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qloher

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Posts posted by qloher

  1. We all know what happens when you don't care much about combat in your game altogether. And I absolutely love this particular result.

    As for the "pot", can you find a better argument than clinging to typos? That's just low.

    PST having a bad combat system, doesn't help your argument about sacrificing combat for romances.

    I made arguments against yours. If you are offended by a light hearted joke at the end, you really need to man up, boy.

    Skyrim in your opinion having some problems with spell system (I personally haven't even played Skyrim and am not interested in doing so), doesn't help your argument as well. There is no at least half-decent romance in Skyrim as far as I know. And this absence didn't help TESV game at all.

    Your argument was a colossal miss from the get go, you see.

    There is a difference between the two crowds tho'.We have better informed arguments. 8)

    Simply saying so doesn't make it true. Really, you guys (Living One & kenup), you have opinions but you are not good at arguing with facts at all.

    jarpie on the other hand have what it takes to lead an interesting discussion, I give him/her that even if we disagree about the subject at hand. Watch and learn.

  2. Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

    You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

    You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

    Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

    Funny thing is, your "counter" has been countered as well thousand of times. I guess you just really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point'.

    Now should I repeat this counter to the counter, someone will pop up and say I'm repeating myself. But of cause I'm repeating myself, my opponent makes me do this by repeating himself in the first place.

    Except it hasn't.Unless you are trying to tell me there are arguments in favour throwing random stuff in games even if they don't make sense. :no::facepalm:

    Romances making no sense in RPGs as a matter of principal is not a fact, but only your personal bias.

    As for "it's up to the guys at Obsidian to decide, not to the romance crowd" argument, the counter is the following: "Yep, it's up to the guys at Obsidian to decide, not to the anti-romance crowd either".

  3. As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

     

    JesusIi've been trying to ignore you, but seriously you know nothing about writing. If you care to go back a few pages I've done you the courtesy of a brief explanation of why you are staggeringly incorrect. I'd be interested in what you think about it.

     

    And, yes, I suppose our brains are wired differently. I'll give you that.

    Care to share a link?

    kenup

    Well, if for your a battle spell is more meaningful and impactfull to the story than a romantic love sub-pot, I don't know what to tell you. Guess our brains are just arranged differently or something. For me a battle spell is but another munchkin ability I can absolutely live without.

    As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

    It doesn't matter if it's important to me; it is important to me, but it doesn't matter. The point is that it helps give more choices for combat, and we all know what happens when you cut off spell choices. And you don't ask for a sub plot, which may or may not be filler, you ask for filler minigames and simulators, because you think RPGs are there to experience a virtual reality. And what the **** is a romantic love sub-pot?

    We all know what happens when you don't care much about combat in your game altogether. And I absolutely love this particular result.

    As for the "pot", can you find a better argument than clinging to typos? That's just low.

  4. Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

    You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

    You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

    Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

    Funny thing is, your "counter" has been countered as well thousand of times. I guess you just really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point'.

    Now should I repeat this counter to the counter, someone will pop up and say I'm repeating myself. But of cause I'm repeating myself, my opponent makes me do this by repeating himself in the first place.

  5. kenup

    Well, if for your a battle spell is more meaningful and impactfull to the story than a romantic love sub-pot, I don't know what to tell you. Guess our brains are just arranged differently or something. For me a battle spell is but another munchkin ability I can absolutely live without.

    As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

  6. Dude stop taking calculations you make in your head as the most legit thing in the world. Avellone and others on the team know what they are talking about, they've done it before. If they say a romance takes two months, it takes two months.

    Where did they say this? Link or it didn't happen.

    Sacrificing spells and side quests for romance? you just ask to do what you want now without caring of consequences and others' preferences.

    You do exactly the same by asking to sacrifice romances for spells and side quests. You are no better.

  7. Thing is, my answers are so dig that forum engine won't let me post 'em sometimes due to an excessive use of quote tags. So I have to cut my expenses based on the total "budget" :grin: . But yeah, it's only fair to let me answer everything.

    Let's see what I've missed the last time.

    Because polls on this very forums show 75% of people are pro-romance. Here. So you are in fact a vocal minority as cliche as it sound nowadays. And don't say polls are not an indicator. They are the closest thing to an indicator that we have.

     

    530 voters from 73986 backers is 0,72 percent so that's not indicative at all.

    Not true. You can't dismiss a poll merely by saying that the sample taken is actually small compared to the whole population which opinion is involved. That contradicts to statistical science in it's basics. For example, US National exit poll samples usually consist of 8,000 to 20,000 people while there are 314 million people live in USA overall. So 8,000 constitutes only 0.00254%. So our poll is pretty damn good from this standpoint.

    Let's say that you go to the deep south to ask if they want Obama or Romney as president, what do you think will be the result?

    Obama will win because tech-savvy youngsters prefer democrats statistically. But that's off-topic. And I'm not even a US cytizen :grin: .

    A game about choice should have a choice for as much people as possible. We don't want it to be lenear. We want it to be an epic advanture as personal as humanly possible. No romances = not perfect for me. When we are talking about a party based RPG that is. Still may be great and awesome, but not perfect, no.

    For the record, so far there are some great and awesome RPGs for me I love to bits out there, yet the perfect one is still to be made.

     

    Well, if you don't see how love is a special kind of feeling yourself, I don't think I can fix it with words.

     

    I put these together so I'll answer both once:

     

    I didn't say about love, I talked about romances and those two are separate. There are many kind of love; between friends, siblings, parents and children, mentor and apprentice etc etc. Romantic love is powerful one sure but it's not any more powerful than other kind of love.

     

    Friendship-, sibling-/parental-, mentorship-love etc are as special as romantic love but it's different; case-in-point Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir in DS9 when Miles' wife asks from Julian in the series to tell her that her husband loves her more than Julian, he can't say so.

    Well, I'll clerify. Romantic love is special among specials. You compare how much there are movies about parental love and about romantic love, you'll see for youself. There is a reason behind it.

    No, not true. I would not be happy with only one rout per character at all. So you basically want them to be as streamlined and nonreactive as possible? So the player character is running around robbing people, excavating graveyards, kicking puppies and eating babies, still a lawful good paladin from the party is a PC's best buddy simply because the only rout he has is a rout of friendship? Not good!

     

    Those are different - if you say romance the said paladin there would be lines for objecting those activities which most probably would be unique for each branch, for romance, non-romance, rivalry etc, the characters should react to what you do depending on their relationship with the PC.

     

    There are of course branches in the dialogue trees which leads to different dialogue-parts but for every larger branch the amount of the written dialogue multiplies exponentially, for example (I'm throwing this out of the hat) there are twenty dialogue events/lines per every branch and when you add another one it multiplies with another twenty...and then another twenty etc.

     

    So unless they add more lines per character which would increase the time and budget for the said companion they have to divide the lines between all the possible routes.

    I have already answered this in my previous post where I've told 10% + some more with darling-modified lines is enougth.

    Those who are passionate about specific cause, tends to rally behind it so they are bound to come to forums and want or demand romances in if they really really want them in.

    So you are basically saying the poll should be discarded not because there are too few people who had voted (as you've suggested earlier), but because the poll itself is a magnet for certain kind of people, hense biased? Well, actually that is a much better strategy, it makes sence (in contrast to your first argument) and there may be some truth to it.

    Also I can counterplea that romance topics are a magnet for anty romance people just as well.

    Goddamit, they have already confirmed low intelligent player character dialogues will be included in the game!! It is not something most of the players are gonna see in the end and it will take 90% more time to wright than the all theoretical romance dialogues put together! Something everyone here seems to miss.

     

    Avellone and Cain loves to write low-intelligent dialogue, but they have said that they dislike romances. You wouldn't force them to disregard something they like to write for something they hate or dislike, would you?

     

    We've asked this before: If the story of the game doesn't concern romances at all, then they would be separate from it, should they write the romances in if they don't like to write them just to pander players who wants romances?

    So you've basically agreed it's not about a budget or time anymore, but about Obsidian's preferences. Am I right?

     

    As for the second part, this has been answered a lot already. We are stating our preferences, we are asking but we are not demanding. If the authors decide not to do romances, we'll accept it.

  8. I'm really interested on how you came up with the "week to write romance", especially if you want it to be substansial.

    Here.

     

    Where did you get that 10%?

    I've pulled it out from my behind basically. But really, let's take NWN2 and MotB for examples. Both had romances. Can you seriously tell me romance dialogues there took more than 10% from the whole pool of dialogues with romanceable characters? I bet you can't.

    Almost all interactions have always been in RPGs just between the PC and the companion which is mostly just talking about their background or interaction dialogue which is mostly friendship or romance. There's always been very little of dialogue with the companions during quests since the main character handles the conversations on 90% of the time.

     

    For romance being at least remotely substansial it would have to be 30-50% of the all dialogue between the main character and the said companion. For those who don't want the romance there would have to be friendship route which uses different dialogues and dialogue trees.

    Well 30-50% of dialogues written specifically for romance routes is a dream come true, I would totally love it, but it is not necessary at all.

    See my examples with NWN2 and MotB.

    Or would you be happy with friendship dialogues just copy-pasted and just "darling" added in the end of them with maybe line or two added in the end of the romance?

    Give me my 10% of unique romance dialogue + 30% of darling-modified friendship lines and I'm a happy person. Seriously.

    No. Throwing more dialog into X doesn't automatically means throwing less dialogue into Y. Something else might be sacrificed instead. Like doing less loot. I personally don't care 'bout loot.

     

    The loot is very small part of what writer does for the companion and that is usually the item descriptions, as for example if companion has his own family sword. The actual loot itself (such as statistics) is done by the game-/system designer who has to balance it with the encounters and other loot/equipment.

    You assume I was talking about loot descriptions solely. I was talking about project budget money management. Let's cut loot not only in terms of descriptions, but in terms of quantity: less models, less textures. Than we can use our spare money to hire an extra writer!

    Would you sacrifice companion's quest for romance?

    I would sacrifice loot. I like companion's quests, so I would rather sacrifice a non-companion's quest if needed. Or a bunch of combat spell.

    Wrong, Kickstarter takes 5% and Amazon takes another 5% so that's 10% there, and paypal takes 2,9% + 0,30 dollars per transaction, so let's calculate.

     

    This might be complicated so try to keep up.

    Kickstarter:

    3,986,929 * 0,10 = 396 692,90

    3,986,929 - 396 692,90 = 358 823 6,10

     

    Paypal:

    176,279 * 0,029 = 5112,09 so 176,279 - 5112,09 = 171,166.61

    3 681 Paypal backers so 0,30 * 3681 = 1104,30 thus 171,166.61 - 1104,30 = 170 062,31

     

    So we get now can calculate both together:

    358 823 6,10 + 170 062,31 = 3 758 298,41

     

    Since obliviously there are going to be failed pledges it will lower the final sum but it wouldn't surprise if it would be 10% of the pledges, depends on which pledges will fail payment.

     

    I was a little off with my calculations made in the head but I was right about how much Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal takes but with failed pledge payments the final sum would be around 3,5 - 3,7 million.

     

    http://www.kickstart...ter basics#Kick

     

    "If a project is successfully funded, Kickstarter applies a 5% fee to the funds collected.

    Additionally, payment processing fees work out roughly to 3-5%."

     

    And here's about Paypal fees:

    https://www.paypal.c...mpp/paypal-fees

    Ok, you are absolutely right here, thanks for the clarification.

    So it is less from 4M. Still a lot of money.

    A game about choice should have a choice for as much people as possible. We don't want it to be lenear. We want it to be an epic advanture as personal as humanly possible. No romances = not perfect for me. When we are talking about a party based RPG that is. Still may be great and awesome, but not perfect, no.

    For the record, so far there are some great and awesome RPGs for me I love to bits out there, yet the perfect one is still to be made.

     

    Well, if you don't see how love is a special kind of feeling yourself, I don't think I can fix it with words.

     

    I put these together so I'll answer both once:

     

    I didn't say about love, I talked about romances and those two are separate. There are many kind of love; between friends, siblings, parents and children, mentor and apprentice etc etc. Romantic love is powerful one sure but it's not any more powerful than other kind of love.

     

    Friendship-, sibling-/parental-, mentorship-love etc are as special as romantic love but it's different; case-in-point Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir in DS9 when Miles' wife asks from Julian in the series to tell her that her husband loves her more than Julian, he can't say so.

     

    Would've film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Predator, The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Thing been any better stories if they would've had romances in them? I know films and games are different medium but they both still tell a story.

    Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

    You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

  9. I've done some math on the matter and came to a conclusion it take a week to wright one romance while also writing something entirely different on the background. I do not think one week per one author is such a terrible cost. Also considering the budget issue, from $4 millions on Kickstarter I'm pretty sure at least $2 millions came from the romance crowd. Even if only $1 million, still don't you think those people may deserve some slack to be cut? $50.000 from $4.000.000 maybe? That equals 1.25% from the budget. Is that too much to ask? (To ask, not to demand - an elaboration just in case someone is thinking to go there again).

     

    I'm really interested on how you came up with the "week to write romance", especially if you want it to be substansial.

    Here.

    Most of what goes into writing characters is actually the dialogue and since romance is what? I think it's dialogue and there can only be so much dialogue per character it's bound to limit on how much other kind dialogue there will be.

    No. Throwing more dialog into X doesn't automatically means throwing less dialogue into Y. Something else might be sacrificed instead. Like doing less loot. I personally don't care 'bout loot.

    and how do you know who pledged and what they want?

    Because polls on this very forums show 75% of people are pro-romance. Here. So you are in fact a vocal minority as cliche as it sound nowadays. And don't say polls are not an indicator. They are the closest thing to an indicator that we have.

    Also they wont get the full 4 million since Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal will take their cut so the budget will be 3 - 3,5 million at most, depending on whether they pay the rewards from the pledges or from their own pockets, if they pay the rewards from the pledges, it'll cost them probably about 500k, possibly more (it cost about 700k for DFA to manufacture and send the rewards).

    Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal will take 5% at most. $4,163,208 - 5% = 3,955,047. So it's 4M basically. But, yeah, there are also phisical revards to make.

    And explain to me also how would romances make this game perfect? Would it be less perfect if it doesn't have romances and romances wouldn't fit it?

    A game about choice should have a choice for as much people as possible. We don't want it to be lenear. We want it to be an epic advanture as personal as humanly possible. No romances = not perfect for me. When we are talking about a party based RPG that is. Still may be great and awesome, but not perfect, no.

    For the record, so far there are some great and awesome RPGs for me I love to bits out there, yet the perfect one is still to be made.

    And how are those bad arguments? The second one in particular.

     

    Care to explain how romances make characters more deeper than say..."Brothers in Arms"-camaraderie? Would characters actually be any deeper if one of them would have romance instead of friendship or rivalry? What makes having romance for companion more special than say... friendly competition between friends (you and companion)?

    Well, if you don't see how love is a special kind of feeling yourself, I don't think I can fix it with words.

    This comes to my first point in this reply (and several postings before this one), the writers basicly have to devote any given companion to one route; be it friendship, rivalry, romance etc and if they do several routes which player can choose from, they can spend less time writing all given routes and they all will be dilluted.

     

    Would you rather have companion which is shallow with many different possibilities or deeply done in one?

    No, not true. I would not be happy with only one rout per character at all. So you basically want them to be as streamlined and nonreactive as possible? So the player character is running around robbing people, excavating graveyards, kicking puppies and eating babies, still a lawful good paladin from the party is a PC's best buddy simply because the only rout he has is a rout of friendship? Not good!

    If devs write romance for one character, they have to also write another route or the players who doesnt want to have romance have no reason to interact with the said companion/NPC.

     

    Lot of players can enjoy the friendship-route but those who just enjoy romances are much fewer.

    Not so much fewer as you think according to the the polls.

    Goddamit, they have already confirmed low intelligent player character dialogues will be included in the game!! It is not something most of the players are gonna see in the end and it will take 90% more time to wright than the all theoretical romance dialogues put together! Something everyone here seems to miss.

  10. Ok, a nice clear summarization, let's go with it.

    I tried to provide you with the link from the forum's search engine for my posts but apparently it's not possible.

     

    Let me summarise what I've been saying and arguing: I have been arguing with the time on how long it takes them write companions and how long development time they have, I have argued with the budget which is very limited...

    I've done some math on the matter and came to a conclusion it take a week to wright one romance while also writing something entirely different on the background. I do not think one week per one author is such a terrible cost. Also considering the budget issue, from $4 millions on Kickstarter I'm pretty sure at least $2 millions came from the romance crowd. Even if only $1 million, still don't you think those people may deserve some slack to be cut? $50.000 from $4.000.000 maybe? That equals 1.25% from the budget. Is that too much to ask? (To ask, not to demand - an elaboration just in case someone is thinking to go there again).

    ...I have argued with the "Not all fiction must have romances" (which they still don't)...

    That is not a good argument. With this kind of logic it is possible to attack virtually anything.

    ...and have asked why this specific game should...

    Because we want this specific game to be perfect in every way.

    ...and haven't gotten any other arguments than "because we want it" or "it makes them deeper!"...

    And how are those bad arguments? The second one in particular.

    I have argued with the type of the crowd it brings here (which haven't been countered).

    Frankly I couldn't care less about what crowds go where. The game in itself is the first, the second and the third priority. What crowds it may or may not bring to the forum is a priority #4891.

    I have time and time again have said that if they do romances and they are done like in PS:T for example, I could live with that...

    So what is the problem?

  11. Jasede

    Ok, can you for example reason me with facts why going a friendship route with a companion is not a minigame while romance is? It would be interesting for me to hear.

     

    How about this, with romances you pretty much always have to choose the right responses or the romance cuts off but with friendships it doesnt.

    That is not a problem of romance as an idea. That is just an example of some questionable game mechanics used to manage romances in past games. Things can be done differently this time.

    In BG2 you have praised for doing good romances you always have to choose the right response or romance is off.

    I'm pretty sure I personally have never prised BG2 romances simply because I never actually played BG2.

  12. You don't demand, in the way you separate it from asking, because you are not in a position to demand.

    Ok, I'm glad to see we are done with this unjust accusation.

    But that doesn't change the fact that you have things that you want to be in a game...

    Don't we all?

    ...and are very aggressive about it.

    Not more aggressive than the anti crowd.

    All you do is cry when we present evidence against you. When we give valid arguments all you do is dismiss us as naysayers and other bull****.

    I can say exactly the same about your team.

    And yes all you want is minigames in order to indulge yours -and others'- romantic fantasies.

    You still have not defined what "minigame" means and why is it a bad thing.

    Check up my wrangle with Jasede for details. You like to say you have some good valid arguments, so show 'em to me.

    You arguements are based on making x number of npcs romance-able, y styles of npcs romance-able and z number of possible sexual preference npcs to be romance-able.

    Nope.

    What you don't get is that romance, as well as other things, have to have some place in the plot. They are not filler, they can't be filler.

    What you don't get is there are things called sub-plots, calling anything that is not directly tied up to the main quest a filler is silly.

    Romantic love is an emotion, it must be used to advance the characters involved...

    Did I ever argue that? I'm pretty sure I did not.

    ...and through that affect the plot in some way not to give options for different sexual orientations, stimulations etc.

    This I also never argued. Also the key word here is "in some way": romance can be crucial to the main plot, but doesn't necessary have to be so. It can be a subplot on it's own with ties to other plots.

    And you can't freaking tell us that you want PST or MotB romances, when romances there were weaved into the narrative and plot and they weren't there to indulge into anyone's fantasy. Then you support and defend bioware and their writers, when they have never done that.

    That are just lies.

    Alistair's and Morrigan's romances from DAO were incorporated into the main plot tighter than any Obsidian romance up to date ever was. That is not saying it makes them automatically better solely throught the virtue of being so overarching plot-significant. Just stating the fact.

    • Like 1
  13. But you couldn't have the romance part in MotB if the character hadn't already be designed with the entire concept in mind. Which means it flows organically from the characters conception. Which leads me to what I keep repeating over and over: if romantic love is part of a certain NPC we can maybe not trust Obsidian, but definitely can trust Avellone and Ziets to make it into something mature and respectful that isn't the immature ****fest or soppy happy hugging circlejerk that we don't want to see.

     

    Which basically means: there's 0 reason to ask for or demand romance or to even talk about it here.

    Which equally means there is no reason to demand that there should be no romance at all in the game. See, it works both ways.

     

    As far as I know, no one from the pro-romance team here made any ultimate demands. We are voicing our preferences as we were asked to do by the developers themselves, no less.

    Really? What was with all those lists in the last thread then? Pro-romancers were asking for many options. One said he wanted possible romances with npcs you helped widow or raped. And another one straight up said that he wanted minigames.

    To ask and to demand are two different things. Elementary!

  14. But you couldn't have the romance part in MotB if the character hadn't already be designed with the entire concept in mind. Which means it flows organically from the characters conception. Which leads me to what I keep repeating over and over: if romantic love is part of a certain NPC we can maybe not trust Obsidian, but definitely can trust Avellone and Ziets to make it into something mature and respectful that isn't the immature ****fest or soppy happy hugging circlejerk that we don't want to see.

     

    Which basically means: there's 0 reason to ask for or demand romance or to even talk about it here.

    Which equally means there is no reason to demand that there should be no romance at all in the game. See, it works both ways.

     

    As far as I know, no one from the pro-romance team here made any ultimate demands. We are voicing our preferences as we were asked to do by the developers themselves, no less.

  15. Only MotB and PS:T had acceptable "romances".

    OC romances weren't good, but they were tolerable because they seemed to make fun of the player. Bishop pretty much rejects you, Casavir is a repressed piece of card-board, Elanee is a creepy mother-like stalker (horrifying) and so on.

     

    The only thing that should serve as a model is MotB or PS:T. But that's a given in the first place; there was no need for any of these threads.

    Ok now can you really say in MotB the amount of romance-specific dialogue took more that 10% of the overall dialogue space of romancable companions? Because I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

  16. Ok, 2-3 months for a companion from the ground. Romance is what, like 10% of all said character interactions at best. And that makes 6-9 days to write. While also writing something else simultaneously. Doesn't look all that expensive.

    At worst it's 5% of all interactions if not less, which is even cheaper.

     

    No. A romance would change/color the entire interaction with the character. It'd be a red thread running through everything if it's to be done with any measure of quality. Let MCA and Ziets use their own discretion. FFS.

    It is possible, as it has been suggested in the previous topic, to use romantic overtones while keeping the general dialogue direction that was supposed to be there anyway. Like for some lines you can simply keep the same wording from the friendship route while adding "darling" in the end of the sentence or something similar. There is no need to wright 100% separate dialogues trees for romanced/unromanced states all the time. Those in love should not demonstratively sing each other serenades every time a dialog starts. That would be just silly.

    Also romances are not even there from the start. Half of the game you are building a friendship and this rout should be there anyway. Only in the second half it may or may not grow to something bigger.

    By the way, was NWN2 qualitative enough for your tastes?

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