tajerio

Reading this thread is a lot like watching two wasted guys trying to punch each other at a bar.

I'll be honest, I never get tired of this discussion. Just when I think I need a break or I've heard every possible point someone adds a different perspective around the importance of Romance, so this discussion is almost interminable with all the possible nuances "Interminable" is definitely the right word. Unless it's "insufferable."

Scaling AI to difficulty would probably be the most effort-intensive, difficult-to-balance, highest-probability-of-screwing-up way to increase difficulty. If you make a great AI, you're not going to say, "well, this AI should only be great if you're at the highest difficulty level. Otherwise we'll just hope we can take bits out for lower levels without messing it up or depriving people of a better experience." You're just gonna use it.

You create one character and gather NPC companions along the way. However, you have the option to create party NPCs at the adventurer's hall, which won't be accessible right away but will eventually allow you to just make your own companion characters. Max party size I believe is six.

My favorite companions have major differences with my character, but eventually they come to respect and trust me (and vice versa). That's where I feel the best territory for memorable companions is--the companion's still morally and intellectually distinct enough from my character to disagree, sometimes vehemently, but ultimately we understand one another and can come together in the pursuit of some higher goal. Love the undead lore. It's a great blend of the familiar with the new.

A change doesn't mean it has to be their worldview. More interesting than a character in a situation the audience is unfamiliar with is one in a situation the character is unfamiliar with. There's again, growth and change to be had there, even if it's simply becoming comfortable with their environment. The improvement here is that the change makes the character vulnerable. A good character is one you want to see attempt a challenge. And if it's a personal challenge, all the better. I agree entirely. I was responding directly to a much more restrictive statement about how a character can be interesting.

If it's a good character this is untrue. People often don't act in a consistent manner--sometimes one motivation gets the upper hand, sometimes another does, and frequently irrationality comes into play. But that can all be part of the same way of thinking. And that can make for a perfectly interesting character without forcing a change in worldview, because even though the character's way of thinking hasn't changed, the situation in which that character has been placed can change dramatically, and then we don't know what the response will be.

From my vantage point, the problem is the legacy of the IE games, where a clear distinction is drawn between people who use magic and people who don't--a distinction that isn't nearly so clear in PoE, given the power of the soul. Josh is trying to build a different set of attributes that do different things, but still allow backers to have that IE feel. It's no wonder the conceptualization is muddied. I personally like to think of Might as the sum of physical and soul strength, whenever I'm worried about the simulationist aspect.

How would "duration" be applied to non-AoE spells? For example; fireball, lightning bolt, magic missile, etc... these spells do their damage instantly. Pumping Might will boost their damage by <X> percent but how would they benefit from pumping Intellect? I don't know that they would (though it should be noted that fireball's always an AoE spell). Might will always benefit damage, and that's not the point I'm arguing. I'm simply saying that other attributes provide benefit to damage as well. But any spell that gives damage over time will benefit from intellect as the system's presently constituted. We just don't know what those spells are.

Duration is for all effects, not just AoE.

I also doubt that Monte was born on D-Day. Shocking, isn't it? How could I possibly trust anything he says anymore oh wait it's a joke. What I don't understand about the promance point of view here is this: Josh said that the PoE team had come to the conclusion that they didn't think they could do romances up to the standard they demand of themselves. So why don't the promancers trust the devs' own assessment of their abilities and resources?

Do you prefer to write standing up?

"Optimal killing potential" and "a wizard who kills things with magic" aren't the same thing. We also don't know enough about how the system will actually work to say that optimal killing potential will be the result of high dex and high might. Could be that he's great in mano-a-mano combat, and absolutely stinks if he's got to take on more than one enemy, or that he's rubbish against bosses because he hasn't got interrupt or penetration or what have you. Putting nitpicking aside for a moment will probably let you grasp the meaning of what people say. He clearly meant a wizard who's good at killing things. We have enough information about what attributes do. Might increases damage directly, dexterity increases accuracy . These are the two attributes that you'd want to raise if you wish to deal more damage with a specific character and consequently kill things faster. I don't think I'm nitpicking at all. Intellect makes effects last longer and increases AoE size. That, to me, would seem to increase damage.

Lets not be silly now, in Medieval times women were married off from the age of 13-16 and she was older than that The fact that she is emotionally immature doesn't change the fact she would have been perfectly acceptable marriage or Romance material "Would have been" is the key phrase there. No one played DA2 in medieval Europe, and no one will play PoE in medieval Europe either. It's fine to write a romance that makes players uncomfortable because the object of romance seems immature, fragile, or naive--certainly I always felt this way with Merrill--but to say that everyone should just be cool because that kind of thing was totally all right during the medieval period is nonsense. Also I didn't explain my point properly about RPG being set in Medieval ages so once again you guys missed my point ( you need to realize anything I say is true so you need to learn to decipher what I say if its in any way equivocal ) I meant that fantasy RPG are generally set in a world in the same type of social development that is equivalent to Medieval ages. So in other words superstitions reign, there is very little knowledge of true science and people died very young. And women got married from the ages of 13-16 due to low life expectancy. If you have an issue with that I suggest you build a time machine and go back in time to change how society operated, once you do that I'll gladly agree with you....but until then I simply can't I understand that the world used to work that way--though the early age of marriage was actually much more of an upper-class phenomenon than a society-wide sort of thing. And to depict that in-game is fine. But we gamers now have an entirely different cultural context, as do the people who design the games. So as much as we might want to get into that medieval-esque mindset, it's impossible not to interpret things like romantically engaging with an underage character through our modern lens. And since designers come from that same cultural context, that's where the weirdness sets in.

if they don;t change then they are a type, not a character.It makes them one-dimensional. That's bad writing no matter where it is done. I don't think that's quite right, but maybe my point of disagreement is semantic. The character doesn't necessarily need to change from what the PC knows of them, but the PC does need to learn more about them. So the character of any companion could remain the same throughout the entire game, but as long as we don't know the whole of it at the start, then learning more about them as time goes on and the party encounters new situations is plenty in my book. Basically, no particular thing about a character needs to change for me to find that character interesting, but the sum total of my knowledge about that character's personality DOES need to change.

In the name of the Sawyer, the MCA, and the Holy Cain, amen.

Still... i didn't played DA2 ... but i know she was 2 times older then the guy who in your opininion has "pedophillic undertones" ... are you people sane ?! Hey now, I am not one of the people saying it has pedophilic undertones. If you must call people's sanity into question, at least aim correctly. That said, I think there is an interesting point here about how characters are presented. We're told Merrill is much older than Hawke, yes. But the impression we get from her character throughout the whole game is of an occasionally petulant, usually stunningly naive teenager. So while it's obviously not pedophilia legally speaking, when my PC romanced Merrill it felt like taking advantage of someone who didn't understand either the world or her place in it very well. And if a character presentation is done like that--where the vital statistics are at odds with the personality--then that can force the player, through the PC, to think about how they interact with their companions in a more complex and I think ultimately satisfying manner. Merrill is my favorite character in DA2 for this reason--she makes an aware player confront some actual issues about interpersonal relationships. But a lot of people just say "ooh cute fragile girl romance her" and don't think any more about it.

Lets not be silly now, in Medieval times women were married off from the age of 13-16 and she was older than that The fact that she is emotionally immature doesn't change the fact she would have been perfectly acceptable marriage or Romance material "Would have been" is the key phrase there. No one played DA2 in medieval Europe, and no one will play PoE in medieval Europe either. It's fine to write a romance that makes players uncomfortable because the object of romance seems immature, fragile, or naive--certainly I always felt this way with Merrill--but to say that everyone should just be cool because that kind of thing was totally all right during the medieval period is nonsense.

"Optimal killing potential" and "a wizard who kills things with magic" aren't the same thing. We also don't know enough about how the system will actually work to say that optimal killing potential will be the result of high dex and high might. Could be that he's great in mano-a-mano combat, and absolutely stinks if he's got to take on more than one enemy, or that he's rubbish against bosses because he hasn't got interrupt or penetration or what have you.

Because making a wizard good at one makes him automatically good at the other. It's not that a muscle wizard is stupid, it's the fact that if I want a wizard who kills things with magic he has to be a muscle wizard. I'm not saying that I don't want to be all FACE THE POWER OF MY MAGIC MISSILE HOAK HOGAN! SKRONK!, just that I find it stupid that if I want to do damage via magic that's my only option. That's not really entirely true, though. If you want to make a wizard who has the highest raw damage when he hits normally, then you pump might. But pumping intellect will increase AoE size and make your DOTs last longer, while increasing dexterity will make you hit more often and shift you towards more critical hits. Those are both viable directions to go to increase damage without increasing "the damage stat."

Utterly unsurprising I would say. One of the reasons people keep trying to imitate LOTR is because no one has succeeded yet. If ONE game were ever made that came up to the quality of LOTR, I would never feel the need to play another high fantasy game ever again.

Doesn't make you creepy, but it does make me question your taste. Or would, if I didn't already.

Yep. Including some of my friends that I knew personally. Different people like different things. But if they don't like the same things I do doesn't that mean their opinion is automatically inferior? -most grognards gamers.

Heretic, schismatic, and enemy to peace! You're telling me my entire gaming life has been a lie? THIS CANNOT BE!

I'll take this a step further, and say that the Star Wars universe is just a bad setting for cRPGs. The Light Side/Dark Side opposition is even worse than D&D's alignment system for artificially pigeonholing characters. Not to mention that all the history is the most pulpy sci-fi bollocks you ever read.