Elerond

Are you joking? Do you know what torture is? Most rape is just nonconsensual intercourse, where sometimes the sex organs can be bruised. Torture causes people to lose various parts of their bodies. So no they are not comparable. Who said anything about self defense. I don't think that anywhere in this whole thread there was a mention of it. Why stop there, let's torture people to learn any information we need. Not just pedophiles. regular rapist too, we mustn't forget the pesky terrorist, and while we are at it, why not torture anyone that is accused of anything until they confess. Sound familiar? Yes I know what torture is, but do you? Torture can be anything from causing sleep deprivation (what most torture is today at least) to removing limps and organs from person. Rape can be only taking person freedom of choice away to causing great bodily harm by using iron rod, for example, to rape someone (Indian bus gang rape case). Even lightest form of rape and torture can cause severe psychological harm and in worst case the lead in painful death. You didn't exclude any killings in your orginal post, which was reason why I gave context where I see that killing another person is more acceptable than raping someone. And questions were to show that order which is worst and which is lightest crime changes depending on context where crimes are commited.

In what sense it is any lesser crime than any other mentioned here? Well, raping one person is lesser than me murdering 500 people or worse just from a numbers point of view. Most people would agree that Pol Pot is a worse human being than a rapist. But is raping million people lesser crime than murdering 500 people? Because you can also do raping in massive scale it is not only for murder and torture.

How they are worse? And aren't torture and rape even somewhat comparable as one is physical or/and mental abuse and second is physical and mental abuse? And rape can easily leave you with broken body and mind, and even lead to your death. And is killing in self-defence worse crime than rape, as you did kill someone? And is torturing information from sadistic phedofile kidnapper, worse crime than said phedofile raping his/her victims?

In what sense it is any lesser crime than any other mentioned here? Slavery, one of the popular evil choices, implies a certain amount of rape -- even when the slave isn't explicitly sold into prostitution, they're likely to be taken advantage of if they're attractive. And even if raping one's slaves is illegal, enforcing such laws is difficult at best, and when it's a slave's word against a free person, the slave's got pretty much no chance. Genocide as well, unless maybe the species is completely non-humanoid. It's hard to imagine someone brainwashed into treating a certain class of people as objects not taking advantage of their victims before slaughtering them, for the dead tell no tales. And yet, because these consequences are abstracted away... I'm sure you all know that old saw. "One is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." But in other note when slavery was legal, rape was not (although definition what is rape has changed also during the time, but in this thread people have been talking about act that has been seen as rape through most of the history). And through history discriminate against and even killing person different religions and cultures (even genociding them) has seen as acceptable and even legal thing to do, but raping your fellow citizen was not. And is use of rape as weapon of war any less bad than killing people? Because both things can destroy civilizations and terrorize people in submission.

In what sense it is any lesser crime than any other mentioned here?

And chance get bigger if you go against opponets above of your level. But this will probably only occur if you go off the critical path. Remove "chance"? Absolutely. It will have no impact on tactics as far as I can see. That is probably true that on critical path enemies will be about on your level. Lowering chance's impact, as there is still chance to miss, graze, hit and criticaly hit, so chance is not fully removed, but it will have less effect in the game. And when you sum this with other combat changes like engagement zones and disengagement attacks and etc. you will need to change your typical tactics from IE games and you also need to know how combat abilities in every class works so that you can actually be effective in the combat. Or so it looks to me that this will be the case, but of course this is only speculation from my part based on released information.

And chance get bigger if you go against opponets above of your level. In my opinion proposed system is very intriguing as it lowers luck's impact in the combat and forces player use more complex tactics and have actual knowledge how things work in the combat.

They made a Kickstarter which specifically mentioned Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment, what else did we have to go off? As I said previously I don't think "IE-like" means isometric graphics alone, graphics are completely cosmetic. To me it mean more so than so rule system. Because I don't think that NWN or NWN2 are IE like games even though they use D&D as their rule system. Because they have very different atmosphere because of their graphichs style. And here is quote from Kickstarter where Obsidian mentions IE games.

Screenshot looks nice, although characters, especially in chamber, look floating over the floor instead of standing on it. But I think that with bit stronger and more adjusted shadows will make it much harder to notice (and I think that it would also help if characters would look like they are moving). I love how colorful and detailed scene itself is and character models and equipment look fabulous. Excelent update as always.

Killable npc don't make world less static if world don't react people dying. So if you don't have resources to make world react to civilian slaughter you probably should not make it be possible in the game, because then there is at least some logic how game world works and reacts. Meaning less slaughter that don't have any impact in the world is in my opinion much worse than npc that don't die, because unkillable characters only take away player's choice in somethings (which isn't ideal in rpgs but reality but sad reality where we live), where world that don't react your actions is just dull and usually also very unbelievable.

Making killable npc to unkillable is so trivial operation that you can't even say it takes coding time as you can do it with bool variable and simple check function. And modern game engines features with all their fancy ready-made character system usually have such feature and much more variety giving systems already build in. But it will take lots of writing time to make world to react you random innocent villagers killings and without such reactions your immersion would probably break as well, even with ability to kill innocents, as it would feel quite hollow if game world don't react any way in your psychotic rampage. I think it would be nice if all npc can die in the game especially because of accidentaly thrown fireball and then world (at least faction which land you are) would see you as psychotic murderer and will send mercenaries to kill you and refuse let you in their cities, which would cause you sneak in. But as PE don't have huge ammount of extra resources to spent, so I am willing to sacrifice it, as it is thing that I rarelly did in old rpgs were it was some what possible, to get more reactivity and content in those playthrough styles that I most likelly will actually use to get through the game.

I think that would cause some problems as that would mean that everything would be thrown in the stash, which you can only access in safe places.

I hope Obsidian doesn't sacrifice their artistic integrity to please a damn ratings board. slap an 18+ rating on it, call it obscene if you must. Steam sells all the Postal games, I don't see why they would censor P:E. Anyway, I do hope that the evil extremes discussed here are extremes in the game, because it's not going to be the tone of my playthrough. In EU it is usually easy as we have our PEGI 18+ raiting (or somewhat similar raiting system in use) that allows about all non-illegal stuff to be included, but in USA and Canada it is more complex issue because of ESRB's M (Mature 17+) and A (adults only 18+) and how retailers attitude towards them (as many refuses to sell AO rated stuff) in those markets. Although it is usually sex that brings AO raiting for the games in ESRB rating system, which means that games can be have very brutal and violence in them if they don't have 'strong sexual content'. And Australia is always it's own case. And there is of course rest of the world also be considered .

This is already a niche market, mass market is call of duty/mass effect level. There are people who would pick those options and there is more of them then you think. To add on that, there are people who wouldn't pick those options but would like the game more for their inclusion. I mean for pete's sake, in bioshock the main character sold his infant daughter (not even the worst thing in the game) and the whole world loved the game. There is difference in including thing in the story and make thing as player choice.

Such acts needs reactivity from the game, which means that writer resources need to be sacrificed to make them work and as I don't see that I would enjoy such choices and reactivity in the game, therefore I am against adding such thing in the game as those writing resources could and in my opinion should be spend to write such options that I would enjoy to use.

Being Childkiller in Fallout made you character pariah in eyes of world and (nearly) everyone wanted to kill you, which made games somewhat unplayable if you did such act. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Childkiller And they did realized that that tomach kicking picture was too offensive

Can you guarantee that there will never be chimp that is as smart as healthy human, even if one is breed and geneticaly manipulated to add intelligence? You think RPG system should take into account people of a race not really belonging to said race? The question is how you define races in RPG system? Are character different race if s/he is breeded and geneticaly manipulated to be most superior specimen of his or her race? Because rpg don't usually follow definition specifications and rules for races or species. I think the problem is non-existent, especially because there's often one race for every attribute. So a DnD Orc that has been magically altered to be smarter may simply use the attribute bonuses (none) of a human. That works well in p&p games where GM can alter the rules but in computer games that usually needs hacking/modding as computer games rarelly are very flexible with their rule system.

Can you guarantee that there will never be chimp that is as smart as healthy human, even if one is breed and geneticaly manipulated to add intelligence? You think RPG system should take into account people of a race not really belonging to said race? The question is how you define races in RPG system? Are character different race if s/he is breeded and geneticaly manipulated to be most superior specimen of his or her race? Because rpg don't usually follow definition specifications and rules for races or species.

Can you guarantee that there will never be chimp that is as smart as healthy human, even if one is breed and geneticaly manipulated to add intelligence?

I agree with you that minuses and pluses for attributes isn't best way to go. And I also think skill bonuses or exclusive skills is better way to differentiate races from each other. Although I think that you could make some attributes cheaper and some more expensive to obtain for different races, for example intelligence (or equivalent) could cost orcs more than it cost humans, but strength (or equivalent) is cheaper. And this is to reflect that fact there are more likely be strong orcs than intelligent ones, but you could still make intelligent orc if you want, but it could mean that you may need to let some of your attributes to be lower than what would be "typical" for orc build. This system of course works only if you buy attributes instead of throwing them.

You are right, ofcourse. We obviously loved different aspects of the IE games. I think Obsidian shouldn't have mentioned IE games at all in their campaign, or should have made it more clear what kind of changes they intend to make. For instance I have no issues with the new Torment. From the start it was clear what they wanted to accomplish, that they would change the setting, where they would follow the spirit of the original torment. Obsidian didn't make it as clear and that's why I think there are some disappointed people. In my opinion Obsidian did make it quite clear that they intend to make spiritual successor to IE engine games that takes high-level ideas that make those games feel as they feel, but they will not use any of the rule systems or setting that IE games used but instead they will make new rule system and setting from scratch. They metioned that setting will have familiar elements so that players can easily identify things, but that everything has new twist that make setting different from other fantasy settings. And for rule system they told what were their high-level goals what they want to achive with it and they even gave some examples of ideas that what they had in that time. But I would say that it is way too early to be disappointed to PE as we know very little details about how it's system will work as whole, so it is very difficult to judge what kind experience system will give to players.

Can you be Jewish, but not practice Judaism? Can you practice Judasim, but not be Jewish? When someone is described as "Danish" I expect them to be from Denmark. So I find the comparison to be pretty apt. When I hear someone described as Jewish, I expect them to be a practitioner of Judaism. Am I incorrect in this assumption? I have always had the term "Jewish" to Judaism as "Christian" is to Christianity. Those who practice Judaism are Jews, but also people that are born in Jewish families or have Jewish ancestors are considered to be Jews even if they don't practice Judaism. So you can be Jewish and not practice Judaism, but you can't practice Judaism and not be Jewish.

I have understood correctly it is illegal to use deadly force to protect you property in Lousiana, as such is only allowed if someone threatens your life our tries to invade your home. So defendant needs to make jury to belive that he really thought that his life was in danger, which is made even harder by fact that person that he shot was only 14 years old. But I would not parallel this with Martin-Zimmerman case as circumstances are very different.

Some times you learn the hard way that crime don't pay off.