Badmojo

Boss battles are cool, but I would like to have an option to use brains over brawn to solve problems without going rambo mode. For example, finding out a demon has enslaved a town, now you can go in and fight it, you might even have holly objects to hurt it, or, you might find its true name (hard to get and requires research and preplanning to arm yourself before you face it), if you get the true name you can make the demon your slave, you could also try and negotiate,threaten,seduce,charm,enthrall,etc if you have a high enough score in those skills. Hell, if you have an assassin/rouge, maybe you can sneak up and off it (if high enough skill) before it even knows you are there. Are like in fallout, the old reverse pickpocket a grenade on an enemy and watch it go boom. I would love to see stuff like that. I am not saying for all boss battles, but its one of my pet peaves when you create a non violent character that uses non violent means 90% of the game, to only be forced into old fashioned fighting at the end. It was the one thing I hated in deus ex:HR, all that stealth/conversation work down the drain during the boss fights.

Depends on if they give XP or not, not to mention the no healing in the game except at certain rest locations seems like it could be a bit troubling. So basically, respawning monsters would seem to cost magic spells/ammo/ to fight and if you get permanent damage you will have to go to a rest area, which if its an unsafe rest area, ironically enemies will spawn/attack you again which repeats what happened earlier causing even more health/damage/loss of resources that might force you to go all the way back to a safe location like an INN or something. So after you heal at the inn and go back to the same area, you will have the same monsters you defeated earlier to fight again repeating everything that just happened. So *shrug*, I think something might have to give, either xp and some minor healing, no respawning of monsters, or have respawning of monsters VERY slowly. Of course, going through an area and fighting the same enemies again that you already defeated might get old quick depending on how often we go through an area. The mega dungeon probably should not respond since going through a dungeon is usually to get rid of the monsters/enemies of said dungeon. Actually, there should be a valid reason some areas respawn with enemies, and stopping the source of the respawning will stop the enemy encounters from returning. An example is a necromancer experimenting on bringing back the dead using special magical devices to create an energy field that is spreading beyond his laboratory and bringing the dead back all around the area, turning off or destroying the magical stones will stop the respawning. Or another, is a band or highwaymen, every time you take them down another appear(possibly stronger), you find out that they are part of a bigger group who work for a crime lord and until you take the crime lord down, they will keep respawning...etc.

A lot of good ideas here. I like villains that go up and down the spectrum of clearly evil, to grey, to strange/alien. Kane is a wonderful example of a villian that is obviously bad, but is so chrasmatic that you just can't help like and want to join. The alien/strange are villians whose goals are not based on human motivations like the many/shodan/the master/Alien(from the movies), or you might have villains who are not so much evil as driven by their natural instincts, Aliens (again, its not clear how much is instinct or intelligence driving them, probably both), zombies (yes most are mindless, but their goals are to feed and spread their disease), vampires (driven to feed on the living, their goals are paradoxically to dominate and protect their food supply). Demons are clearly evil, but that could still fall under their natures since they feed off suffering. It is cool that they want grey villains, but at the same time, it would be nice to have some clear cut ones that are obviously bad(and vice versa for good). Like a cult that worships the goddess of darkness and suffering who brings in human sacrifices once a month and their goals are summon their goddess on their plane to turn the world into a living hell. Changing the pace so its not all grey choices. One thing I would like to see, that I have not seen done, is for a path to bring make different (evil) factions work together as an option. You can pull it off for good factions, but evil factions usually go with their can only be one type mentality because of their nature. Perhaps the character can try diplomacy, threats, logic..etc. Maybe argue that the land (that they are going to take over) is too big for any one faction and different groups can rule different parts, the cultist can rule the dominate religion, the evil legion can be the new soldiers, the vampire clan can be put in as recognized "nobility", the evil wizards/summoners/necromancers..etc can be the official court appointed wizards that run the schools...etc. Perhaps deciding who is on the food chain. Again, this is only for the clearly evil groups. Just a thought. However, the heroes and villains are only as good as the counterpart as they say.

What? I don't even... Where the hell did I say *I* was the only person. I specifically said they should ask beta testers and THEMSELVES if a design they put in is fun or not (getting different perspectives is usually a good idea to a point). Lets be clear, this is still the theoretical stage and NOTHING has been created yet. I was simple responding to what I read earlier. Ok, lets review what was said and/or hinted at. - the characters have no magic/healer (ok, not my something *I* would do, but hey, lets see what they do) - we have regenerative stamina (lets just call it for what it is, a health shield that recharges with time, this protects the character until they actually get damaged in health when the shield runs out) - we have what? 6? 8? party that has plays in real time that we have to hit the space bar to pause and set up attacks. Sounds like it might be easy to miss something and get someones shield damaged and the person hurt depending on the size and power of the attack group. Depending on how bad, you will have to go to a rest area to sleep/heal - only way to heal is by resting, there are resting spots from what I understand, there is *safe* resting spots (probably inns) that will be far away, then there will be unsafe resting spots which will probably have random encounters if you try to rest. So the only way you can be sure to get healed completly without fighting a monster is to drag your party all the way back to an inn and then drag your party all the way back to where you left off. I can't remember if there is responding monsters or not, so you might have to fight the same monsters again. Again, this is theoretical work and nothing has been created at all as far as I know. Now, just looking at the limited information, it *LOOKS* like this could be a bit frustrating if we have to go back and forth every time someone gets *real* damage and the only way to be sure we are not killed by a random attack is to drag ourselves all the way back to the *safe* area far away. Of course, the word is limited information, there probably a lot of stuff we are not seeing that might make this the most awesome thing ever....or not. I do not know and neither does anybody but the devs. *its got to be the video games that make everybody this way, damn video games, ah crazy religious groups, you were right! video games are tearing our peaceful world apart!*

Sawyer, thanks for replaying to the thread! This isn't a swipe at you or the people of obsidian, just a minor concern that I wanted to express, I did not realize the thread would blow up in my face. I blame music and violent video games for the bad behavior on here. That is probably it then, I have autosave turned on because I am BAD at forgetting to manually save the game and really do not want to lose hours of gameplay because I forgot to save. However, it makes no sense that it would pull an ironman overwrite if you did not select ironman. Probably an oversite/bug the devs made (among many bugs) that will hopefully be patched in later. Ok, a Mea culpa on my part. I thought it was a mandatory thing since I did not select ironman, however it is still a mechanical fault on their part because it does not say it would pull an ironman. This is exactly what I was saying, I never said I wanted the game to be dumbed down and turned easy. I just said to make sure the mechanics do not cross from fun to frustrating/irritating. How does anybody interpret that as wanting to make it easy? I know we have all played games where there has been SOMETHING that has made us all want to smash our screens in because of bad design. Something that just SUCKS the fun from games. I am just saying after implementing something, step back and ask yourself the simple question. Is this fun? That is all. I am sure the game will be fun, but I have played a lot of games where the devs implementing something that I am sure they thought it was a good idea, where most of us find frustrating. I do agree that asking beta testers this would probably be a good idea.

It's his own fault for starting his post with a weird, erroneous tangent about the X-COM. After that his credibility was shot and nobody truly cared about his concerns for PE, given that they were built on a faulty premise. No, that is what everyone is latching on too without actually coming up with a coherent argument against what I said about worrying about unfun game mechanics. Maybe I made a mistake with xcom, got a buggy game, or who knows. But that is how it is acting for ME. Still, that is just a distraction from the argument itself.

This is pretty much all I was saying, but hey, some people like stiring up rage and hate on a board.

The game overwrites ALL the saves on the level, even my manual saves. Might be a bug.

fudge, A lot of idiots on this board. First, I never said I want PE to be easy, EVER! So shut that noise. Secondly, what the hell is wrong with all of you? I was merely mentioning my opinions and you attack me? You act like I killed your favorite pet, pissed on it, made a stew, and then sent it too your families as a Christmas meal. You know what? News Flash. Not EVERYTHING about the old games were great. You know why? Because it was all new! It was all trial and error and limitations of programming at the time. There are something that should definitely not be in the new games, not because of making it easy, but because it was not fun to the MAJORITY of players, EVEN THE OLD SCHOOL PLAYERS. Oh, but I guess they do not count because only REAL gamers play grimhard. Also, this trend of making games so freaking hard like demon souls is exactly that, a trend, the old games were not that hard. Many of you are just on the trend badwagon, if PE makes a game like the older games, guess what? It would not be any harder than those games which IS FINE. If they make it super hard like you want IT WILL NOT BE LIKE THE OLD RPG GAMES. Your the ones asking for change. However, it seems a lot of you want one hit kills, degrading armour, forced hunger/eating, and half a dozen other things that most of us just do not find fun and were not even in the old games. But, I digress. I never opened this thread to start a flamewar, I was just expressing my concern that some mechanics might not be fun when actually playing. As for XCOM, I either have a bugged game or the posters who say they loaded a save right before a character died is lying. *shrug*. Too far in to start a new game and see if the same thing happens, after I finish I will try it again.

Oh yea, that was annoying for stealth players. It was way worse in deus ex:HR. The company for dhr tried to blame another company that worked on the ending as the culprit, but it was the original company that sighned off on it. One of the devs said they wanted a big action fight to make you feel you accomplished something. um...what? If you go through the game 90% with stealth, you do NOT want an action fight...grrrrr.

Ok, found it, the developer decided to make permadeath mandatory. I think permadeath is fine to a point, however the way the game is designed, it is WAY to easy to die, at least in the early levels. However, It should have been optional or turned off on easy, because this is really one of those designs some will love and some will be driven to frustration/hate. I am in the later part. I DO get what the developer wants to do, but this is NOT fun for me and a lot of others, there is NO emotional reward for a job well done, it just feels frustrating and that ruins the FUN aspect. Let me make it clear, besides this and some other features, xcom EU IS fun, but it is overshadowed a bit by this frustrating "feature". I am fine with permadeath in PE (I do think it could be put in as a fun way like I mentioned in my necromacy/reserection thread, but its all cool either way), however I think not having healing magic/medicine and only healing by mandatory resting *groan* areas in certain fixed locations (from what I gathered in the update) is crossing from fun into possible frustration territory. It is one of those things that sound good on paper, but will probably suck when actually doing it. Of course it depends on the whole package, there may be some way that this feature is actually "fun" but I do not see it, it also sounds like we are going to have to do a LOT of traveling back and forth to inns/safe rest areas (from what I gather, not resting there but in other places have monster spawn and attack the party), that really, really does not sound fun no matter how I look at it.

have you loaded at a point right before a character dies on that level? every save gets overwritten at that level when a character dies. I did not have ironman enabled so maybe I have a bugged game (and boy, does this game have a lot of bugs). :/ still, the fact that I have an alien an inch from my character and I shoot it with a 90% chance of success only to have it mostly miss, while an alien all the way across the map can shoot my character most of the time with pinpoint accuracy is BS.

its not ironman, it set on EASY. This feature should NOT be in easy mode. You can start the game on easy and select ironman mode. ironman=save&exit ONLY Let me guess, you couldn't decipher how to start a new game and someone else configured it for you. I don't even.... Emotionally drained you said? Excuse me, but I am glad PE its not forced to cater your needs as a gamer. Um, no, ironman mode has a SINGLE save file only, and no, I did not have it enabled. Have you played XCOM EU? If you got it (pc version), go in a game, go to a battle, save, let one of your men get killed, load the save and see what happens. ALL I asked is that they step back and look at what they are making and ask if it is FUN. Bad/frustrating design that seems like a good idea, can ruin even an excellent game.

Really fun game, the only real issue I think I had was with the gun targeting and sneaking was super hard at the beginning until you upgraded. One thing, I want to play again, but I do not want to start as a blank slate, wished you could unlock the professional level without having to do the recruit level first.

Um, what? Sorry but I love a hard game as much as the next person, but if there is multiple play types like insane/hard/normal/ and EASY, then you kind of expect easy to be..um...easy? Have you played the game? I know quite a few who said the same thing before they played it and after they played it their attitudes changed quickly.

its not ironman, it set on EASY. This feature should NOT be in easy mode.

I am playing the PC version, it is set to easy(which I think the devs do not understand the meaning of the word). When one of your character dies, the system overwrites the save game of that level, when you load up that level, it is changed to the point after the character had died. The devs said they set it that way so people would be forced to actually earn their online achievment. It...it is stupid honestly, I do not care one iota about online achievments, I want to play for fun, not frustration. I would be happy for an option to turn off the autosave at the cost of turning off online achievments. I am hoping they will patch it up from all the complaints about it. Actually you can't those get overwritten also. You have to load up one from all the way back at the base, basically reloading the whole level. We all have different play styles and sometimes they are incompatible with one another. I was just expressing some concerns from what was mentioned on some of the updates, it might work beutifully..or it might end up being a frustrating mess. Like I said, it wasn't until xcom eu showed me one extreme of design over fun. It would be nice if we had a toggle to change the play styles to our liking. I know they said some stuff will be toggable, but others sound like it might not. More choices the better. Nope, easy. I have only a few hours here and there, I can use to play because of my commute and work. Still, easy is not really that easy.

I don't know, on one hand it would be cool, on the other hand it is an overused trope. "oh damn you inevitable betrayal that I saw a mile away!". Heh, as a joke an a evil path party, if you play it a certain evil way, at the end, ALL the party members should turn on the main character (and possible each other) at the end as a possible ending outcome.

Oh, here is a thought, what about getting locations from priests? or using a cipher? Or perhaps a necromancer could contact the dead and ask them? If you don't have one in your party you could find a temple and pay for the information Maybe its a skill a character could learn (so you could have one of your party members focus on this), it could be used beyond the quest marker, if you have a journal you could click on a NPC character/location in your list and the character with the ability could point to their location on a map. Of course the skill has to be upgraded, at low level it will show you a general idea of the location, higher it points a bit closer, at highest it is pin pointed accuracy. If you need info NOW and your character is not high enough, you could go to a temple, cipher, necromancer who is a high level and pay them to show you the location on the map. A priest contacts its deity to get the info, a cipher uses her powers, and a necromancer contacts the legion of dead.

I have been playing X-Com enemy unknown lately and I think its a great example of problems caused by designing *solutions* to non existent problems that end up making the game unfun and frustrating. For example, they set up an automatic save function to save the game after each characters death, to overwrite the save game of that level. They argue that its so characters will feel more important if you lose them (can't reload save) and make you feel good when you over come a challenge. Sounds good right? WRONG! It is the most frustrating game ever, your characters die, not from lack of skill but because of stupid luck on the enemies part (not to mention the host of bugs and other screwed up design features). You end up replaying that level A LOT till you finally pass it, am I happy I passed? Am I glad of the challenge? Do I feel like I accomplished something? Hell no, I am so frustrated and pissed that when I finally got through, I just felt emotionally drained and seriously thinking of stop playing if this is what the whole game will be like. Many forums are flooded with people complaining about this, I could understand if this was for normal or hard, but even easy and no option to turn it off? That went to far. Ok, now the reason I brought this up is because I am a bit worried about some of the design decisions that have been mentioned by the devs they have been thinking about. Some of them sound like its to fix a playing style problem (like spamming resting or getting xp from killing monsters, etc) than actual real problems or putting something in to make the characters feel more important (like no healing spells/medicine..and only able to rest at certain locations...thats a bit extreme and does not sound fun to me). The issue is, some of the ideas sound like it will lead to frustration instead of fun like what is happening with X-COM EU. I could understand if this was a multiplayer game, but worrying about how individual people play in a singleplayer game? All I ask is to step back from looking at it from a mechanical solution and ask the simple question "Is this fun?", will players have fun with this or will it make them frustrated? I have faith in the devs, but xcom eu has shown me a worst case scenario. This isn't demon souls, this is supposed to be a FUN game.

A simple toggle (with it being off by default) is the best options. There are times every so often you forget where you want to go, or you get lost, or maybe its a boring quest and you just want to hurry up and get it over with and not spend too much time on it (oh, can you go to the well and search under every rock to find my ring I dropped when I was young and foolish *GROAN*...but, since we can't grind for XP anymore, we HAVE to do this quest for the xp *sigh*) or half a dozen reasons. If its optional and off by default, seems the best solution.

You know, I don't think there has been ONE single request for chainmail bikini's, but people keep bringing it up. Your thinking of this: Which is weird if you think about it, when it happens to a guy (say the monk class), not a peap from the WK/Fem crowd, but a female npc/companion and they freak out. I disagree a bit about usefulness, I mean, there really is no logic reason anybody should be wearing armour all day long, nor getting hot/tired, impairs movement...etc. Yet, few have complained about that not being logical or consistent. Possible that they were planning to change it anyway to make it more realistic? Yes. However, a bit doubtful when you place in the timing of the change happening only after a group was raising such a fuss. It was only then it became "oh, we weren't going to use that, we were going to use THIS totally PC armour instead...silly us". A bit suspiscious, if there were going to change it, then I would think they would have put the other armour in instead of confusing the audience. Either way, they screwed up. Because its nice to know? I mean, the more detail you can see about a character the better it will be, if the characteristics of a character NPC's cannot be easily distinguished with a casual glance (for example, human, male, wizard, blonde, carries a bone staff, wearing black clothing, so probably necromancer, etc), If I question the most basic of characteristics like what sex it is, then the developers/artists are not doing their job right. Attractive might not have been the right word, I was responding to an earlier post. However, it should be a bit more stylized to show off that its female/male, way more than the current picture shows. I blame using ugly europeon classic armour designs instead of being creative and come up with something really original. The realism argument just doesn't hold water with me when you have guys throwing lightning, gods exist, elves and dwarves running around, etc. Again, it is the sign of future problems. Someone was already complaining about the dwarf female not having a protection armout in front of her boobs because in archery they wear them. Seriously. And that is what this will turn into, unless all the females are covered head to toe not showing any skin amd striping out any female identifiers like boobs, the PC fems/prudes/wk group will raise hell. No, really, most of the people posting have been males, this is not confined to only this forum, this has been going on all along the internet, its always been mostly men who push this, it might start with a single fem posting, but the lion share is men..oh, and sock puppeting going on. actually, go back a few pages, there HAVE been people demanding that male/female be treated exactly the same. Those of us who have seen this exact groups WK/prudes/fems/other,etc show up on every other board on every website shoving the same PC crap in everything for months. It gets a bit tiresome. These threads should have been closed/moved way back and those who keep opening them (especially obvious sock puppets) should be warned/banned, it just pissers off both sides and prevents actual game discussion from progressing because everybody is here fighting for views. Maybe the mods think that letting these thread go will release steam and die out. No, no it wont, it will just make it worse, but hey, whatever. Basically this is less about discussion and more of who can scream the loudest at this point.

it really isn't, it was only used to easily identify male and female characters when they are sprites. Um, go back some pages, some people have damn well asked exactly for that. Perhaps PE is not for YOU, ever think of that? They had a visual image of the original armour and WK/fem group trolled and cried foul demanding change. obsidian caved and changed it just to please this group. Many of us were fine with the armour, yet because of some very small group complaining, obsidian changed it. Sorry, another fool who likes to abuse the sexist word. Sexist, misogynist, rape supporter, etc words have all been used, abused, and twisted beyond recognization. No matter what the argument is, those words are thrown in by people at another group no matter what. Don't agree with me? sexist. Like looking at women? sexist. Not agreeing with a female political candidate? sexist. Creating RPG's for men? sexist. It is the boy who cried wolf syndrome, these words keep appearing over and over by a group and people are starting to ignore it. However, when there is a REAL case of sexism/sexist against a real woman, it will be ignored because people like you who use those words like candy in an argument and only hurting women in the process. I have no problem with this, the Player Character females can do/dress whatever/however they want, I am arguing against NPC/world PC. I think you are trolling, its a game, not a political soap box to shove your political views to the world.

But this is my point. I do not want them to worry about who they may offend, I want them to create the game they WANT to create without fear of whose toes they step on. The original armour was fine, but a group pressured them to change it and they did. That sent all sort of warning bells going off. You say pandering, I say creating a game for the core demographic that is buying it. Changing to not offend, is pandering to the PC crowd. Well, I honestly do not see anything attractive about it. It could easily be a guy or girl in it. Yes, it does look like a bit feminine, but it is way to subtle. Again, it is too subtle. Actually they should show what a male in Armour (NOT BEARDED!) so we can compare them side by side. However, when they are sprites, they will all look the same. Ah, your missing the point completely, this is NOT about sexiness/hormones..etc. This is about changing the game to please the PC crowd/trying to not offend anybody. At least my reasons anyway. I did not put money into PE just for it to be another PC friendly game, I put it in to avoid that drizzle the ESRB has made games into. Changing The armour is just a symptom of worse things to come. Bzzt wrong, its just a bunch of fem/KS trolls, trolling every website/forum. The thing is...its not the women who are the ones mainly pushing it, its the white knights. They are the ones who are screaming for this change which has me baffled. As for opinions, it depends. For example, I like games where men/women are treated differently in both good and bad ways, others want games where men and women are treated EXACTLY the same. I hate the second way because every modern game does this, characters should be unique and recognize the differences in race/sex/species, not ignore it. Now, this is something that there really cannot be a compromising position on. Trying to create a compromising position and you end up with BOTH sides complaining about it. So, who do you listen too? The original group who has always been there and is your biggest player base, or the new way smaller group who want to change it? I should say I think female PC's should play/dress however they want with much dialog going all over the place to fit their play style. I am mainly referring to NPC's/world actions. That is the point, the armour has nothing to do with this thread, it is just a cover story to change all women in the game to a PC friendly version.

*had to break up my reply, hit quota quote block* Pretty much this, different styles is good. However, I do NOT want them to ban attractive Armour on female NPC's, which I get the impression from, with obsidian caving to the WK group and changing the armour. So, if I donate to a game who the vast majority is women and traditionally been women players, can I go in and demand they change all the male characters to fit my tastes because I am offended by the way they are portrayed? I do think its great women play, I do want more women to play. I do NOT want the game devs to try and appease another group by making a game PC friendly. I want them to create something FREE of PC influence, esrb, company restrictions..etc. Well, it should. It's like an abusive relationship, I know I should just leave, but I keep coming back.