jarpie
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Posts posted by jarpie
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Oh yeah, because we actually make sense we're trolls. Making PE to support 3D vision etc would be like trying to make drawing in paper to be three dimensional.
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I can't understand what 3D gimmick would bring into PE, it's isometric game with 2D backgrounds ffs. And yes, 3D isn't anything more than gimmick, and it belongs into FPSs even if to those.
Well, we'll have to see how well it does in the marketplace. I agree that 3D TV is something of a gimmick, but 3D games are expected to be more immersive. (Just as stereo sound is more immersive than mono.) With a computer monitor you're closer to the display, so the 3D effect should be more engaging and cover more of your field of vision.
What part of "isometric" and "2D backgrounds" you didn't get? You do know that 3D to be effective, like at all, it needs actual 3D?
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I can't understand what 3D gimmick would bring into PE, it's isometric game with 2D backgrounds ffs. And yes, 3D isn't anything more than gimmick, and it belongs into FPSs even if to those.
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Put them as NPC's in the game - but make them killable in amusing ways.
Since reviewers only play 5 nano-seconds, they'll never know the interesting...experiments...players can perform on their avatars.
Reviewer: Ooh, me in video game! Me give 10/10.
Player: Hey, I fit three reviewers on this pike...lengthwise!
Legends of Valour did this in 1992, it had bunch of english game-magazines editors and editor-in-chiefs headshots as shopkeepers in the game... and it got raving reviews in the said magazines.
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I do not like romances, not because of the concept I like relationship between diffrent characters and love , friendship , rivaly is one of them, It is just the fact, that all romances are pointed not to expand on character but rather so one fictional character could bone another fictional character, pure fanservice.
What I want from obsidian is that they will concertrate on other aspects of relationship .
And if we need to make romances than make them orginal, how about there is romance that happens but not between our hero and a companion, but between two companions and we serve as machmaker for them, hey it is romance
What about my idea that all romances ends with "black widow" and game deletes all saves when the romanceable NPC kills the player? that at least would be something what haven't been done.
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And why people keep wanting it? Devs already said no, and no means no.
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Because it just would be waste of resources for a feature which would be pretty much pointless for game like PE.
If you ever played BG or NWN in MP you'll never say that this is "waste of resources".
NWN is whole different type of game, and yes I've played NWN in PW-servers. PE will be solely meant to be played as single-player and it wont even have modtools (at least for now) to create your own content.
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So many people are against multiplayer. It seems like no one remember this day that most of AD&D games have it: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights etc. Best of the best RPG's.
Because it just would be waste of resources for a feature which would be pretty much pointless for game like PE.
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Who said things have to go the player's way?
All romances ends with "black widow" and game deletes all saves when the romanceable NPC kills the player?
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Given Obsidian's previous games PE is bound to have quite a bit of reactivity and C&C.
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And Isn't this topic also sexist and mysogynistic?
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Merin, at least I tried to counter-argue all of your points but now you are just cherry picking and lifting sentences out of the context, probably because you can't come up with proper arguments and you yet again resort to passive-agressive patronizing tone even though we agreed we'd try to argue civilly - I was being completely polite in my replies but apparently it's not possible for you.
I'll admit I've not been completely civil all the time but at least I've tried to argue with actual arguments, examples and substance.
If I'd write another post with the new arguments or taken from my original posts, you would just again pick up the ones you can either lift up from the context, twist their meaning or then "subtly" try to mock my writing because english isn't my native language even though you knew very well what I was meaning.
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They can do it similarly to what was done in PS:T where the player character remembered parts of his past life as the game progressed, and since PE World has different kind of souls that could affect on what kind of memories etc the soul gives to the player character - they could do it in discussion such as (this is just rough example) "I remember this and this thing from the soul's past doing for these reasons, and then I remember this other previous owner doing this for these reasons" - which would be affected on what type of soul player chose for example.
Torment never directed TNO's motives, though. At no point did Torment tell the player how TNO felt about anything, or why he had done anything.
I used PS:T as an example how they can do the "flashback" to remember what one of the many previous owners of the soul did and why, if you remember they did that in middle of the conversations, so they could do similar thing in PE with the remembering what the previous owner did and why.
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I enjoy well rounded and complex NPC characters and I enjoy the capacity to interact with them in multiple ways. In as much as is practical I want to have the NPCs simulate a person with a human beings capacity for reacting both positively and negatively to situations. So I want a lot of NPC reactivity in PE, in fact as much as the writers can possibly squeeze in. I believe NPC reactions are a great and relatively inexpensive way for Obsidian to reinforce consequence and difference in the world. Resultantly I will always advocate for more NPC dialogue variance rather than less as it is a part of roleplaying that I enjoy. Thus any funds spent on providing branching dialogue that expands the range of possible interaction with the NPCs is for me money well spent. I would usually prefer two shorter well written branches in which an NPC either likes your action or expresses dislike about your action over one longer well written dialogue which does not change based on the NPCs personality. It is much more meaningful to me if I for example burn down a village to achieve an aim and then face a barrage of ‘you’re a ruthless bastard’ from a companion than it is to burn down a village in an act of ruthless bastardry and have no negative reaction from a companion you would reasonably expect based on their established character to be disgusted by the action.
I see the potential for romance as a logical extension of a friendship type of NPC PC relationship. It is something that if the circumstances and characters would be positively disposed towards should be possible to explore. I don’t agree with the argument that a satisfying romance subplot necessitates the same level of resources that are devoted to establishing the NPC as friendly to the PC as to me romance can develop quite naturally and satisfactorily from a friendly relationship tree with minor variations. Similarly if a non-friendly or casual romance branch is also included then it really takes minimal effort or resources to type a more sophisticated version of ‘Hey babe, how about it?’ and ‘Go to hell loser!’. After all the aim of PE isn’t to write an epic love story and romances if included need to be managed in a fashion balanced with alternate NPC PC relationships.
Further to this point, that as the budget increased so did the scope of PE, absolutely Obsidian is now creating a larger world and more companions. They now have greater opportunity to explore different NPC character relationships without having to shoehorn any and all interactions into a very limited amount of NPC personalities. I originally expected deep and well developed NPCs with branching dialogue trees and I now see no reason for them not to be able to include a romance aspect or subplot for some of them as we have so many more characters and personalities to explore.
Obviously if you feel that variability in companion interactions is an undesirable feature and that you would prefer the NPC dialogue doesn’t change in response to the PCs actions then you naturally would see no value in funding an increase in the range of potential options available for the PC to explore. I have no issue with anyone who plays their game differently than I do but as I enjoy the feature I will advocate for it’s inclusion.
It's late in here so I'll answer one thing quickly but I can reply tomorrow more depthly.
WIth the exception of maybe Bioware the developers very rarely write other than possible friendship because otherwise there would be lot more writing to do. How I see the grander branching dialogue isn't that NPC reacts to something what you did, the branching dialogue is that first there's character as a tree, then there are the big branches such as "friendship", "rivalry", "romance" etc. which then divide to their own branches with their own responses on what the player does - friend would respond differently on you burning village than lover would.
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I have to say I agree with jarpie on this. It would make no sense for the characters own self motivations not to factor into the game world at all. In the end, whether you're playing Baldurs Gate or Planescape Torment, your character had their own self motivations that probably completely differed from the person playing that character. Especially in Torment, the Nameless one had several motivations that I could of given a crap less about, but they were interwoven into the character. Even though through dialogue, the player is given choices to choose from, there is still a very underlying concept of the character that is built into the game from the start.
We play the role of the character as the developers have portrayed him/her to us. Though we have many options of dialogue to pick from there is not an infinite number of choices to be made, which means we inevitably are forced to choose one of the paths that the developers have written, total free play-ability, or sovereignty in this case of a character, just cannot work in a game such as this. In order for a game to be created where the actual character's motivations were non existent, they'd have to ship us a blank game. Even in NwN if you were playing on a role-playing server, if you ignored your characters own self motivations and purely played the character based upon your own self motivations, then you were not properly role-playing Any true role-player will tell you this. Now as blunt and bold as that statement is, it's true down to its core. That is the very fundamental of role playing, you assume the role of a character.
Saying that motivations should be based on what 'you' the player have stated that characters motivations to be, isn't truly rping that character. Being a DM on a NwN server, we encountered this problem many a times. It's very hard to move away from something that you want your character to do, but know in your mind that your character wouldn't truly do that, so you're then forced to properly role-play that choice, by choosing the path that your character would take, or you can choose to not role-play that choice and do whatever you want. Thus destroying the whole point and meaning behind the words role-play
Now speaking specifically about PE, we are now taking on the role of a character in the vision of the writers. So, yes we should be forced to have underlying motivations and goals that the character has, whether we chose them or not. Why? Because, otherwise you wouldn't have a game to play at all. Though you have control over the choices and paths the character takes, the underlying ones will always remain. It's what leads you from the start of the game to the end, many choices and paths in between. Otherwise why even bother going to find Sarevok in BG? The underlying motivation for the character was to find his father's killer, whether you agreed with that or not, or no matter what options or paths you chose, whatever you did would eventually lead you to Sarevok. Unless you decided to just not beat the game. So to say that the player character's motivations shouldn't enter into the design of the game at all, really makes no sense to me. I cannot fathom how you could play any sort of role-playing game, including NwN where you are playing your own character, without having an underlying sense of the character. Especially in NwN, your character will always have his/her own motivations, it's just with PE we are now working with the developers/writers characters motivations, which is what gives us our choices and paths we can choose from in the first place.
I also have to add quickly that the possible motivations you choose in the game can come up in the main- and sub-stories also and can affect how they branch out, progress and develop - No idea if PE will take this route but I'll give an example:
In the very end of the game it shows what happened after the game ended in the end slides like in Fallout: New Vegas for example, and it tells that this and this happened because you made those important choices for those reasons - like in the example I gave about goldchest you chose differently and gave gold to the poor people and you became to be known as a "Robin Hood"-kind of popular figure in certain part of the gameworld and you became high ranking member in the church because you did it because you wanted to help the poor people or if you chose differently and kept the chest, becoming rich man but you were thrown out of the church as a disgraced man because you lied about your motivations; if you would've kept the goldchest and said to the priest that you intend to keep it because you need the gold, your standing with the church would've been neutral and you they wouldn't have let you join in because you're not righteous enough.
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I'm missing it because that doesn't make any sense to me.if they wouldn't give player any motivations to choose from how they can deal with the soul possibly influencing the choices you make?They shouldn't. The idea of souls influencing characters should be left for NPCs. Maybe if they want to get meta, the player can be a stand-in for the character's soul.
If the soul is influencing character decisions, you either remove player agency by declaring it for the player. Or you're making a silly distinction of letting the player choose between soul and self which is needless complication that doesn't actually explore the theme. It's just letting the player pretend he's exploring a theme he probably doesn't even understand.
You're missing it. The player has a choice as to how and why do something. For example, save that pregnant woman or the king? You can save the woman because you save two lives and the king has more people caring after him, or you can do it because you hate the guy, and other possibilities that can be presented in the dialogue and the narrative. Some time later you learn that something similar has happened in the soul's past. At that point, we see whether the pc made the choice influenced by the past, and in which way, or not if he didn't get influenced.
The player already knows why the PC made the choice. In fact, you just asked him why. Turning around and saying "it's because of the past life" or "because of no reason, lol" based on a comparison against the writer's arbitrary script isn't something that sounds even remotely beneficial.
That's where the roleplaying and dealing with the themes comes in - the player character and the NPCs can then talk about it in the game how and why the soul possibly influenced the said action and what kind of people the previous owners of the said soul were.
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... avoiding the temptation to argue that themes could be presented in so many very different ways, knowing full well some sentence will be grabbed by somebody and used, out of context, to create an army of straw men that even fire could not stop ...
In a role-playing game, especially one where you are allowed to fully create your own character (as PE will be, in the great IE following of the greater cRPG tradition), the game writers should almost never write the player character's reactions.
They should, can and do write NPC reactions to the game world and the player character, and other game world reactions to the player character, NPCs and other game world events.
You're not seeing The Big Picture.
Without player character reacting to what happens in gameworld then the game and the gameworld will be like Bethesda's games where rest of the gameworld is just there for the player to play puppeteer and becomes completely superfluous and bland instead of giving impression that player character is part of the small world, it gives the feeling that world being there for the player and player character to toy with.
I'll give you an example from my earlier post:
Game gives you a choice to save either NPC A or NPC B, and if you didn't save NPC A and he was right-hand man of local leader such as a duke, he might send hired mercenaries after you, demand explanation, demand some sort of compensation, or something else what writer has come up with, and it might affect how the story progresses since you didn't save the NPC A thus not getting help from his master, and since you saved NPC B, he joins your group and you get help from his master who might be local thieves' guild leader which gives you different kind of help and takes you to the completely other route on how the game progresses, maybe different set of quests to progress in the story.
And here comes the "Player reacting to the gameworld" and the consequences-part; You get the message from NPC B's master that NPC A's master is mightly pissed off at you for letting his right-hand-man die, and he will send mercenaries after you, now you have a choice either to get the message to the Master A that you are willing to compensate his loss somehow (be that huge sum of money, you're going to work for him (doing quests), letting him to kill one of your companions etc), you can wait for the mercenaries and fight them and then deal with the consequences of that action, you can sneak to Master A's castle and either kill him or threaten him with "See how easily we got to you, now back off" and all those choices can branch to the new directions and so on.
If they won't write player character reacting on what the NPC says or does then you can't have well written and deep companions and other NPCs because there wouldn't be two-way interaction and the writers wouldn't be able to write good, evil, creedy, neutral and all different kind of responses to which game can then react to and keep track of what kind of character you are playing - such as in PS:T where lot of alignment shifts came from the dialogues where the TNO reacted on what the NPCs said.
They write that the player character makes a choice, or the player / player character makes a choice? Distinction is important.You are getting caught with the words and not the meaning - English isn't my native language. I obviously meant that they give a choice for the player either to save a baby or not but that should've been clear enough from my text.
No, you really do mean the writers saying what the player character decided, and writing why they did it?In a cRPG, especially one where you can create your character in the way of IE following the great tradition of cRPGs letting you make your own character, the writers should not be dictating to me my character or my actions. Stuff like KotOR or PS:T, in the Total Recall method of "here's a unique character born from the mind-wiped husk of a previous villain", is a special case of that's not your character the stuff they relate to you, it's the personality of whom inhabited your character's body earlier.
Digression aside, I reject the scenario because I don't believe PE should be dictating my character's motivations to me.
As I said above, the writers of the game has written a scene where the player gets a choice either to save the baby or not, after (not necessarely instantly) that they can show a "flashback" where some previous owner of the soul had to make a same or similar choice, and show his/hers motivation for the choice they made, but more on this later in my reply.
Let me try and pick out the salient point in here, and feel free to correct me if I've missed it -
How can the game writers create reactive dialog for the NPCs if they haven't dictated ahead of time the PC's motivations?
The same way they've done it for all the other IE games where NPCs spoke to the player's characters - by first giving the player enough options to reasonably represent where most players would like be playing their characters from (what number of options is the trick - too many and the game takes way too long to write, especially if these options keep branching.... too few and you get Mass Effect 3 where you can choose to say yes in a nice voice or yes in a mean voice) and then crafting NPC responses to those options.
In a perfect role-playing environment, each character would have it's own player so each character was super-realized and each character could react to whatever each other player said or did without limitations. And this is how simulations for group therapy and training exercises work, but let's not go there for now. With role-playing games, you aren't going to get that many people involved - you have a handful of players controlling their own characters, and as such their characters have the most reactivity and are the most realized... whereas all the other characters in the world are controlled by the GM, and therefore are less realized. Still, the GM can try and react to most anything the players do, so it's not so bad, just the GM can't spend lots of time fleshing out every other character in the world. Now you move to cRPG's, and the limitations grow. You don't have an active GM (in single player cRPGs), you have prescripted dialog and such for the NPCs before the player has even bought the game, let alone made a character. And because of the limitations of prescripted reactions, the player becomes limited in how many choices he or she has as well. The game developers have to prescript the options for the player.
So, yes, the player's options are pre-scripted. His character can only be player defined, as far the game world will react to him or her, inside of the boundaries of what the game developers made possible. There are limits to what you can create inside the game rules and options.
But you still create it. You still choose the dialog your character speaks. And all the nooks and crannies that aren't covered by the character creation system you can imagine to help add the height to Harry Potter or the style of shirt that Frodo is wearing (referring to books, movies, reader vs. writer vs. movie director visions of characters, etc, from earlier post.)
Games used to (some still do) give you bio blocks to fill in your character's biography. Clearly the designers meant these to be YOUR characters, not their characters.
I know the difference of singleplayer CPRG and RPG played with several players and GM very well - I played 3-4 years in the RP Server of the NWN where we had GMs/DMs - since you are so determined of playing your own character, you should try it - honestly.
Since they can keep track of what the player has done with numerous variables etc, they can then write the dilaogue where the NPC asks from the PC why did you did this thing, and the game gives the player several choices - if you remember from PS:T they had 15-20 choices for some dialogues, you don't think that's enough to cover most "generic" motivations given the context in the game and gameworld?
As I said, the game can keep track of what you have done with variables, and they can do what PS:T did that they can write the flashback in between the dialogue described as written text what the previous owner of the soul did and what was his motivation - thus they can then write the dialogue with the PC and NPC where PC says "Previous owner of the soul did similar thing for this reason" and then continue the discussion on possiblity how soul influenced the action and motivation of the player character.
Since you can probably choose what kind of soul the PC has, it can also influence on what the previous hosts did and it will be increasing the replaybility.
Yes, the player chooses the dialogue which the character speaks and takes the actions/options but you are not the writer of the said dialogue and the possible multiple actions. You are still playing the character and it's vartiations and aspects in the gameworld they have created, if it would truly be your character then you would've written the dialogue and would make completely your own choices.
Where the roleplaying in single-player crpg comes in are the choices & consequences - how do you react to them, what choices you make, what kind of character are you playing (good, evil, creedy, selfish, neutral, etc), how do you interact with different characters and factions - which faction do you join in, which faction are you working against, which character do you help and which not, how do you react what happens in the gameworld such as the before mentioned situation with the Master A and then the game shows in the gameworld how the story/stories, gameworld, NPCs and your character shapes up in the said world depending on what you have chosen to do - and they show how your choices changes the NPCs, gameworld and the story - that's where the roleplaying in singleplayer RPG comes from.
Not from the stuff you have made up in your head - the stuff what happens, happens in the gameworld because that's how games work - the player character optimally has as many choices in the game as it's possible to do and choose from, and you choose from them depending on what aspect/varitation of character you want to play from the choices/options the devs have written for you - your character can't be anything more in the game and game world what the devs have written into the game.
When you play a character in PNP or RP server ran by GM, it basicly happens like in the single-player RPG but the two-way interaction can just be more fluent but the basic principle is the same - you still don't imagine stuff happening in your head what doesn't happen in the game.
Since you brought up IE games and PS:T, do you remember how many choices it gave for the player to choose in dialogue? it sometimes had 15 or even 20 choices. As I said in the beginning, you are not seeing The Big Picture, they can now write as much branching dialogue as they want since there are no VOs - they won't have to care how much dialogue there is in the game from that standpoint since the biggest restriction on how much variability there can be in the dialogue has been VOs.
For every important choice you can make in the dialogue there are many options to choose from - let's say 10-15, and there is unique reply from the NPC for each of them, and then you can again choose from the 10-15 options - See now how it can work? Who's to say Obsidian wouldn't do that, or wouldn't want to?
What I've read about PE in the interviews and comments from the developers makes it seem that it will be closer on what PS:T and KOTOR 2 was, in KOTOR 2 if you remember at least one NPC asked from the player character why he went to the war and followed Revan and player had multiple choices to choose from - I think there were places where Kreia asked why chose to do something - and she reacted to that.
I think this is very important from the devs in Kickstarter page: "Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.", I've bolded the important part.
The devs have said that player can choose from what culture the player character is from, and then the gameworld will react to it - this tells me that the player character probably won't be completely blank state like it was in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, which you want.
The player character's motivations shouldn't enter into the design of the game at all, with the exception of what the player choose to have as his character's motivations.The game designers (for a cRPG in the style of PE, the older IE games, etc.) give you options of what you character says or does. The game world (including NPCs) should react to your characters words and actions - words and actions that chosen by the player, not by the writers.
And why they shouldn't? They know the gameworld, characters, themes and how to deal with them better than any player would, like I said before you are playing variations and different aspects of the character (or if you prefer; possible characters), and they might want to write possible motivations for those possible characters, which then determines how the character shapes up in the story and how your character shapes up the story - as I described earlier in the post.
Let's say that the story they have written calls for the motivations behind the actions your player character has chosen, for example priest of the one of the religions asks from you why you stole the gold chest from the local noble when you are trying to join their order - you can choose from lot of different options and one of them has "[lie] I plan to give it to the poor", which means you're planning to keep the chest for yourself. The game can keep track of that, and later if they find out that you have lied to them, they might kick you out of their order unless you manage to fool them but some of the choices are genuine motivations behind the actions.
Hell, game can even keep track of that for later when one of your companions asks why did you lie to the priest, and then he/she reacts to your answer.
See how the motivations in game can be used?
I have always talked about the choices and options player can choose from what the writer has written for the player - they still do write the options for you either in the dialogue or in the gameplay itself and they choose the possible actions you can take.
PS. Sorry I couldn't keep this shorter but I had to be thorough in my arguments so there wouldn't be misunderstandings.
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Maybe this discussion should be moved to it's own discussion, mods?
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if they wouldn't give player any motivations to choose from how they can deal with the soul possibly influencing the choices you make?
They shouldn't. The idea of souls influencing characters should be left for NPCs. Maybe if they want to get meta, the player can be a stand-in for the character's soul.
If the soul is influencing character decisions, you either remove player agency by declaring it for the player. Or you're making a silly distinction of letting the player choose between soul and self which is needless complication that doesn't actually explore the theme. It's just letting the player pretend he's exploring a theme he probably doesn't even understand.
You're missing it. The player has a choice as to how and why do something. For example, save that pregnant woman or the king? You can save the woman because you save two lives and the king has more people caring after him, or you can do it because you hate the guy, and other possibilities that can be presented in the dialogue and the narrative. Some time later you learn that something similar has happened in the soul's past. At that point, we see whether the pc made the choice influenced by the past, and in which way, or not if he didn't get influenced.
Exactly this too.
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if they wouldn't give player any motivations to choose from how they can deal with the soul possibly influencing the choices you make?
They shouldn't. The idea of souls influencing characters should be left for NPCs. Maybe if they want to get meta, the player can be a stand-in for the character's soul.
If the soul is influencing character decisions, you either remove player agency by declaring it for the player. Or you're making a silly distinction of letting the player choose between soul and self which is needless complication that doesn't actually explore the theme. It's just letting the player pretend he's exploring a theme he probably doesn't even understand.
They can do it similarly to what was done in PS:T where the player character remembered parts of his past life as the game progressed, and since PE World has different kind of souls that could affect on what kind of memories etc the soul gives to the player character - they could do it in discussion such as (this is just rough example) "I remember this and this thing from the soul's past doing for these reasons, and then I remember this other previous owner doing this for these reasons" - which would be affected on what type of soul player chose for example.
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Merin, since you are against reactivity and showing/asking motivations from the player (or want to keep them at minium at least), and especially making the player to react to the gameworld.
Then tell me this:
How they could deal with any themes concerning for example, friendships or how the souls affect the behaviour unless they write player character reacting to the other characters and what happens in the gameworld, also if they wouldn't give player any motivations to choose from how they can deal with the soul possibly influencing the choices you make?
If for example they write that player character makes a choice, like Tale said either to save a baby or not, and then they show player character remembering the soul's past lives or talking about the soul influencing that action, wouldn't the motivations be important in dealing with the choice and not just the actions since they are dealing with the themes that does soul and its history influence the player characters and NPCs behaviour?
More places/options there are for choosing potential motivations, the more in detail (in depth) they can deal with the theme of having souls influencing player characters and NPCs choices, actions and motivations - also with how the soul possibly influences your potential motivations for actions toward the companions and other NPCs - if you just show soul possibly influencing the motivations and actions of the NPCs then the player character is just an empty puppet what is completely removed from the gameworld and not actively participating in it and in the themes thus dealing with the whole theme is pointless as I explain it below.
I'll give you an example: The PC and the NPCs are discussing does the soul influence their motivations and actions, and since the PC is the one doing the (most) choices concerning what the group does, then he must be one of the main points in the discussion so there has to be motivation behind the actions since otherwise the whole theme is worthless because soul would be influencing his motivations behind the actions and not the actions directly - and how they can write lines for the NPCs (like the people in the world who are studying the effect of the souls) having the view of the PCs actions unless they know the motivations also?
Now, this is important - they have to show the motivations in the context of the gameworld how it (the world itself, characters etc) react to the motivations and the actions of the player character or otherwise dealing with the whole theme is moot because there would not be points of reference to which compare player character's motivations and actions vs. the gameworld for how the writers want to deal with the theme in the gameworld.
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There’s something that’s been bugging me in this thread and I think it’s the argument I keep reading that developing romances would somehow swallow up so great a proportion of the ‘character’ budget that it would reduce the funds available to develop well rounded interesting non-romanceable companion subplots to a triviality.
Now this would in fact be a pretty reasonable argument in a Bioware AAA game where the romances have unique models, cinematics, additional voice acting and even unique animations associated with them but I don’t think these features are even on the table for PE.
One of the greatest advantage for me of a non cinematic or text based game is the ability for it to include so many more dialogue options for the NPCs and PCs because it’s just so much cheaper to produce them when it’s text typed in a box without all the fancy bells and whistles associated with modern AAA titles.
So assuming that no cinematic, animation or special resources are required for developing a romantic subplot for some characters (because we aren’t having the grand kissy-kissy scenes) I fail to see how adding a romance could eat up any more budget than any other branching type of NPC character exposition. And if romances in fact aren’t any more expensive to implement than other NPC features doesn’t the whole argument really devolve into an individual’s personal opinion that they would prefer it if the money was to be spent elsewhere or aspects other than romance were focused on? Just as the support for romances is a statement of personal opinion that an individual enjoys this feature and would like it included.
I feel that having available to them close to 4 times the asking price for funding the original PE model then the developers should be able to provide us with quite a comprehensive array of possible NPC interactions including friendships, rivalries, dislike, affection and romantic love.
The companion interaction scenes do not write themselves and are not done in two hours in between design meetings (were they might be, if you work at Bioware). On a project like PE, with limited funding and people, effective usage of manhours is essential. But we've been over this already in this thread, several times, and we obviously do not agree with one another's premises.
I would also add that if you want to make romance as in-depth written as non-romance, then it would have to have basicly same amount of dialogue as non-romance branch or at least very close to what non-romance has, thus meaning that the amount of the dialogue would be divided for both and then both would suffer.
If you would give romance-branch say 10% of the dialogue what non-romance branch has then you would basicly have just about 3-6 conversations, and the romance would be as shallow as they are in Bioware games and Obsidian is not doing that.
Sistergoldring, don't forget that the game will be much bigger now than what it was at 1,1 million; they originally had just three races, five classes and five companions, one big city, no mega dungeon and since then they have added:
three races (six altogether)
six classes (11 altogether)
three companions (8 altogether)
another big city (plus the quests, sub-plots, etc what goes with it)
15 level mega-dungeon
one extra region (plus the quests, sub-plots, etc what goes with it)
one major plot (plus the quests, sub-plots, etc what goes with it)
one extra faction (plus the quests, sub-plots, etc what goes with it)
Expert-, Trial of Iron- and Path of the Damned-modes
Crafting and Enchanting
Adventurer's Hall with full party creation
Player House
Stronghold.
Edit: Mega dungeon with 15 levels.
You don't think those require quite a hefty amount of funding and especially writing since they are keeping the development time the same as it was in 1,1 million?
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We haven't exchanged any PMs other than when I asked if you've answered my one post, not a single other one PM so don't try to claim otherwise, I bet mods can even check that if need be.
Excuse me. One PM chain. With a back and forth, where you asked if I was ignoring you, I apologized if I had missed something - told you I wasn't ignoring you - and asked which question I had missed, you gave me a link, and I pointed out that I had responded to that post, which then you apologized and admitted your error.
One PM. One chain of several responses back and forth. I don't think getting nitpicky about this is making you seem less irrational.
And that last point I bolded - "the mods can check" - what, is this a contest on who's lying more? I thought you were looking for great debates, for both sides respecting each other, not trying to paint me as a bad guy?
Where is "you ignored my post" and "if you'd even read what I said" debating with respect? That's accusing, based on speculation. You cannot know if I read it entirely or not, if I ignored it or not. All you have is what I chose to respond to.
My posts are long, but so are yours
Acknowledged. Repeatedly. Even to you in what you are quoting and then trying to call me a hypocrite on by pulling the tu ququo -
I freely admit that my posts (like this one) get entirely too long. But I am trying to only respond to certain points, and to keep my points as short as I can. I FAIL at keeping them short, ALL THE TIME
Except I give the important caveat of noting that -
I don't berate people for not addressing every little thing I say.
Yet you won't let that go -
funny how I could process yours and reply.
It's no my fault that you cannot into long posts, one would think that -novelist- would actually be able to read and process longer texts. Besides if you'd even read my post
Watch what is happening as I'm even trying to address most of your points in a relatively short post? See how long this is getting?
You always could've drop me PM or message in the thread and say "Hey, you didn't notice this" if I hadn't replied to something you said.Maybe I would have, had it been a point of contention for me.
It isn't.
I'm not the one demanding that people read a ridiculous amount of threads to answer every single one of my points or else they aren't allowed to debate -
Example 1 - "I'm going to let you give counter-arguments for rest of my message before answering yours, only fair."
Example 2 - "Have fun reading and counter-arguing"
Example 3 - "I expect counter arguments on all the points I've give in those posts. Enjoy!"
You start off demanding that someone respond to seven quotes before you will answer them (it's only fair that they respond to everything you demand they do), and advance to demanding, excuse me, "expecting" that people must respond to a list of 6 links which go to lengthy posts.
I'm not the one making post after post about "you aren't answering every point I made" and PMing others "did you ignore me, am I on ignore because I didn't see your response" even though the response had been made.
I didn't make that many points
I'm still done with you ... Good day, sir *tips his fedora*
Help me out here - were you done with me but just one more post, or... are you done with me now?
Yeah, I sent you one PM asking if you've put me on ignore because I didn't notice your reply, and I didn't ask if you've ignored anything I wrote in the message - notice the difference. The last topic got quite heated, and I was tired of writing same points over and over again - I admit I could've been nicer but so could've been whole lot of other people too.
As you were replying I modified my last post:
Edit: consider this as last reply from me to you.So this is my last reply since you didn't see my modification.
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haha keep in mind you're a regular poster on BSN and so are most of the people clamoring for romance. Yet the people who argue against you don't post on the BSN forums.I guess I was wrong - the BSN was already here.
Someone quote this so Merin sees it.
touche.
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Feargus Urquhart quote on addressing hate in games
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
Have you noticed how the social justice nutjobs and "We want romances"-crowd are largely the same people? Interesting coincidence...