JFSOCC

Don't pass your silly right and wrong label onto me. In my view, you are wrong as hellll. So who wins now? Come on guys, hit the green like button so I can feel I won an internet discussion. I'd love to but I agree with BruceVC. As an art form, games are fairly young. the same discussions were had over film in the first part of the last century. They were considered to be an entertainment form for the common masses, not on par with drama or literature. And to be fair, many of the films that came out were not very artful. But like with ANY art form, you have both pulp and art. Games are in their adolescence, I think. and beginning to grow up as an art form. You see many games being developed or released with something to say. I think anyone who has played Journey would consider it art, arguably games like spec-ops the line, which is very critical of society, are to be considered art as well. Art reflects society. And sure like in movies, you have your summer blockbusters, your Sharknados and Machetes. In the games industry, I see those coming from the big publishers, like EA and Ubisoft, or Activision-Blizzard. Still with all the crap that comes out of hollywood every year (and mostly, it is crap) you still have beautiful films respected as art. No-one these days would argue that film isn't art. But, and especially with crowdfunding available, games are about to mature as an art form. I believe it soon won't be a discussion any more. That's not to say you'll lose the pulp. You'll still keep your CODs and Battlefields, and that's fine too.

you have to use abstraction somewhere. You'll just have to accept that you can make daggers but not bows because you choose daggers but not bows. You can select bows on level up, or, if you have a ranged character, maybe you should have chosen bows in the first place.

Long haired brunette, green eyes, petite (like a gymnast), olive skin, pretty. Reminds you somewhat of Lidda from DnD. Oh you mean actual character portraits and not personal fetishes? Oh, you do whatever you want then.

yes

yes, though I wouldn't differentiate skill levels between weapons, I'd just let you select more weapons (or armour) to be as good as crafting as anything else you could craft.

I'd much rather that your crafting skill determines what and how much you can attempt. For every two points in crafting skill you can pick one from the list: knives, daggers, staves, short swords, long swords, pikes, wands, staffs, hammers, axes, etc etc. light armour, medium armour, heavy armour, shield, etc. Ring, amulet, etc. firearms would be on this list, but might cost more. Which would unlock crafting for that item. Then for every (arbitrary) 4 points in your crafting skill, for each item, you get to unlock one mod. You could also unlock mods through gameplay. they could involve: (some would cost more) bleeding, shock, daze, knockdown, sharpness, penetration, poison, weakness, vampirism, stamina drain, ability drain, +speed on wearer, + defence on wearer, +attribute or skill on wearer etc. etc. Some of these mods would have several levels. Some of those could be unlocked by paying skillpoints into them, some through gameplay, some may unlock if you have other skills. (like poison unlocking if you have a high medicine score, for instance) The materials you use get to determine how many mods an item can have. With better materials being capable of holding more mods. lastly, high skill in crafting allows you to use one more mod than allowed in crafting normally. -- Example time So, let's say I've got a wizard with a penchant for crafting. He's got 8 skillpoints in crafting. He's selected Staffs, wands, rings, and bracers for 4x2=8 skillpoints. He wants to craft a powerful Staff. Since he's got 8 skillpoints he has unlocked two mods for staffs: +defence on wearer and penetration. Shock is a standard unlock for staffs, and because he's got skill levels in acrobatics he's also unlocked +2 defence(reflex) He's picked a rarefied timber for his staff, one capable of holding 3 mods, but his skill level is not high enough to fill them all. He can either pick 2 mods and succeed, or pick the 3 mods, pass a skillcheck which will roll for success. He chooses to take the risk, knowing he's often a preferred target, he picks +defence on wearer twice, and picks +2 defence reflex to boot. The skillcheck passes and his staff is created, using up the rarefied timber. He names the staff and starts using it. Later during the game, he finds the staff doesn't fit his playstyle, so he tries to craft a new weapon better suited for his pleasures. He's got two options 1. get the materials for a new item 2. modify his old favourite. He picks the second option. Since he's grown as a character, he's now got 12 skillpoints in crafting, having added pistols to the list. He can now freely change the three mods on his weapon, without risk of failure. During his levelling he's also learned to enchant, giving access to a different set of modifiers on any weapon. But this is done separately from crafting. He keeps the +defence option, because he still feels a bit weakly, but having unlocked poison eagerly adds it in place of one of the defence boosts, and adds penetration in place of the other. His staff now has a 10% chance to cause poison, and ignores 2 points of armour. after fiddling around, he's not satisfied, instead changes up the last defence bonus to add another poison mod, the staff now has 2x10%chance to cause poison, and ignores the first 2 points of armour. After this, with the limit of three mods the rarefied timber gives him, he's yet unhappy about the power of his weapon, and wishes to enchant it. his enchanting skill is fairly decent, but the weapon he wishes to enchant already has 3 mods on it, which increases the cost of enchanting. He's got enough skill for three enchantments, but can only afford to add one based on the heavy cost. He decides to add duration effect increase, which causes any effect the weapon causes to have increased duration. instead of 5 seconds of poison, poison effects now last 7 seconds. If the staff had different duration effects, those would have been affected as well. -- This is how I imagine crafting could lead to highly personalised items, which could grow with you over time. Limiting the choices for the mods to be unlocked lets the player focus on what would suit his or her playstyle, and allows for some replayability as you can choose differently in different playthroughs. People with high levels in crafting could create very powerful combinations, but would still be limited by the choices they made earlier. No crafter could create all weapons, with all mods, all at maximum levels. Yet all crafters would early on be able to build something which suited them personally. Any crafter making an early mistake can overcome it fairly quickly by levelling up their skill. And I imagine it would be rewarding to have unlocked so many mods for a weapon throughout the game, not just from levelling your crafting skill, but also from levelling other skills and completing content with unlocks as reward. anyway, that's what happens when I go off on a tangent.

Either way I hope there's a toggle in the difficulty settings, because I haven't decided yet if I want to play expert mode, but I do want hidden skill checks for my game.

On the subject of helmets, what about scary looking ones like the samurai demon masks/helmets?

This sounds really cool for those like me who enjoy the role-playing elements of RPG's. I wonder if there is a risk of character stereotyping, especially if the game treats your responses differently than you would. But since you mentioned that outside of expert mode you're informed, I don't think we've got much to worry about. Cool!

Cool video! I always enjoy hearing Chris Avellone speak, maybe he can do an Q&A on these forums some time

Yeah I hate to break it to you Hassat, but you have to be more careful with your soldiers in Xcom. Finish it on normal and you can use it in your argument.

hmm, as long as your system doesn't kill your creative ideas. If everything has to follow a strict process or ruleset, aren't you worried that you would end up settling for mediocrity because you wouldn't spend more time than is allotted on it?

This thread can use some old school electronic

After having seen the programme, I ha some comments on it. It seems the organisation I support [population matters] did as well:

I'd be OK with a delay if it's required, tbh. But we'll see how it goes.

not for us europeans, we have to wait till friday. Goddamn localisation to hell!

I love Robert Rodriguez's films, and I was going to see Machete Kills in cinema today but they've cancelled its run in all but a few venues, and I'm not going to travel for 3 hours to get the 22.45 screening in the middle of nowhere.

I can simply not imagine that the game obsidian creates would not let you fail frequently and in horrible ways. I think there is consensus that nobody wants a game that you cannot lose.

it only works as a faraday cage if it doesn't touch you. if the metal touches the skin at any point, it no longer defends you from the electrical currents.

I actually liked what I saw here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64587-josh-sawyer-gdc-next-10-talk/page-5?do=findComment&comment=1387307 And while it may be from a different game, the idea that you could reduce gear to it's components (in this case ore) and then have that as raw material for your own constructed items. (with the mods available to you limited by your knowledge, in the example the person knows how to make masterwork and hardened edge mods on the gladius, made from steel) I think that's an interesting (if not so atypical) method of adding crafting.

Well, I like playing chess, despite the movement options and skills and abilities of each piece being pre-set, completely locked in, and with no randomization, I have yet to play the same game twice. I've been in some incredibly tense situations in chess, ones that I sometimes still managed to survive. And all that, without any randomness whatsoever.

Well, taste has to be developed, which means coming into contact with new and different things, something most Amateur DJ's won't be ready for just yet. Maybe this is more to your liking? This is my favourite classical piece, I may have already posted it in an earlier iteration of this thread, I don't know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZifjMBELgL4 There are more performances on youtube, but this one was the 4th found in a cursory search. for comparison So both have parts of the performance I don't like.

yes, I believe so, but it's not doing so well, unfortunately. I don't know what the paypal totals are, which is how I backed it, but it looks like it won't make its goal.

http://www.uitzendinggemist.net/aflevering/56551/Prinsengracht_Concert.html Sarah Chang in 2008 in a public concert in Amsterdam, still very beautiful.

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/vjpsy/til_blueeyed_people_tend_to_have_a_higher_alcohol/ there's where I originally read it. again, I can't make any claims as to the veracity of the article. "looks legit" although there's now a big "inaccurate" flair tagged to the thread, so probably not.