Hormalakh

Proper, effective options can allow for replayability. Balance is a huge issue and testing it becomes really difficult (imagine having to test the whole game over and over with different options.) But if done well, it can extend the life of a game.

^Couldn't like that enough. I love webcomics. Here's one taking your idea into account. From the very well drawn and written, Gunnerkrigg Court. And a last. http://www.gunnerkrigg.com

So many problems with the implementation of Watcher's Keep... you've named a few of them. Add to that 27 hours (or something ridiculous) journey travel time. If time mattered in that game, it would make even less sense to go there.

Stadt des Feuers by ourak. DeviantArt http://browse.deviantart.com/digitalart/?offset=792#/d5mg5yw Another one from Giant In the Playground - Order of the Stick And finally a last webcomic. Some things in this story can hearken to god worshipping. Some of the spirits are worshipped as gods. Phoenix Requiem http://requiem.seraph-inn.com

Two from a really amazing comic that I still read. She's quite good and her fantasy world is well made. Check her out at www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/ http://www.casualvil...03/ch03_27.html http://www.casualvil...03/ch03_28.html Wrights are mages. Khert is the magic energy used. Gefendour is the main religion or something. A whole bunch of lore that I never bothered to keep up with. But interesting none-the-less.

Time for some imagery! That should get the creative juices flowing and a picture is worth a thousand words. "No-face" - Spirited Away Obvious. Interesting to see something inspired by her. Devourer of Light - Deviant Artist, Negative Feedback

Honestly, while I think this is a great idea and all - I consider a quick and painless implementation of a "queue action" function to not be too complicated. There are other features I'd rather they work on and I would hope that if they are going to work on the queue action functionality to a huge extent, that it be done in a P:E 2 or something. If it gets too complicated, it becomes tough to do. A few of these ideas are simple and I would hope they implement them, some of them are more involved and wish that they get implemented, but doubt that they will. It's too much work for not enough reward.

You really don't live up to your user handle very well, "Sharp One." If you are able to read, I would recommend you to re-read update #9 and tone down the arrogance. Here are a few tidbits in case it's too long of an update for you. With bated breath, I await your next refreshing and undoubtedly illuminating response to my post.

See. These are the reasons I brought up the question in the first place. Does class mean "personality" or does it mean "occupation"? To me, it means an occupation and life-style. While certain personalities are more likely to be drawn to a classes, there can be other personalities that choose those classes. Let's take barbarian for example. You could have a lot of dumb (i.e. unintelligent) characters who become barbarians, but there will undoubtedly be the few smart barbarians or charismatic ones who aren't vulgar. A better example would be the druid. What exactly stops a druid from following authority? What if my druid is of the belief that nature is the highest authority and that, as there is a hierarchy in the animal kingdom (alphas, food chain, etc) there should be a hierarchy in intelligent life and leadership. There is no reason for druids to be proud or arrogant. They could just as well be polite people who have learned much from the way of nature and how everyone is interconnected (swamp-guy from Avatar who controls the vines, for you to understand what I'm talking about). Also, another issue I have is with your definition of paladins and others relating to gods. paladins are considered more like "warlords" in this game than fighter-priests. Priests are the more "godly" of the classes. Other classes don't really have any relationships to god per se. They could, but they don't necessarily have to. Buddhist monks (to name a trope) don't really focus on God or gods.

From what I understand, options come down to when designers can't agree on a certain aspect. Then they try to make it optional.

When I stop hearing about all those great gaming experiences people have when they limit themselves to certain rules like "no reload." Free will is what makes life exactly worth living. Except in save-games. At that point it's most important to dictate the terms.

Tim Cain talks about fuzzy logic in AI programming for Fallout 1 (if he were to do it again) and I'm sure he's got a whole array of AI ideas that you could implement. I hope you're working together with that guru on this very difficult and complex problem.

I think a lot of people are forgetting that the gods have a huge role in the game. We have a god-touched race too, so keep in mind that it would be nice to introduce some gods that would fit a certain god-touched race that you'd like to see. Demon god - demon-touched. Chaos god - chaos-touched Dead god - dead-touched etc etc it's tough to create a monotheistic god paradigm with god-touched races.

yes to queuing. another aspect that some RTSs do well that can help the RPG RTwP system be more effective. I also like the second color coded idea a lot. probably would be careful about using the red color, because sometimes that can mean different things (chars being attacked, invalid move, etc) Maybe a different symbol? Like movement was the four triangles, attack is a sword, and spells a different symbol. i don't think anything is added to gameplay by arbitrary limitations of queues. players often will change actions based on outcomes in combat, so most people won't be queuing too many commands anyway.

@Osvir some of what you wrote i like. it describes professions. those are good. the personalities, i don't like so much. they limit the character design too much.

Man that has got to be the most pathetic reply I have ever seen. At what part did I say my character had no lock picking skill in that post? I even end with a paragraph that talks about how you should require certain skill levels to even be able to "attempt" an action to begin with. Of course I could not have picked the lock if I had no lock picking skill, but at that point the presence or lack there of the mini game would be a non issue wouldn't it? If that is really all you have to say then you need to stop posting in this thread because you have nothing constructive to add. Hey .... what I said back there... yeah, I'm sorry. I was taking my frustration from a different thread out on you. So I apologize about that. Going back to what you had written, and re-reading the last paragraph again, I can see now that you did indeed mention character skill being an important aspect of it. The main concern I have is that some players might still be upset if they cannot pick the lock fast enough and blaming the minigame for ruining the game for them. in your same story, if someone was to die they might either blame themselves, or more likely, they'll blame everyone but themselves: the mini-game for being "stupid", the developers for making a stupid "mini-game", their character for not being able to simply by-pass the lock. ultimately, the primary goal of the mini-games should be to be fun. For different players, that means different things. if they do implement such a system, making it optional would be the most ideal. of course, then they have to design with that in mind, and that costs even more dev-time, and so on and so forth. hopefully this was a more substantial response to your posts and you find something worthwhile in it. no hard feelings, eh?

^That sucks

@Umberlin I would never dream of controlling the casual difficulty level. My concern was for the harder difficulty levels. The ironman mode has inherently been one filled with trepidation not because of its difficulty but because of instability in the game design (bugs, bad AI). If we knew that ironman would never fail I wouldn't even be bringing this up. But there it is, and here I ... was. But yeah, it is pretty sad. I do have self-control when it comes to saves/loads for the most part. But there are those few moments when I've lost a party member to chunking and I've been playing the game for a long time now and having to take such a big hit really bothers me. So I just come up with excuses as to why I should reload that save game and spam cloudkill on the umberhulks this time. it's those few occasions that are bothersome. and i know many a player who truly loves those moments. they are the moments that players love talking about and are most memorable. a lot of the more "hardcore" players don't play games at a higher difficulty level because of some sort of weird nerd disfunction that is inherent in their genetic make-up. it's because of the emotional experiences that they have when their choices are made to matter in real-time and they suffer the consequences of their actions without recourse. you can learn a lot about yourself from a game. of course, now that i've had further time to think about the situation, i do agree that putting down such a harsh striction on games as unbelievably long wait times would be not a good idea. As I said before, I've come up with a better solution for myself, hyperbole be damned. as for the other players, i believe everyone can come to their own level of acceptability with this. those who are blind to the enjoyments of a game with meaningful choice will either come around, or they won't. those who are like me - and there are quite a few - will find their ways. mods feel free to lock down the thread if you wish. i don't care much for the hate on this thread.

A Dr. manhattan type god. He doesn't care much for this world.

ok take all my internets. how did you do that?

You mean bacchanal?

OH ****--!!! ARE WE GONNA SEE ORLANS AND AUMAUA NEXT UPDATE?! Here's hoping! Since we're not sure if gods really exist or not, in this world: I'd like a fake god in there. One that a group of people came up with and that have some sort of conspiracy towards getting him to "kill" the other gods. They're really in it for the political power/money. They don't believe that the gods are actually immortal beings with divine power. Something like that. One of my favorite monotheistic arguments for why there is only one God is that if there were multiple gods in existance, then there would need to be some supreme power that would keep these two gods separate (gods being omnipresent, omnipotent beings). Then the argument becomes a reductio ad absurdum beause each god would need another god to separate them, thus making an infinite number of gods exist, each only existing to act as "in-between powers" to separate the other gods. How about a god that has this power? The ability to keep gods separate in multitudes and controls their omnipotence and omnipresence by being "in-between" all gods, creating a space between them. Obvious is obvious: god of souls. gods of: courage patriotism - i.e. thomas jefferson, george washington, mao zedong, kim jong il, imam khomeini, - all have become some sort of divine representative mechantry, wealth - merchant class god ideas - allows people to have ideas dreams - controls the dreams that people have. lies - god that is deceitful and trickster. nature/animal god - druids worship. magic - mystra-like. Edit: Cow god brahmin. Two headed cow god.

^ I actually like this one. Need moar!

I have a pretty interesting topic of conversation that I want to discuss, but I'm a little scared of the response. I'm going to think it over a little before posting. Tomorrow.

^Cool story. But, this is a roleplaying game. You're playing the roles of characters who are not you. If your character doesn't have the skill to pick a lock, you shouldn't be able to pick it regardless of how cool a bro you are.