PrimeJunta

I like sax and violins.

I hate everyone on this thread already.

- The Witchers did sex, romance, and women well - Jade Empire is the best BioWare game - Baldur's Gate is a tedious grind and Minsc should be shot - D&D sucks in almost every way

@DCParry If you're replying to me, I think I need to clarify. The concept of "class struggle" is explicitly Marxist. It is of course crucial to Marx's theory of history, and in my view a highly useful way to look at both historical and contemporary societies and their evolution. Marxist historiography does explain a lot of history in terms of class struggle. However, pre-industrial societies did not conceptualize the conflicts within or between them in terms of class. In Marxist terms, the classes of the time had false consciousness. Peasants in a jacquerie did not think of themselves as rebelling against the class structure which made them peasants, nor did they believe that the conditions that pushed them to revolt were caused by that class structure. They thought of these struggles either in terms of 'justice' (restoring a usually mythical order currently unbalanced by an unjust ruler), or in religious terms. The Renaissance itself was originally seen not as an era of something new, but as the rebirth of the glories of ancient Rome and Greece. So yes, there was plenty of class conflict, sometimes even revolutionary or near-revolutionary class conflict (Chinese history has plenty of fascinating examples!), but describing this confict as 'class struggle' in the Marxist sense is anachronistic in a work of fiction set in a pre-industrial age. The concept wasn't invented yet, and people did not think of what they were doing in those terms. This is what I meant in my shorter post above.

And praise the gods of computer games for that!

Class struggle as a concept is a bit of an industrial-age notion though. Doesn't really fit in a Renaissance setting; back then class conflict wasn't about overthrowing the system and usually wasn't even conceptualized of in terms of class. It'd be a perfect fit for an Arcanum spiritual successor though. Upcoming kickstarter maybe...? I figure MCA has had his fill of the original and is champing at the bit for the opportunity to do it right.

My biggest niggle with SoZ is a trivial one. Loading screens. There are so many maps and they're so small that you transition between them a lot. To be genuinely playable, the transition ought to be instantaneous, or as good as. Instead it feels like I'm staring at a loading screen more than actually playing the game.

I'm confident they'll do a good job. There are precedents. Class (and to a lesser extent, race) was worked into Arcanum, and virulent misogyny into FO:NV, and I don't recall hearing too many complaints about it being in-your-face or didactic.

I never managed to finish SoZ. I got into my usual powergaming mode, and once I had broken the economy I lost interest. Perhaps I'll give it another shot one of these days.

If I can't make my stronghold an anarcho-syndicalist commune where we take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major affairs, I'm going to be extremely upset at being oppressed by the violence inherent in the system.

Is thing thing still on?

If you try to make a banana omelet, you'll actually end up with a banana pancake. They're really tasty. We often have them for breakfast. Recipe: 1 banana 2 eggs some vanilla (optional) Mash the banana extremely well, with a fork. Mix in the eggs and vanilla if you're using it. Fry on a buttered or oiled pan, serve immediately, plain or with stuff you'd put on a pancake..

Folks, this is not going to happen. The devs have made it clear, and the game is deep in production which means something this fundamental simply can't be shoehorned in at this point without setting back development months. The next opportunity to agitate for it is if and when they announce a sequel.

Ow, that's gotta sting. You could probably even hit something with one of those things at that range.

That's a fair question, and I'll try to answer it. I would like to see romance in PoE where the PC plays some other role than lover. Perhaps it's a romance between two companions, or a companion and an NPC, or two NPC's, and the PC becomes involved through some story twist. Why? Because I believe it's extremely difficult -- I won't say impossible because in writing nothing is completely impossible -- to write a compelling romance for a blank-slate character. PS:T's romance worked because TNO is not a blank-slate character, quite the opposite really. PoE's PC is a blank-slate character, so unless someone really surprises me, I don't believe it's possible to write a romance worth playing for him/her/hir/it/them.

I've played them. That you even describe romance in terms of failure or success illustrates precisely what, in my opinion, is wrong with them -- and the fundamental difference in tastes and preferences I have with people who enjoy them.

@Death Machine Miyagi I figure that since I'm in the "anti-mance" camp, although I hope not in its violent wing, here's my two cents. My problem with cRPG romance is with the "push the right buttons, get teh secz" flavor thereof. The real problem is that most promancers appear to think that this is, in fact, the definition of cRPG romance. It's certainly exactly what it is in every BioWare game since BG2. Even if done reeeasonably well (Jade Empire), I still find it tacky, and that its very presence detracts from the overall experience. Of the IE games and their successors, IMO only Planescape: Torment pulled off romance well. It even had three whole possible romances: Annah, Fall-from-Grace, and Deionarra. Yet most promancers here appear to feel that they're not romances at all, because they're never consummated and there's no happily-ever-after. So I'm strongly opposed to romance as wish-fulfilment or pandering. If romance is integral to the story, and if the writers are good and dedicated enough to give the NPC's a real feel of agency, then I'm all for it. However, these romances would not look at all like the harem-anime things we have in all BioWare games since BG2, nor even the truncated wish-fulfilment versions in NWN2 or MotB, so I doubt most promancers would even accept that they are romances. And we'd be right back where we started. In threads like this one.

I would like to see modding tools. That said, if the data formats they're using are open (as they seem to be), and since they're using Unity which is also based on open standards, it oughtn't be too difficult to mod even without a dedicated toolkit -- and it oughtn't be too hard for the community to make modding tools. I can see how Obs would want to keep their eye on the ball and concentrate on making the best game they can at this point. Polishing up and releasing mod tools later would be cool though. I don't know if they want to give away some of their main competitive assets, such as their dialog editor though, which I hear is better than what others are using. Stupid capitalism.

Surely we've seen enough of their writing not to have to worry on that score?

It's in the TSA rectal examination pose. Anything would look bad in that. If they manage to animate it with a touch of cat in the movement, it's gonna be pretty cool.

The classes are a good deal more flexible than in D&D. Of course D&D had multiclassing and prestige classes, but the former was IMO pretty badly broken in all editions for a variety of reasons, and I think of the latter more as an attempt to address a weakness in the system that shouldn't have been there in the first place. From what we've heard of the PoE system, it'll be possible to play character concepts similar to most D&D3 prestige classes just by picking a suitable mix of stats and playing to those strengths. So I wouldn't be too concerned about that either.

@Kjaamor I don't think a romance written by someone who cringes at the idea of writing one would be all that much fun. Except in an ohgodmybrainpleaseno kind of way.

@IndiraLightfoot I think you may be over-thinking this. What Josh et al have been going on about is systemic balance, i.e., attempting to make it so that there isn't any single obviously winning way to do stuff. That's good, from where I'm at, as it makes a broader range of strategies and tactics viable: instead of having "how do I make the most powerful wizard" we get "how do I play this particular wizard for maximum efficiency." The only counterargument to that is IMO "it would be better if it was worse." While it sounds silly it's not always; sometimes things have a particular charm because of their rough edges. Most of the time, though, worse is just... worse. What you seem mostly concerned about is pacing and encounter balancing. Oblivion was a horrid thing that should never have been because all the encounters felt the same, due to heavy-handed level scaling and lack of (more than cosmetic) variety in enemies. I don't see any indication that PoE will turn out anything like this. For one thing, Obs has never fallen into this trap before. For another, Josh has repeatedly said that there are some (optional) encounters that only a few of the devs -- the devs! -- are able to beat, and he intends to keep it that way.

They did promise memorable companions as one of their core "spiritual successor" planks. I think it's premature to worry that they're going to renege on that, even if romance is out. There was a ton of companion interaction in MotB, for example, with romance only extremely peripheral (and, IMO, not well done at all). Same goes for KOTOR2, except that one didn't have any romance in it at all.

@Karkarov A blank slate character who feels like an actual character is a tough equation to balance. PS:T and The Witcher managed it by not giving you a blank slate character; both TNO and Geralt have a lot of baggage in their respective worlds. I'm not sure I can think of a "blank slate" cRPG where the character eventually did become a real character. BG's Bhaalspawn wasn't altogether blank-slate either; I didn't particularly care for the way e.g. the dream sequences imputed a lot of feelings and motivations to you, nor for example Imoen as McGuffin in BG2. It jarred with the blank-slateness of it. That sort of thing would work better if you had some real background. DA:O tried, with the origin stories, but totally failed to capitalize on it in the actual game IMO. I thought it was a wasted opportunity; it would've taken a fair bit more writing but it could have been possible to make the game feel more reactive to your origin without having to do complicated stuff like rewrite quests -- most of it could've just been done with dialog flavor. It will be interesting to see how Obs handles it this time. And I share both your hopes and concerns re The Witcher 3. I love the hell out of the two Witchers, but a big part of the love is because of what they could be rather than what they are. Both fall short of their potential; TW1 because it's so obviously a first effort in many ways, TW2 because they clearly had to cut the ending short. (Aside from a laundry list of niggles obviously, I mean QTE's WTF?)