Lurky

Many of these suggestions sound pretty nice and pretty fun Reading some of them, I was reminded of the Auspex, Dominate and Dementation disciplines from Vampire: The Masquerade, and I think that some of them would be pretty nice abilities for a Cipher. I'm not sure if they could be feasibly implemented in a computer game though, but the part of being able to see through invisibility or illusions, to control the actions of an enemy, or to confuse them with hallucinations sounds easy enough. Additionally, how about the ability to project mind illusions? It doesn't have to be the same as mage spells, but it could use different skill checks to be successful, which could give it another degree of strategy. And another reason to bring a cipher with you, since their class could give them better saves against this kind of attacks.

My opinion is the same as that of many people in this thread: I like the equipment / top of pack / stash system, and I like the addition of an unlimited third layer of inventory made for hoarders, but I wish this mechanic could be properly integrated into the game, instead of just as an abstraction, like it is right now. Therefore, I'm basically posting here to give props to JonVanCaneghem for his idea, because I really dig it. I'd also like to bring up again the already mentioned thread of beasts of burden, because there are some good ideas there too. Any of those would satisfy me, and in practice any of them could still work as well as Josh's abstracted system. For me, the best combination would be both of these solutions to be implemented in the game: the scavengers for hire and the beasts of burden. - On one hand, the scavs would clean up the dungeon completely at a cost, but you would have to visit them each time you wanted their assistance (unless you had a scrying orb to communicate with them, at least), and they wouldn't work for caved-in and blocked-off dungeons, nor for the locked stuff. - On the other hand, the beast of burden would be an extra inventory you could carry with you, which means that it would work for the dungeons the scavs can't go into (and some people mentioned that it could be used for faster travelling, too), but it could have other limitations, such as providing ample-but-not-unlimited space, needing upgrades in order to be more useful, or taking up a party slot. ...Of course, implementing both mechanics to address the same issue would be overkill, and probably not the best use of development resources, so that's right out. But looting is something I consider an important part of IE games, so no matter what the final solution is, I hope it's well integrated with the rest of the game content. I don't know how many people care about proper gameplay/lore/story integration, but I care, and I'm not the only one :\

Quotes have decided to work like crap on this post, so I'll be doing it this way. "I know wath Avellone and Sawyer thinks about romances ... but last time if i remember Sawyer sad if they will have time etc they will consider putting them .. so basiacly they are not saying yes or no ..." Actually, Sawyer's latest statement on romances in Project Eternity is that he would only want them if they were a natural fit. So, if romances are only to be included if they fit the rest of the game, the story and the characters, this means that parameters like the tone, the storyline involvement and the implementation of romances are not up to us. They're up to the rest of the game, the story and the characters. After all, they have to fit in them, not the other way around. Which means that this poll is pretty pointless. After all, the story and the characters depend on factors decided by the devs, not us. And that's the way it should be. I still voted though, since this is about collecting opinions. "Sawyer somewhere sad that romnances are for "Egostocking" the player... but as you see only 4 member want to be worshiped in romnace and 5 for sex scenes from 42 that had voted .. so basiacly he is wrong or at least he is pretending and don't really want to know.." You might be looking for this post. A post from 2006 where he states his displeasure with a very common and popular implementation of videogame romances, as well as the expectations that surround it, does not mean that he believes that all romances are inherent shallow pandering, or that all romance fans are shallow people. He knows that not everyone is like that. We know that, too. There's no need for a poll to prove it. By the way, Sawyer's post, as well as its message, was already discussed in previous threads. You would have known this if you had bothered to read them. Just saying. "Of coure not every player voted in this poll but i also think that Sewyer don't asked every fan about that subject .. so at this moment poll is only true evidence.." There's plenty of polls about this subject already, most of them with more votes than this poll is likely to potenitally collect (since they were created when these forums were more active). There's no need for more evidence of the same fact. Which is that... "And thred is also to show "ROMANCE/LOVE haters" that pro-romances are not nerds, that want only to se boobs "Ohh and ahhs) and hear every 3 seconds "You are the best on the planet!" ...We already know that. Plenty of "pro-romancers" have spoken up in the previous threads, and they were after pretty varied implementations of romances: some after the BG2 variant, some after the PS:T variant, some after the Dragon Age: Origins variant, and some even admitted to liking the Dragon Age 2 variant. Even though we all want the same thing, they're a very heterogeneous group, just like the antiromancers. In any case, nobody said that they wanted shameless and unmasked ego stroking. Some of them were after masked ego stroking, though: they denied wanting self-centered pandering, but when describing what they did want, the mechanics certainly sounded like they promoted it. Those are the kind of people many antiromancers like to pick on. It doesn't mean that everyone is like that, and I suspect that the antiromancers this thread is trying to address already know this fact, but that won't stop them from having fun picking on the extremes that don't realize they will not get what they want. If you're not like that, you don't have to feel like you might have been alluded to. By the way, I think that hanging out on the discussion forums of a game that doesn't exist yet already qualifies you as a nerd, no matter what feature you're discussing . Saying that pro-romancers are not nerds is kind of an oxymoron. We're all nerds here, and there's no shame in that. "We alrady have thred that "ARE YOU YES OR NO FOR ROMANCES" this is "WHAT KIND OF ROMANCES ?". Even that Romance Thread VI show that most players are for ..in this that most players don't want them for boobs or ego... so conclusion is simple .. end it harder to lie or ignore when you see statictic ..." That thread is not for "yes or no for romances", it's for romance discussion in general, which includes your question. It tends to devolve into a yes or no debate because that's the biggest bone of contention about them. It's hard to discuss the nitty gritty of their implementation when their inclusion is by no means guaranteed or even likely, and has in fact been harshly critizised by one of the writers, and put into doubt by the project director. "1. Im not sure that Lady Crimson read all of them and is willing to copy and paste best ones "What type of romance" here ... 2. Im sure that you don't read them all so i don't understand your confidnence about that that this subject is epmty dry .." As someone who has read pretty much all the threads on this topic, I can confirm that I have seen Lady Crimson, SqueakyCat and Bos_hybrid in most of them. They are right when they say what has already been discussed. That makes for 4 of us who say that this discussion is not addressing anything new. Considering the number of replies of this thread, it's not insignificant. "Strange that somehow the elves, dragons, and other said it a million times and somehow you guys din not approached them with such malice as romance threads. [...] 4. There are many thread about other part of gaming and for hated "ROMANCES".. and if i remeber corretly nobody is "MAKING" someone to responde to it. So many threads about them is not evidence that people are stupid or "Romances" are generally bad.. it only a prof that people on this forum is consern about this subject and like it or not .... most of the peaople voted they want to see them (in any form) [...] 6. Romance and relationship thread and some kind of agression for other simmilar thread are something waird on this forum ... mayby we have tons of simmilar threds but i don't remember exacly the same thread that is open. So way are you still want to fix something that is not broken ? [...] 8. Threds or polls like "What kind of YYYYY You like/ liked ?" can be applied to everything weapons, misses, cannons, magic and biggest delicate subject "Romances" sory ... but thats how poll work ... 9. The first big mistake about romance thred was "Create ONE general Romanc" becouse it the same as crating "ONE General for Weapons" .. and i don't see any moderator saying in any new weapon thred "Shut up or i will close topic" .. dubbled standard ? [...] LadyCrimson If you think that this thred is worthles at least putt second question in romance thred (i propose 3 question from my poll).. (but i also expext the same standards for other 1 weapon thred, 1 armor thred, 1 magic thred, and the best 1 "GENERAL" Fighing thread" .. im sure if you combain all thread about combat it will be way longer then romnace threds ...)" You're mixing apples with oranges. Classes, races, weapons, armours, combat, magic, Vancian magic, cooldowns, level scaling, XP per-objective or per-kill... those are gameplay elements. Story, companions, and their interactions with the player (those includes the specific subset of player romances, which for some reason hog the entire spotlight of companion interactions all for themselves) are narrative elements, which are handled differently. The feedback required for narrative is pretty different from gameplay feedback. Aside from that, the gameplay systems are being designed now, and Sawyer has discussed them at length in updates, so of course people are going to give their opinions about these topics. They are a relevant topic of discussion at this point of development, so of course there's going to be plenty of specialized threads about them. The devs haven't mentioned particular points of discussion about narrative though, so the grounds for discussion are different. "But there are a lot people that want romances, and even romances that was not "Shallow". " How many people want a specific feature doesn't matter if it doesn't fit what the developers want. Just tell that to the people who still want PE to be ported to consoles, or to have multiplayer, or to be designed with turn based combat. Game content is not decided by player consensus, but by the devs, and narrative content especially so. 7. "General" Romance thread is something like "PISS off romance lovers" to me .. only after 67 or more pages of topic actualpoll was formed ... with 1 question ... If you think that only question about romance is YES or NO ask your lovely devs even they will say that there are mork to work beside that .. A lot of words and time has gone into discussing these topics, and some discussions have been rather thoughtful. A general discussion thread might feel like "PISS OFF" to you, but opening up a new thread and nonchalantly dismissing everything that has already been said in previous threads, basically saying that you can't be bothered to read it all because it's a lot of work, is pretty damn condescending to those of us who have participated in them. Another thing: as they say, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. As you can see, opinions haven't changed and there's still no consensus on this topic. Replies have been civil so far, but there is no reason to think this thread will turn out differently or be more productive than the others. "12. I don't care if devs are gonna lisen to anybudy (you, or me) thats is their game and their opinion and thats okay .. but your myst understad that i don't meked this thred or sad my opinion to somehow distroy the game .. im thinking simply that romances are good forl role playes .. so im doind this becouse i care about this project the same way as you" You are free to have and express your own opinion. Antiromancers want exactly the same as you: they want complexity and depth, they want interesting companions, roleplaying opportunities, meaningful choices and everything to be as good as possible. In order to achieve this, their conclusion is that the game will be better and achieve these goals with greater success if romances are not included. And they are free to have and express that opinion, too. There is no way these two opinions will get along together without constant clashes. That is why romance discussion is contained in one thread. It always gets ugly, so it's best to contain the fighting in one place. if creator have no motivation to even consider something at the begining of creating .. it does not sound well for their creation.. Of course they can have allredy some "General idea of the game" and don't want to change some part of it .. but problem is we are not talking about alhemy or strongholds (that was stechgoal) we are talking about human interactions .. if ssome one has not motivation for consider some part of it this just sound bad. So, what is it that you're saying? If the writers have no motivation or desire to write something, and consider that this something is not crucial to the player experience, they should still bend over backwards to the wishes of fans how don't know when enough is enough? And you're asking for people to respect your wishes, when you don't respect those of the writers? But argumentation like "one or two devs don't like this so it wont be" don't convince me ... But this is not "one or two devs don't like this". This is "the people in charge of making decisions and deciding what goes in or out don't like this". There's a world of difference between the two. Additionally, if the argument of "the people in charge don't consider romances that important, and have shown repeated indifference or outright dislike of them" isn't enough to convince you to maybe lower your expectations, then what exactly is going to convince you?

David Gaider made some good points in that linked post. Going through his tumblr I also found this: on the origin of romances, and the line of thinking that led to them becoming more prominent. It's good for perspective, and it's true that romances invoke visceral feelings. Which is a huge reason why they're so delicate, and why they should be handled with extreme caution. You don't want visceral feelings to blow up on your face, or you end up having things like the fan campaigns to "Retake Mass Effect 3". Another thing: he admits that romances really are Bioware's Thing, something that makes them stand out. They are not Obsidian's Thing, which means that PE shouldn't really be held to the same expectations. It's good to remember that little fact. Having said that... Gaider said this: If that's the case, wouldn't that mean that having a large percentage of potential romances could also affect how the player perceived and related to the companions? If a majority of companions were romanceable, that would become the norm of party relationships the player can have, and the pressure would be on the non-romanceable characters to follow the norm. I'm certain I've seen a lot of posts on the internet whining about the non-romanceable status of Aveline and Varric, compared to posts that simply discuss their characters. So yes, percentages and relative measures matter, and they do affect player perception. Even if it's not quite as conspicuous as a full romanceable party, "too many love interests" is a percentile thing. Just like "romance content is unbalanced" could be seen as a relative measure thing too; even if romances only add a few lines and a scene or two, it's always a bigger amount of content compared to non-romance paths (since it's added on top), so it feels unfair. If it can affect player perception like that, it counts.

You did misunderstand me, but no worries. I did indeed forget to explain things. What I mean by not locking romance content is a more theoretical goal. I don't mean "any companion should be available", I don't mean "a companion should love my PC no matter what". It's more like "under the assumption that the romance content is a worthwhile addition to the game (if it's not, then don't bother), such content should not be made unavailable to the players if they couldn't know that their choice would have that effect". It's more of a "have some worthwhile option somewhere that lets the player access this stuff". How to do that when a) one of the people involved in the romance is the player, a completely variable character, b) the other one is just one of 8 companions with diverse personalities and preferences, and c) without unnecessarily or arbitrarily limiting the player? Hell if I know. Bioware seems to address the problem I said by making the choice at character creation irrelevant. Gender doesn't matter, and race doesn't matter. How you act in general doesn't matter either, because you can bribe the companions with gifts. And now you don't even have to get along with them, because you can still get a "rivalmance" or something. This isn't even bisexuality, it's playersexuality; it doesn't matter how your PC is, because they'll be attracted to you if you press enough buttons. And it's bad. It's bad because it renders the choices made at creating your character irrelevant. It's bad because it attracts people who defend that implementation by saying that it allows them to freely choose whoever they want to fit their PC, as if the companions were accessories to wear instead of anything resembling real people. It's bad because how many people are like that in real life? What are the odds of having a full party like that when the rest of the world is like your typical picky person, with preferences and stuff? I'm not sure if I'm getting my point across, but the gist is that this approach ends up feeling very bland and generic, and the NPCs become weaker because they have no preferences at all, nothing of your PC really matters to them. No, everyone being playersexual is not a good solution either. I was not suggesting any particular solution in that quote, I was pointing out a problem. I don't even know if it has a good solution. I can't think of one anyway, just the problems that other implementations have. I also realize that I'm probably not explaining myself very well, so I'll give up for now. I believe Sawyer said something about that matter. The gist of it was that, if a choice is given to the player, then it should have some payoff. Maybe not a perfect fit, but an acceptable fit to what the player wanted. It was in a video, I think.

I'm not sure if you're answering me, but just in case, I agree with you Nonek. Yeah, what I said was not a good solution. It was more to ilustrate that there is no good solution. Still, thanks for pointing out another reason why it's bad I'm fairly certain that some people would like something like what you said, though. They're probably the same kind of people who search on the Internet the romance options of Bioware games before playing, or read guides for dating sims. Yeah, I don't think anyone here wants PE to have the reactivity of Skyrim. My last post doesn't contradict what you said, either. Of course content should be locked to certain choices. I simply added the caveat that content should not be locked for reasons that feel arbitrary or illogical. I mean, you can still do it, and you'll still have replayability, but if there's no logical reason why certain content is locked away then it's kind of a poor way to do it IMO.

Indeed. I actually tend to see the opposite as bad design. Having all content available to all character builds kills replayability and significantly weakens the impact of the choices made by you, the PC. If you carry this train of thought to the extreme you end up with a Bethesda RPG where a magic only character also ends up being a master thief and world renowned two-handed weapons expert. This is not what I meant. Locking content is good and awesome, as long as it's what the player wants. As long as it depends on informed choices. In my example, finding out that choosing a certain gender makes romance content inaccessible is not an informed choice. It's a consequence that doesn't logically follow my character build choice, so it feels arbitrary. I mean, I put it right there: "I should not be locked out of them because of choices I made that I didn't know that would have this effect". The bolded part is important. Ideally, choices shouldn't feel arbitrary. They should feel like they have a reason to be there. So, how do you make a romance lockout choice feel like it has a reason to be there? For example, if you chose a playable asexual race (as in, one that doesn't rely on sexual reproduction and is not wired to bond in romantic relationships with others), you could put that in the race description and thus you should expect that romances are out of the question with this PC. That would be good, and as you said, it enhances replayability. Because the player chose that, and got what was expected. In my example, unless the game says at character creation "if you choose this, no romance content for your PC" the player has no way to know that. And if you make the game outright say it, you're emphasizing the arbitrarity of the situation. I think I'm not entirely wrong when I call this kind of solution "bad", since it introduces new problems. That was what I meant in the quoted post. Notice that I'm not saying that unintended or unforeseen consequences are always bad, as they can be pretty great too if you know what you're doing. Maybe that spell had a side effect you didn't intend, but holy crap it was awesome and you're glad you found it (or maybe it wasn't awesome at all, but if you reload you can avoid it without much cost, unlike a choice you made at the beginning of the game). Maybe the narrative pulled a fast one on you, but if it was foreshadowed or otherwise made believable, you can look back and realize that the game had tricked you. These are good surprises, but not so much in my example. How do you foreshadow "if you choose this certain gender/race that has no inherent romantic restrictions, no content for you" without outright telling the player that? And if you do, what do you do when the players point out that they've had content excluded from their preferred choice for no logical reason? Look, my point is this: no matter how you do it, including romances brings others problems to the table too. Maybe you'd prefer having all these problems rather than having no romances at all. Many people would rather choose the opposite. It's no wonder we disagree. But at least I hope I made my point that yes, these are problems, and yes, they are caused by romances. What to do with them or how important they are is a decision for the devs, not for us. The only thing that could help them is giving them context for why I think this or that, and hope that they're as well informed as they can be when they have to choose. Maybe you could try to do the same, and give examples of what you enjoyed and why, what you consider good implementations and why, or possible solutions to many of the perceived problems that romances bring to the table. It'll be more productive than what we're doing now, anyway.

Indeed. I'd also like to see some sort of mentorship relationship where the player is the mentor. That can be interesting too. I'm also wondering if it would be possible to implement some sort of friendly rivalry between the PC and a companion, something that could feel natural for the player. How about class-related competition? Like, if the PC and the companion have the same combat class, comparisons could be made. If the PC is of higher level than the companion and you use an ability they haven't unlocked yet, they could be like "Hey, that was a cool trick you used in the last battle, but don't get too confident because I'll catch up to you". Or on the contrary, if the NPC is the one of higher level, or has unique abilities, maybe they could throw some friendly taunts in your direction. It's hard to balance, something that feels competitive yet friendly, without coming across as condescending or hostile. ...****, it sounds so corny now that I wrote it. But I don't know, maybe it could work. Class comparisons, race rivalries, there are some possibilities there. From so many gameplay ways to customize your character, it seems like some of the most superficial ones could be used in the NPC interactions too.

I like this thread, and I agree that giving opinions and throwing ideas around is valuable, as long as they're well thought out and not demanding. I'll try to help too, since this is a mechanic that interests me. First things first, I'm a total packrat and a big hoarder. I have a tendency to push to the limits my characters, even if I have to play inventory tetris for several minutes to balance the weights of my party and keep as much loot as I can. This means that I really liked Sawyer's idea about having a big stash to have a place to throw all your loot into. Even if it's unlimited or if it's just really, really big, the ability to keep all the loot I find makes me very happy indeed. However, I also have to say that I do care about the lore, too. I love Sawyer's inventory idea, and I'd love to have something like that in the game, but having it without any kind of ingame acknowledgement is going to be jarring. Even if there's no possible perfect explanation for a mechanic like this, I think it's better to at least acknowledge it ingame in some way, rather than handwaving it with "that's the way the game plays". To put an example, I'm reminded of Portal. You can do things in that game like falling endlessly between two portals while gaining momentum, removing one portal, and landing as if you hadn't accumulated so much speed that it would turn you into one big red stain on the floor or anything. This is because implementing some sort of distance or velocity threshold that killed you after a big fall would hinder the player's ability to solve the physics puzzles at their leisure, so this breach of reality was pretty much for the sake of fun gameplay. However, this is completely unrealistic, and players pointed it out during testing several times. Turns out, players do notice, and care about details like this. To solve this, what Valve did was adding heel springs to Chell's model. Now, the notion that some little springs like these could stop the players from certain death on landing if they've been falling at terminal velocity for a while (there's an actual achievement for that!) is ridiculous. But it was something. It was acknowledged in the game, and the players were pretty much appeased just with that explanation. Something that simple, and it worked. I'm aware that Portal and PE are not the same. PE will be more serious than Portal, so making ingame jokes about violating the laws of physics for fun and profit like Portal does to handwave stuff like that probably won't be an option. But there are other possible options, be it in the form of portable holes or magical teleporting transportation of stuff, or whatever. From all the possible solutions, I'm digging the idea of beasts of burden. It addresses the elephant in the room, and since PE has magic and gods and unexplained stuff in the lore, maybe the beasts of burden could have some magical ability to carry a lot of stuff, to better handwave the gameplay mechanic. On top of that there's all sort of fun things you could do with them, from upgrading them (and giving you the choice to spend more now and be able to collect more stuff later vs keeping what you have) to occupying a companion slot (and giving you the choice of more space or more punch in combat, but that could be hard to balance... but didn't some people want an animal companion too, like a dog?), to simply having the beasts helping for fast travel too. Hell, I'm willing to sacrifice the infinite capacity of the stash for just "a hell of a lot of capacity" if it leads to better lore/gameplay integration. If it's big enough it'll rarely matter anyway, as you'll have to worry about health and resting too, and there will be some point where it's preferable to go to camp before continuing to explore. In short: I think it's better to have some acknowledgement or handwave for this mechanic rather than having nothing at all. Maybe not the majority cares about details like these (how do you know that, anyway?), but some players do care, and will point them out. We're discussing it now for a reason, after all.

Makes sense. They still have so much to build that the particular subset of interpersonal relationships that are player-companion romances aren't even a blip in the radar for them right now. Hell, with so much world stuff they have to create, companions are probably very low in Sawyer's priorities right now. Then again, even if Sawyer isn't dismissing romances outright, I still think that the odds of them being included aren't good. I mean, Alpha Protocol and PS:T might have had romances or sort-of-romances, but they had a pretty fixed PC too. In PE, the PC is completely variable, so different races, genders, cultures, moralities, ideologies and attitudes would have to be acknowledged in the romances. Not to mention than any of those can be a deal breaker for people IRL, moreso in terms of romanceability (and in a world as diverse as I expect PE to be, with all its many cultures and subcultures and factions and the tensions that will come beween them, they probably should be deal breakers). And there's Avellone in the team too, who will probably have some say in character creation too and is not fond of romances. Unless they have a good idea for it, I'm not seeing them. Good luck providing romances that acknowledge all that variability the PC can have without romance becoming a major part of their interactions, so that choosing between romance and non-romance is actually a choice worth thinking (in terms of content at least). While ensuring that character creation choices aren't too limiting in terms of letting players access those romantic interactions (and if romances enhance the story and the experience significantly, their access shouldn't be too limited, I think). While mantaining a diversity that properly represents many aspects of the world and makes all companions distinct and with their own set values (no bending to the player's will please, there's some posts covering this already). All these contradicting goals, and with only 8 companions. Ouch. Yes. I agree with this, and I still think that this is the crux of the complaints against romances: the ability to choose if you want to engage in it. If the character is written with romance as an integral part of them, what happens if you don't want that? Is it forced on the player anyway? Do you miss important character interactions? It doesn't necessarily have to be the case where both routes are oh my god so perfectly balanced I can't choose (though I'd like that), but there should be something of an alternative, so that it is a proper choice. Which means that romance cannot be an integral part of them. By the way Ieo, your comment about your friend reminded me of the DA3 boards on the BSN. The other day I found this post. The utter confusion some people show for the notion of someone not wanting to do romances is pretty telling, I think. The OP is asking for that choice to be acknowledged and rewarded with something, and even the lead writer tells him it's not going to happen. Some strange perspective, there.

Minsc had his moments, but he was pretty one-note. I'm cool with P:E having an earnest idiot that provides comic relief from time to time, but just give the character a little more variety and depth. It would be interesting to see the conversations with a Minsc-like idiot NPC and a low intelligence PC, though

Well, I was okay with the concept art, but now that you mention it, the Aumaua did seem like weird humans to me at first. But I don't really know what they were trying to do with them or what makes for good concepts in this case, so I didn't say anything. Nonetheless, I find this post valuable because it does a good job of collecting and detailing most criticism I've seen of the concept art, so thanks for that Besides, there's going to be races AND subraces. In the case of the Aumaua, maybe some subraces could be more humanlike and others could have more amphibian traits, all over the spectrum around the uncanny valley? Hell, maybe this stuff could be explored in the P:E world, see how each race reacts to them. It would be interesting if the humans of the P:E world had a reaction like ours, and reacted more favorably to the aumaua subraces that were less humanlike, because of the uncanny valley effect. But as I said, I know nothing about character design, and I've been cool with what has been shown so far. I'll probably be cool with whatever they come up with.

Some people have already mentioned the Discworld gods, but they mention being brought up again. They have pretty much anything you could want in terms of wacky variety. There's some inspiration you could draw from there. I've always been rather fond of the god of evolution. I mean, an atheist god. How's that for craziness? It has already been brought up in the very first page of this thread, that's how awesome the concept is

Complicated questions you've given me here, guys. I'll try to address them as best as I can. This is going to be long, so I'll cover my answers in spoiler tags to not clutter this thread. Regarding the probability of romances being included in PE. Regarding design and implementation of romances in PE.

I'm not saying mods should be a substitution of actual game content. I said so at the end: In the end, including romances or not is a design decision (and one the writers should have more or less decided on at this point, I think). The reason why I'd rather not have them is, among other reasons, because of the impact they have on the design of the characters and their implementation. I'm not opposing them because they could be modded in; that's just one rambling of mine where I pointed out some details that could actually benefit fan-made romances compared to writer-made romances. Mods should not make up for game deficiencies, I agree with you. Which also means that mods should not have to cover up for any non-romance interaction deficiencies caused by the inclusion of romances, by the way . And no, I don't think these thres are ever going to stop. I mean, Avellone did position himself on this topic in this interview, and we're still here. I imagine that the devs consider us a lost cause at this point

Honestly, after all the threads talking about it? I doubt there's anything that we missed. I think that many here do indeed know what you mean with romance. And that's the problem, that we know what you mean. We know everything that romances bring to the table, and by everything, I mean the good and the bad. Many of us oppose romances because we think that the bad far outweighs the good (and many people think or haven't found any good in them in the first place, period), and that not including romances will overall make PE a better game. I also want to remind eveyone that yes, Obsidian will try their best to make the game as mod-friendly as possible. They promised so in one of the Kickstarter updates. They will also try to release mod tools for the community if they can, but if it proves to be an unfeasible task, the mod community is good enough that they'll likely make handy guides for us layman people to crack the game and have our shot at making our own content. Obsidian has us covered In fact, now that modding has been mentioned, allow me to say that I think modding is the best solution for the inclusion of romances. I mean, think about it: 1) Romances are not something the writers at Obsidian enjoy doing. However, many of the people who enjoy playing romances enjoy making them, too. If you believe that the passion creators have for what they do can be felt in their creations, then leaving the romances to the people who care about them means that their passion will be felt in the romances too. This will potentially make them more heartfelt and engaging, which is an especially appropiate thing for romances. 2) Romances are most effective when they are focused on certain preferences. They are not for everyone, and not everyone will find the same thing appealing. Covering all possible preferences in the game is impossible, which means that even if romances were included, some people would still be left out of them and would have to do their own thing anyway (which causes all sorts of envy and petty fighting within the fans, as well as a lot of noise directed to the writers to make themselves heard for the next time). By leaving romances to the people who care about them, the people will make certain that what they do matches their preferences perfectly, maximizing their impact. And nobody will be discriminated; if you want something, you can get it no matter what it is, if you just make it yourself. If you're lucky, maybe you'll find it in the internet, already made for and by people like you! I don't like cutting stuff with the intention of making fans pick it up and complete it. I'm not saying that we should do the work of the writers for them. But in this case, I think that the end result will be better if romances are in the form of mods made by fans. As I said, I think that's what optimizes their potential. And as I said, I think that the bad of including romances in PE outweighs the good. I think PE will overall be a better game if it's not made with that idea in mind. My explanations and other people's explanations for this have been stated at length in this and the previous threads, and I honestly don't feel like repeating myself, so I'll just leave it like that.

Nah I can't agree with that logic, when you have the responsibility to save the world on your shoulders and every night this hot dark elf in bikini chainmail implies that she wants to ravage you horribly I am confidant you will find energy? Actually, stress and tiredness have a very negative impact on the libido. Studies prove it, so this isn't something where you can say "I don't believe it", because it's true. Having the responsibility to save the world on your shoulders would surely cause a lot of those two, don't you think? It would have an impact in your sex life for sure, no matter how favorable the circumstances are. Besides, what if you're not into "hot dark elves in bikini chainmail"? I am so totally offended now, you know. I demand you apologize for discriminating against straight women and gay men in your example. Right now

^Second: with this type of quest system an editable journal is a must. Yes. Very much. Finding stuff on your own is cool, but there should be an option to manually record in the game our findings, to not lose track of what we were doing. That's not to say an automatic journal should be scrapped though, as this system is very useful for the more traditional quests. So yeah, two tabs would be best: the Journal tab, for the automatic quests, and the Notes tab, to enable more deductive findings. If the game also allowed us to organize our notes (by location, NPC or other criteria), even better. We can wish, right?

It might not be a legitimate argument, but it is the dealbreaker for some people. Selfish? Maybe. But I completely understand why they wouldn't want the fan interest to shift to romances 50% of the time. Which is what happens on the BSN. You can ignore the knuckle-draggers, sure, but if that involves ignoring a great deal of the forum discussions we might have a legitimate problem in our hands. Which is what happened on the BSN, too. And yes, there's already some of them. And there could be more. If there's already some of them when romances aren't confirmed, how many would there be if they were announced? The idea of this community gradually but surely shifting its interests towards a bigger focus on romance is a concern for the people who like to hang around this place, and if there is concern, there is going to be opposition. It's not really rational, but hey, you asked why. Well, I am interested in learning what these methods and techniques you mentioned are. I know that explaining them would be a lot of work, but come on, I made the effort to dig around the various threads to find posts explaining everything, just for you (not to mention that I made the effort to write that big post about design sacrifices). Surely you could spend some time writing how this could be minimized? I'm genuinely curious Everyone wants a well-writen game, yeah. No argument there. Well, having a companion whose interactions are disgusting for a good chunk of people seems kind of wasteful. I mean, we only have 8 companions, in a party of 5 companions+PC. There's not much room for characters like that. Incidentally, that's another argument for opposing romances: there's only 8 companions. If we had like 15 companions there would be a lot more room to experiment for the developers, both with character types and with romance types, and there would be much more freedom for the players too. The impact of romance would be much lesser in the game, so the opposition to them would be lesser too. But that is not the case here. Some options are lacking, I'd say. Where is the basic personality type covered? That can make or break a character's possible interest in romance/seduction, especially when combined with interests and values. Basically, all points would have to align in a certain way for the character to even be eligible for romance. The moment one of them fails, point 7 should be a no. Combinatorially speaking, that leads to far more "no"s than "yes"s, the way I see it. Your point of view is refreshing, by the way. After so many posts arguing that romances are good because they are good, it's nice to see some thought put into this

What is it, then? Maybe I'm dense, but it seems like a simple issue with simple solutions available to me. Well, not everyone has the same reasons, but the most common are: 1) The existence of romances in PE means that a certain demographic of people overly obsessed with romances will be attracted to PE and to these forums, bringing their habits and expectations with them. Did you see this post at page 2 of this thread? Those posts from the BSN aren't outliers, because many topics found there are just that romance-focused. Many people don't want the Obsidian forums to resemble the BSN. 2) The existence of romances in PE leads to sacrifices in character design that many people don't want to see. I wrote a post explaining the biggest ones here, if you're interested (it's really long and not really that detailed, but hey, this topic has been going for a while). 3) Even if you minimize the sacrifices in character design, far too many times there's problems with the implementation too. Ieo voiced here the impact romances can have on companion content. Sylvanpyxie wrote some good posts here and here about her experiences with romanceable characters, and she's not even against romances anyway! There may be more, but I already gave you a bunch of stuff to read. I know that's a lot to throw at your face, but bear in mind that this is a long running topic. A lot of stuff has been said about romances already. Might as well try to be up-to-date with the discussion

"I don't want to do them" is not the real reason why there's opposition to romances.

Considering that he asked for simple stuff, for just "court the person and if you succeed you have sex with them", I'm not sure if he's on the reasonable side of the spectrum :| I mean, I would expect a reasonable pro-romancer to understand that some people want variety in their NPC interactions, instead of replying to a list of potential possiblities with "Uhhh that's too many! Stick to the simple stuff!". I would expect that if Avellone said that there would be a variety of relationships with the companions, a reasonable person would understand that wanting a lot of the same type (romance for everyone) is not in line with what he said. I would expect that if the game was marketed as "mature", it can't hide from criticism with the "it's a fantasy RPG what are you expecting" argument, which means that it can't really be used as defense. Seriously guys (not addressing all of you), we can disagree in our priorities, but damn, put up some intellectual effort to justify yours at least :\ Or maybe he's trolling. You can never really tell. Also, how many of the people who want chainmail bikins are in favor of chainmail boxers too? Equality, guys!

But then you go and say this... ...No. You seemed like you could get it, but turns out that you didn't. There's platonic love. There's familial love. There's respect and admiration. There's drive to nurture. There's competitiveness. There's rivalry. There's hatred. All of those are examples of emotions you can get from interacting with your companions, and none of them involve romantic love. Want romantic love to be one of the many emotions you can experience? Then say that! Don't say that having no romance means being emotionless, because it sure as hell isn't the case. Romances are not the only emotion you can get from NPC interactions, they're not the strongest emotion a game can give you, and they aren't even the best or most immersive emotions you can experience (seriously, they're not). Hell, as far love goes, they're not the highest form of love either, just the one that gets the most attention. And that's the problem. Want to know why some people oppose romances specifically? Because far too many times they lead to statements like the last one I just quoted. They hog the spotlight like no other NPC relationship does. If the existence of romances leads to the rest of emotions being trivialized, if it leads to reducing the focus of the rest of the relationship spectrum*, it's no wonder that some people would rather see them gone entirely. *grumble* This is why we can't have nice things *(For the record, I'm not worried about this happening in-game. Avellone's statements have been very clear that this is not going to happen. But no matter how clear he is in stating what he's going to do with party relationships, romances still hog the spotlight in the forum discussions. This thread is supposed to cover the rest of relationships too, why doesn't anyone talk about them?)

The problem is, romantic love tends to have a stage at the beginning that is the infatuation phase. And infatuation, by definition, dominates and overbears the behaviour of people. That is a problem for the character, indeed, for the reasons you've eloquently explained before. Infatuation is a problem for character interactions, and the problem is that many people* still associate the romances with this phase. Maybe it's because of media influence and its idealized romances. Maybe it's just that some people want to get the high of infuatuation that romantic love often causes. Either way, there's this expectation a lot of people have that romances have to give this rush of feelings to be true romances, and having romances that don't do that might not be what people want. The only way to avoid this would be to have a romance that skips this stage. It can be done, certainly. You could implement a romance that is so subtle and low-key that could be considered to be still the flirting stage. Or write a character who is jaded enough that infatuation doesn't come to them as easily as when they were young. Or you could write a character with certain traits so significative that they overshadow the weight a romance/friendship relationship with them would have, preventing infatuation. There's several ways to handle this, and they can probably be executed reasonably well, even if many writers struggle with them (the last type of character especially: it doesn't mean that the characters have to be one-note, or that the traits have to be traumatic psychological issues you have to help them overcome!). If the writers can pull it off, maybe Ieo's suggestion can be done properly. This would be the ideal for all people, I think. But then again, I'm not really sure it can be pulled off properly. To have a romance that feels special (let's be honest, that's what many people want), you want it to have a unique impact on the characters. In order to make the romance and non-romance routes fair, you cannot really allow that to happen. How do you achieve both at the same time? I don't know. *I know that "many people" is vague, but if you want proof, trawl through the old threads. Read some of the suggestions people have made for the romances, and notice how many of them override character behavior, such as asking for jealous confrontations and stuff like that. Notice how many of them describe romances as this moving and beautiful force that deeply affected them and the NPCs, and how deep and immersive it was. The expectations I talk about do exist.

This was a really interesting update. Very informative I would also like to show my support for more updates like this, showing the process of game development from this perspective. Anecdotes are nice, but they're better told when the game has already been released, IMHO.