PrimeJunta

Sorry, @KaineParker, but no can do. We're winning, you see. You and the other manboons are the ones in the echo chamber; we represent the world at large. :breathes the briny wind blowing in from the sea: Mmmm. Freedom and open space. Lovely. If you want to find a nice comfy hole where you can safely wallow in your masculine victimhood without inconveniencing the rest of us, though, don't let us stop you. I hear the MGTOW's have a project where they want to buy an island and all move there. Maybe you want to chip in on that? Hell, if it's realistic, I'll throw in a shekel just to be rid of you lot.

Gamer culture is a zit. It is being popped. That is all.

Nice try. Now, point them out and state their crimes. Nah. More fun yanking your chain here. Nice fedora by the way.

@TrueNeutral Trolls are likely never going away. (I'm having a pretty good time trolling this very thread, for example.) GG will blow over soonish, though. Give it a couple months and then there's room to talk about ethics in journalism without it devolving into an in-depth investigation of who banged whom when and whether today's death threat to some particular woman is a "legitimate threat" or not.

@Meshugger Unable to see them, huh? Hmm, I wonder what could possibly be the reason for that…?

@Orogun01 Priorities, man. In this situation I have to take a choice: throw my lot in with the MRA's, MGTOW's, misogynists, and other assorted manboons, or call for a higher standard of ethics in journalism. One or the other. It is politically impossible to do both. Try, like TrueNeutral here, and you'll fall between the chairs, or be used as a fig leaf. I choose not to throw my lot in the with the manboons. Once we've got them safely rounded up in a ghetto where they can wallow in their victimhood without inconveniencing the rest of us, then we can talk about journalistic ethics. If capitalism hasn't collapsed by then and made the whole discussion moot anyway.

Where did I do that?

Journalistic ethics and harassment may usually be two completely separate things. In this context, however, they're not. Like it or not, you're throwing your lot in with the harassers, and soiling both yourself and the cause of ethics in journalism in the process. If you're not a neckbearded manchild yourself, then you're, as Lenin dubbed Western milquetoast lefties supporting, or at least not opposing, the Bolshevik revolution, a "useful idiot."

Oh, good. That means our side is winning. Nyah nyah.

The status quo is not apolitical, nor is "not evangelizing." I.e., that was the eternal cry of the hegemonic group having hegemony challenged. Mm, the smell of Molotov ****tails in the morning...

I had a few minutes to waste. That said, this thread has opened my eyes to just how many neckbearded man-children inhabit this very forum. I'm frankly shocked. I thought more of us were fully-socialized adults, more or less. I also think that if you're more upset about indie games not getting the exposure you think they deserve than lives and careers being if not ruined at least severely harmed by this stuff, you are one of those neckbearded man-children.

Am I the only one who thinks this entire thing is mind-bogglingly... stupid? Sure, there are ghastly problems with ethics in games journalism they're pretty much exactly the same problems all American corporate-funded mainstream media have -- and in the cosmic scale of things, a bought game review ranks pretty low compared to, say, a bought election or a bought war. Plus, some indie dev sleeping with a journalist who didn't even write about her stuff ain't it. And people are sending other people death and rape threats, pulling advertising, boycotting publications, and generally getting incredibly butthurt about this? "Gamers" deserve exactly the reputation they have. Which is one reason I don't identify as one. Besides, it's not even a proper identity—it's a consumer segment. Late-stage capitalism bullcacky, is what this is.

@Captain Shrek no moving goalposts here, just expanding on the reasons for my original request ("Do you have a cRPG in mind with a learn-by-doing system that doesn't lead to relentless skill-grinding? Both TES and Darklands certainly do.") Again, I asked because I can see a number of serious problems with your proposed solution, and was curious if you knew of a game that had actually pulled it off. Since you don't and were speaking purely theoretically, I have no further questions. Thank you for your time.

@Captain Shrek Yes, you did criticize skill-grinding. However, you failed to provide an example of a learn-by-doing game that's not skill-grindy. The two you mentioned certainly are. IMO your proposed solution (severely limit the opportunities for skill use) doesn't sound like much fun, and I fail to see its advantages compared to plain ol' hand-placed quest/objective XP. So I was curious if you know of a game that actually did it that way and succeeded at being fun. Armchair design will only get you so far, you know.

Not butthurt about XP. Riiiight... Do you have a cRPG in mind with a learn-by-doing system that doesn't lead to relentless skill-grinding? Both TES and Darklands certainly do.

Hm. Why even bring XP up then, if it's not relevant? I re-read your post and you appear to be arguing there that P:E should get rid of XP altogether. I find that confusing (and also unreasonable).

Good points but from where I'm at, taken a bit too far. First off, the IWD's. I really enjoyed the combat density and design of IWD 1. IWD 2 not so much; there were too many trash mobs there, and too many of them were more or less identical. More goblins, then more orcs, then more barbarians, etc. That you lump them together suggests that we have rather different ideas about where the ideal should lie. Moreover, the combat density in the BB isn't too far off IMO. Dyrford Crossing seems a bit crowded, but other than that, it feels about right, and the mobs are remarkably diverse too -- it's not beetles after beetles after beetles after beetles; it's lions and spiders and beetles and wraiths and cultists and so on. So I agree with your general principle — too much combat and too many trash mobs is bad — but not the specific claims, i.e. that IWD 1 or the BB have too much of them. The rest of it just sounded like more butthurt over XP, so I won't address that.

Nobody's as easily offended or easy to troll as the folks who keep woofing about SJW's. All you have to do is say something complimentary about Anita Sarkeesian. Lulz guaranteed. Compared to them, actual SJW's are marble.

@Lord Vicious I wasn't referring to in-game activities. I was referring to emotions caused by perceived slights and pandering by the developers of P:E.

@Razsius ... Okay, I guess. You see it as a "half-measure" and "appeasement" as well. You feel like you're being pandered to, and that makes you mad. Fine. I'm not really interested in these emotional reasons though, personally valid as they are. (Although if your objective is to make your 'camp' not look 'unreasonable,' that's not exactly helping, though.) The rest of your post is a defense of kill XP, which is also not something I'm interested in pursuing. So I still don't see it, except from purely emotional/ego grounds (feeling first deprived of a prize, then slighted, then pandered to). As to "shoehorned in," I don't see it that way. Again: the core design goal of P:E's XP system was to reward accomplishments, not activities. Filling in your bestiary is an accomplishment. Killing things is an activity. Therefore, bestiary XP makes sense from that POV whereas kill XP doesn't. Nor does trap/lock XP, which is why I was really surprised to hear they're considering it, and hope they won't include it. I.e.: I'm all for quest XP, objective XP, bestiary XP, and discovery XP, because all of these reward accomplishments, but I'm against kill XP, trap/lock XP, uncovering-fog-of-war XP, or practicing-your-skills XP, because they reward activities.

That doesn't explain why you hate bestiary XP. It just explains what kind of XP system you'd like even more. I still don't get it, other than from a purely emotional POV (you're upset at not getting exactly the XP system you want, and you feel they're patronizing you with a "half-measure"). Is that it?

I honestly don't get the hostility to bestiary XP. It makes a lot more intuitive sense than kill XP (XP is supposed to, at some level, represent learning, and bestiary XP makes that connection more concrete; it also doesn't make sense that you can keep learning more, and always the same amount, by killing more and more of the same kind of critter), it's much easier to manage for the game designers since they won't need to watch out and compensate for XP hotspots like spawn points and they can easily tally up the total available XP at any stage in the game, and it gives a feeling of continuous progression that's IMO the best thing about kill XP (and something I find myself missing in the BB). I.e., from where I'm at it has all the benefits of kill XP with almost none of the drawbacks. If anyone would care to enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.

Try synergizing with other caster classes. A combo of a druid casting a group fortitude debuff followed by a wizard attack against fortitude is pretty powerful.

The twist with the Cypher system is the use of XP as in-play currency, e.g. to reroll a die, get a temporary advantage, etc. This works well in a tabletop setting and can be a quite a lot of fun. The T:ToN "two flavors of XP" system is a workaround to produce some of the same feel on a computer game. I don't see what it could bring to P:E. There are no mechanics for spending XP on other things besides character advancement, so there's no need for the two flavors of XP, and P:E has very traditional level-up mechanics rather than the Cypher system's half-level-less "tier" system. Take away those parts, and what's left is plain quest/objective XP -- pretty much what P:E started with. Which part exactly would you like to see in P:E?

Does Dark Sun count?