Stun

Oh right. Right. They're the same as Bioware Romances. I forgot. Just like Leliana, Morrigan, Isabela, Fenris, Anders, Viconia, Jahiera, Anomen, Merril, and Aerie, Grace and Annah will ego stroke you by sleeping with you...and.... telling you that they love you...and.... Engaging in a give and take "us" discussion with you....and.... telling others in your party that they love you.... And the game will give you a choice to go down that narrative path, or reject it outright. Oh wait. That doesn't happen with Annah or Grace in PS:T. None of it does. Ever. Edit: It's noteworthy to point out that even when you're talking to Ravel, and she demands that you tell her how you feel about Grace and Annah, you still don't get the option to say: "I love them"....only that you could love them.

Clearly you haven't watched his Dragon Age 2 review. Or his Witcher 2 review lol Make no mistake about this, Angry Joe is a Promancer to the nth degree.

"The romantic NPC should be picky, it's obvious he/she has high standards. In Planescape: Torment, we made it pretty clear that Annah and Fall-From-Grace didn't express interest in just anyone, and the player was the only one out of thousands that ever piqued their interest." http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1/entry-79-blog-o-romance/ ^So they have a crush on TNO. A crush that for Grace goes completely unrealized, and for Annah goes unrealized until she dies. That's ego stroking, not romance. And it's a theme in PS:T. PS:T is filled to the gills with exactly that type of "TNO is the only one who gets my interest." Dakkon answers only to the Nameless one; Ignus will teach no one but the Nameless one. No one can motivate and lead Nordom but the Nameless one. Ingress' teeth only respond to the nameless one. Fell worships the Nameless one and builds an entire studio in TNO's Honor and no one else (are you going to argue that There's a Fell romance in PS:T?

There's dozens of Chris Avellone quotes there. And not a single one of them mentions an Annah Romance, a Fall-From-Grace Romance, or a "love triangle with the Nameless One." Good Job!

<sigh>

Oh? Can you describe to me the courting process of Annah (or Grace) In PS:T? No wait. Allow me. Annah: You stink. And I've never seen anyone so ugly. TNO: :::Kisses Annah:::: Annah: Are you daft? TNO: Admit it, you liked it! Annah: Get away from me! You're making my demonic blood boil! (literally. Permanent +5% fire resistance) And then.... Nothing. Nothing at all. No courting for the rest of the game. Maybe some thief training though...which she vocally resents. ------ TNO: Hey grace? What are your feelings about me? Grace: Not saying. TNO: Oh come on. Grace. Nope. But Dakkon...man, he's got impressive combat skills! TNO: Ok then, can I read your diary? Grace: Nope. TNO: nevermind then. Ok, Bruce. This is your definition of Romance/courtship in an RPG? Really? You're basically stretching the definition of romance so that any non-combat scenario = Romance. I rest my case. Edit: I have good news for you, Sir Stretch. Despite what the devs have said, PoE will have Romances. In fact, the Beta we've played already has 2 of them. Rejoice!

Link?

Oh no she doesn't. There is no dialogue path either before, or after the kiss that leads to anything other than her shooting down your advances in the most insulting way imaginable. She tells TTO that you matter more to her than her life. And that's all. And considering the fact that she says that even if you never talk to her or kiss her, is an obvious theme....the same one that all your other companions have: She's drawn to you because of your plight. Because you're doomed. Not because of romantic emotions.

:::shakes head::: What the hell is wrong with you people? I kissed my mother last week. Doesn't mean I'm romancing her. You can't romance Annah in PS:T any more than you can Romance Dakkon. You know what context is, right? Give it a rest, Bryy. The Annah kiss isn't indicative of any romance, especially because of the context. But the promancers don't care. They cannot pass up the Opportunity to cite a KISS that occurs in a story-heavy classic like PS:T for their argument. They can't. Because their warped theory states that you can't have deep NPC's without romances and therefore PS:T, the game with the deepest NPCs ever, must have them. The fact that it DOES NOT utterly nullifies their argument and everyone here knows it. But hey.... You can Kiss Annah, therefore, Romance! And so my response is: OK. I kissed my Mother last week. Therefore, romance!

Wait.... There are no 'per battle' abilities in PoE. There are per encounter abilities instead. This may sound like pointless semantics but it isn't. You see, unlike MMOs and ARPGs, encounters in PoE are self-contained. That is to say, if a map has 2 fights in it, they will be reasonably spread out so that you will not 'accidently" trigger them both at once. And therefore your question is a no brainer. You will know when a fight is over. A fight is over when you've killed all the enemies in front of you. First, the combat state isn't arbitrary (it's the opposite of arbitrary. it's rigidly defined--which is its real problem). Second, the only time your scenario will happen is if you try to make it happen, like for example, sending your wizard off into the distance during combat to toss a fireball into the fog of war. But why would you do that except to deliberately try to trigger that second encounter for "challenge" purposes, or for tactical purposes (to make optimal use of abilities that you can only use once per day)? As for cooldowns. Ugh. No. Lets not go there.

He's saying "if there wouldn't have been a Super Mario game until today". Meaning there wouldn't be a Super Mario success to copy-cat/emulate/imitate/simulate/rip-off. It's a hypothetical question that would require a lot of analytical research, thinking, history study. It's like saying "What if there had never been a Legend of Zelda series until now?" or "What if there had never been a Final Fantasy series until now?" or even "What if there had never been a Baldur's Gate series until now?". It's a question with no real answer (a.k.a. "I need to put myself in an advantageous position by asking a BS question-card") because there's no end to the possibilities what would've happened. What sort of consequences would a non-Super Mario past look like etc. etc. it's an extremely difficult question to even hypothetically answer with too many variables. Osvir, he claimed games didn't sell as well back then. But yeah. Angry Birds is an excellent example.

If that's what he's saying he's comedically wrong. There's a bajillion Mario copy-cat games for Wii and other platforms. The vast majority of them generate ridiculously high sales. And that argument of his is not applicable anyway. his claim was that games didn't sell that well back then.

The video game offer? What is that, exactly?

Nope. That's a chicken-egg argument. The Game sales is what caused the Mario character to become a house hold name, and what drove the SNES console to become so financially successful. My question is: what caused the game itself to be so popular in the first place? why did it appeal to so many gamers? Good god. Remind me not to hire you as my stock broker. 21st century News flash: Mario games are STILL being released, and STILL selling upwards of 20-30 million each.

Stop. WHY? Why is a simple, casual, very-little-thinking-involved game that appeals to the intellectual capacity of your typical grade school student the most successful franchise in Video Game history? Oh, that's right, because of all the the above. It's simple, there's very little thinking involved, and even the kiddies can master it. Yes, That was my point.... which you and Diogenes continue to miss.

As far as kickstarter games are concerned, PoE will be a resounding financial success by virtue of the Obsidian name alone. It will Outsell D:OS, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun returns, etc. There are huge swaths of people who know nothing about PoE but will buy it anyway because Obsidian made it. These other games don't have that element going for them. As for reviews... I'm betting reception will be mixed. It already is.

Are you dense? Super Mario Brothers came out in the 80s.... sold 40 million copies. Sims came out at the same time as BG2.... sold 16 million copies, And it was also a PC exclusive. Hell, we don't even have to leave the elder scrolls. Morrowind came out less than 15 months after BG2.... sold 6 million. So I'll ask again: WHY?

Torment didn't have romances. It had 3 from the top of my head. Oh, if we use the promancer definition of 'romance' it has far more than that. PS:T has about 12 romances. 1) Deionarra - She's a ghost (a spectre to be precise. a species of undead) but hey, even necrophilia doesn't matter when there's LOVE. 2) Fall from Grace - A succubus. Last thing out of her mouth is: Don't forget me! (promancers eat that sh*t up. just ask them) 3) Dakkon - the classic Bromance. The game even lets you tell him that your two deaths will be as one (Aaw) 4) Annah - Nice body, sexy...tail. And that Kiss that makes her all hot (literally) 5) Stale Mary - the Zombie. Yes. She's a 'woman' that teaches TNO how to listen. In traditional Promancer terms, this is profound romance material. 6) Yves-tale-chaser - you can spend hours swapping stories with her. Is that not the stereotypical "first date" material in the eyes of the promancers? 7) Ravel - She stalks you throughout the planes? Check. You can pour it on thick with the flirting when you meet her? Check. You can kiss her? Check. You can tell her that you love her? Check. And She reciprocates all these advances? Check! And that's just the PC-directed romances. There are, of course, narrative-based 3rd party "romancing" going on all over PS:T (things that love other things) 8.) Yves tells you a story about a man who was in love with the Lady of Pain. And how he died with a satisfied smile on his face when she met him and shredded him to ribbons 9) Yves tells you a story about a Modron who fell in love with a...Clock. 10) The woman at the Smoldering Corpse Bar who's in love with Ignus, and eagerly burns to ashes as she embraces him. (again, the promances eat this sh*t up) 11) There are harlots all over the place 12) Morte 'falls in love' with Kamaxi Adder-tongue at the Brothel. C'mon people, this is NOT what the Promancers (or anyone else) mean when they profess their wishes for romances in CRPGs. They only ever cite PS:T because it's such a time-honored classic and they hope that by name-dropping it, it will lend strength to their crap arguments.

:::shakes head::: What the hell is wrong with you people? I kissed my mother last week. Doesn't mean I'm romancing her. You can't romance Annah in PS:T any more than you can Romance Dakkon.

This is not a philosophical/debatable issue. We're dealing with plain old objective statistics. Statistics that game studios and their marketing firms intensively follow when creating games. Skyrim sold 20 million copies while Baldurs Gate 2 only sold about 2 million. Care to guess why this is?

Of course it depends on one's definition of what an RPG romance is. But that's really not saying anything. It's like going to McDonalds, ordering a bag of fries and then telling everyone that McDonalds serves 'French cuisine'. No. Broadening the definition of romances so that one can cite great RPG classics like Planescape Torment and say: "See? the best written games have them!" Does not fly with me.

Torment didn't have romances.

Part of what problem?

Yeah. THIS. And...not anything else you've said on this thread. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to CRPGs, the broader the target audience, the more limited and watered down the RPG will be. And must be. Because average gamers don't like to read, don't like to focus on anything beyond the visual, don't like rule set complexity, and most importantly they won't be entertained by gameplay that is designed to be more of a cerebral experience than an adrenaline rush. We all want PoE to be as financially successful as possible. But there's a huge difference between wishing that the game does well, and wishing that it be designed to target the mainstream masses so that it sells a bajillion copies, like Mass Effect and Skyrim and other large-target-audience-RPGs. And this is precisely why I look at this Angry Joe Preview and rejoice. He might help this game sell well despite it not being targeted/designed towards his core viewership.

Weapon set 1, 2, 3, 4. Aside from hotkeys, there is an alternative to having all of them be visible on the game screen at once. Go look at how IWD2 did it. Only 1 weapon set on the bar at any time, but if you right-click on it, you can switch to any of the others on the fly. This might be the solution to the potential issue of a 5th weapon set gained via feats, btw.