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centurionofprix
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Posts posted by centurionofprix
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yo ~~
It's White imperialism in black face
Smile as they keep you trapped in the rat race
Or wrapped in that place called Guantanamo Bay
... ah ****it, I can't do it.
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Just don't let him write the lyrics in any decipherable language.
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I don't think the specifics of shadowing mechanics will affect too many potential customers of PE since the game is being designed and marketed for classic RPG sensibilities in the first place. Single graphical details like this are a bit incidental.
The game does use dynamic lighting for illuminating 3D character and environmental models from what I understand, but the character shadows and the pre-rendered backgrounds don't (the latter of which, I'm sure, is exactly how the great majority of PE backers and buyers would have it).
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How will the shadows/lighting work in the final product? The environment is gorgeous, but the conflict between the apparent lighting of the scene and the way the character models are illuminated makes the latter seem out of place.
The character models only have one shadow cast from the scene's directional light. Per-character point light shadows (especially multiple point light shadows) would get computationally expensive very fast. The characters are lit using dynamic lights placed in scene, but real-time lighting is never going to perfectly match the pre-rendered lighting of the scene.
For what it's worth, I think circular shadows in no particular direction might be less jarring. The shadows being, at times, cast against the lighting of the characters' surroundings has a strikingly unnatural effect in the screenshot (though I don't know if this is less or more apparent in motion).
It looks lovely otherwise.
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How will the shadows/lighting work in the final product? The environment is gorgeous, but the conflict between the apparent lighting of the scene and the way the character models are illuminated makes the latter seem out of place.
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I don't think there is a limit as to how far PE should go if the plot calls for it. If this means crawling the utmost depths of rapacious depravity, cool. But there's also not much point in extending, just for the sake of it, beyond what the story/characters/themes call for.
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Voted NWN for the best companions because of MOTB.
PST for second best.
Then Fallout.
I like many of the NWN2 OC characters as well.
Then the BG series. For me, BG1 has better NPCs than BG2 or any other Bio game simply because there isn't enough dialogue to turn them into insufferable morons and brats; instead, there is only the (often very interesting) sketch of the character's basic personality, all the stronger for not being bungled with bad writing of the details. Likewise, my favourite characters from BG2 are ones not in the centre of the story and not so infused with latter-day Gaiderian sensibility; Nalia and Mazzy for example.
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So do you think Divine Comedy would have been deeper if Dante ploughed Beatrice?
To be fair though, Le Morte d'Arthur would have been a bit different without "The Book of Sir Tristrams de Lyons" and "Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwynevere" as would Orlando Furioso without Ruggiero and Bradamante...
I didn't want to argue that physical passion doesn't have a place in any story at all. It certainly does in some stories. But it doesn't categorically make all stories deeper. Whether PE, or any other work, would benefit from sexual relationships depends on what the themes, the story and the characters are like.
(I don't see any difference between asking for romance mechanics out of context and asking for aging or art mechanics out of context, except the fact that some people are obsessed with the particular inclusion of waifu choices. Whether any of those mechanics are relevant depends on the story - sometimes they would be an artificial, meaningless addition if only included for the sake of being included. Marlow romancing Kurtz, Kurtz's women or a fluff character would have really sucked.)
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PS:T does actually have romances, though not in the biowarian style but rather executed in good taste and with meaning for the plot and characters. It's a good example of how romance should be done - when it is a part of the particular story being told, not for the sake of having romances in the game.
Nah, Planescape didn't allow you to have that deeper interaction and connection with party members that a sexual experience provides. That was the one thing unrealistic about the game for me. The ideal Romance implementation for me is BG2 or the DA series where you can court Morrigan and Isabela
So do you think Divine Comedy would have been deeper if Dante ploughed Beatrice?
But seriously folks. Taking Planescape as an example,
sex with Grace would not have made for deeper interaction because having her spread her legs for the Nameless One would have compromised the idea of the character for the sake of satisfying horny players.
Instead, her hopeless vow at the end to spend an eternity searching for TNO was brilliantly done. It's romantic, and it's as deep as you can possibly get, and it works as a natural extension of what the character is like.
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PS:T does actually have romances, though not in the biowarian style but rather executed in good taste and with meaning for the plot and characters. It's a good example of how romance should be done - when it is a part of the particular story being told, not for the sake of having romances in the game.
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From Vampire: Redemption
Count Orsi and the neverending decadent monologue. I don't know if they made him so long-winded on purpose, but the guy goes on and on and it's absolutely hilarious. Plus, what a bastard.
The letters from the council of voivodes and Libussa the Defiled.
From Vampire: Bloodlines
The fragments of Alistair Grout's decline on the recordings in his mansion.
Jezebel and the rest of the plague-bearers. Jeannette, Theresa, the embittered ex-supermodel Nosferatu - hordes of wonderful minor characters.
Sebastian LaCroix. Not so minor, but fabulously written and acted. He makes such a human, yet perfectly despicable, worm overlord.
From NWN2
Amie was likeable. I was actually quite gutted emotionally to have her die on me - ditto for Sandhra.
From MOTB
The souls you could view at the Thay academy, and the devils in the basement. Funny, tragic, weird.
I get the feeling there were a number of such characters in MOTB that I forget. The guys in the furnace.
Oh yeah, and the crones most of all.
I liked that evil cleric in BG who raised zombies like they were his family.
Bassilus definitely. That was a fabulous little encounter, even if the skeleton of the quest could've been more fleshed out.
Prism and Greywolf too. And Brage. These atmospheric little vignettes were the very best.
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i see kindergarten here.
The piont of this conversation is that there are some players that want romances (from poll we know that most of them) and some people that don't. Some of them have their reasons some only trolls. But the most people that are responding are people who don't want them .... weird.
In general the point is that most "people that don't want romance" are trolling by useing "biowere inspired" images....
Or threadstarter Zalpha here referencing Aerie as an example of a good romance. At least to this particular discussion, Biowarian images are relevant.
But in my opinion this type of actions are simle acts of shallow minds and irracional fear. becouse :
1. obs is makeing game not bio
True, but some people (see starter of this thread) want them to make romances in a biowarian style, and simply for the sake of having romances because "most" players want romances, as opposed to romance being included because, and only if, it works as a relevant extension of the story and themes. I don't think anybody would object to the latter case, but it also means that romance isn't necessarily included.
2. this is not aa+ graphics game so bio-sexscene-based-something-like-romance is imposible.
Of course it isn't. See romance novels. See mods for IE games. The horrible, horrible Aerie romance referenced in the original post was also from an IE game without graphical sex scenes.
The issue with Bioware romances isn't merely that they supposedly revolve around sex scenes, or whether these are represented graphically, in text or in a fade to black. Or even the bizarre psychiatrist-patient power dynamics. It's that they are included for the sake of having a dating sim aspect to the game, with no relevance to the overall story and with no depth or meaning to justify their inclusion. They're horrible and actively make the characters worse.
secondly most of you still don't get this... this isint about adding dateing sim intu PE becouse even if this is all about in this level of graphics is imposible.
The only reason for romances and relationships is for narrative/wrthing side not visual efectish ... soo you don't see anyting you only read about it.
So people that are mostly for eroge or daiting sim will be not interested in those kind of things.
Nonsense, people love romance novels and romance mods for IE games precisely for the dating sim aspect. (I do too, sometimes, but I see no inherent reason why this should be included in PE to the exclusion of some other type of content. Perhaps it'll make sense given what Obsidian is trying to do with PE, rather than just for the sake of having a dating sim aspect, in which case I guess they'll put some tasteful romance in there, as they did with MOTB.)
I don't think the 10 seconds of creepy plastic dolls writhing against each other in slow-motion are the reason Bioware fans like the romances.
The real reason abot adding writhing/ narrativ romances for PE it's becouse it's simply realistic the same as talking, hate, frinship etc.
And for me cutting then 100% out is like cutting talking or other things that go beyound sword swinging.
True, and many of these things are necessarily cut out from RPGs. Say, aging or art or philosophy, all of which, like love, can have absolute significance for human life. The crucial issue is whether this particular story needs to include any of these, and which ones. Insisting out of context that the game should necessarily have aging mechanics or art mechanics or romance mechanics seem to me to be quite the same thing. Obviously PE has no need of art mechanics unless these are relevant to the vision of the game.
If we apply logic from most people that don't want romances but innsted we use hate or talking in general is what we get.*snip*
This part struck me as simply nonsensical.
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I'm disappointed, not just in the loss of durability but also in the kneejerk reaction of the community and how, when we were given the opportunity for a game to innovate and take risks because of freedom from publishers instead was shouted and screamed into not doing anything new, proving the publishers right that we don't want anything new or different really.
This wasn't something new or innovative. It wasn't some "risky" stroke of maverick genius, just a choice of whether to include a common (also to publisher-funded games) mechanic to deal with the problem of late-game economy. Nor does it, for whatever that would signify, have anything to do with publishers being right (?!).
Congratulations you have managed to get rid of the mako before it even got into the game,
Good riddance; the game would obviously have been better off with a different mechanic, or a different implementation of the original (and not planet scanning either...). You're seriously using Mako exploration as an example of how the designers should stick to any idea that comes up?
god forbid they try anything different hell many of you want to get rid of the guns because its not 'fantasy', the publishers were right all along...
Sure, but guns are part of the setting and the vision of the game, and Obsidian wouldn't -didn't!- get rid of them merely due to some shrill voices on the forums, whereas there were good reasons for doing away with durability (which wasn't even a central mechanic to the game, just a device to fix a minor problem of ecomony).
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Ah I may be just a bitter old man, but i've seen twenty years of feature stripping and streamlining to the point that there is no game, just a cinematic experience being shown to you rather than an interactive game to participate in. Therefore I always prefer that features should be retained and improved, rather than jettisoned arbitrarily. However I could get over the MMO aping combat mechanics without campaigning for their change, so i'll do the same with my equipment now being impervious to all harm.
I'm sure Obsidian will still make a good game.
Not exactly arbitrarily in this case, given that there was a reason for doing away with it, and given that Sawyer wasn't so confident in the mechanic himself. The original IE games didn't have durability mechanics, so it's not really even a case of feature stripping from some prior point - if anything, Eternity seems to be adding quite a bit of complexity onto the IE template. Just not this particular idea, which didn't seem to work very well.
There is one thing that makes me nervous, and that's the sequence of events here:- devs give a short snippet of information about a mechanic in the game
- a relatively small number of people (relatively small compared to number of backers, forum members and active posters) start to whine and bitch
- Josh says "I thought you would like this feature/ what would you like instead (to spend your money on)?"
- feature is removed
The specifics behind this decision are everyone's guess.
Maybe it wasn't so much about the number of people, or the whining and bitching, but rather that there were good reasons for getting rid of the mechanic.
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Who in their right mind listens to the posters on the Codex in the first place?
Well, nutcases aside, some of them know what they are talking about. While my tastes don't align with the most "hurdcure" of them, even when i disagree i can see where they come from.
Also, reasons aside, they have excelend taste in games judging from their top 10 list...
Codex sucks
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Lovely. It's interesting how the design process on PE has been checked by feedback, as opposed to less transparent traditional development. Each of the changes have, I think, been for the better. (not to overstate the weight of fan feedback, especially as it wasn't a resolute choice to include the durability system in the first place, but this change in particular was a very good thing)
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Aw man, no. I don't understand these trivial LARP mechanics, certainly not in an IE-style game. The originals were remarkably to-the-point.
(which probably sounds whinier than intended. Who cares really. I still don't get why they would bother to include such a system, though, and bonuses for eating certain foods seem silly.)
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And what about a separate budget for the stronghold, if accumulation of money is what item degradation is supposed to fix? Actually, why shouldn't people who don't spend on the stronghold have more money for other things?
(the most crucially, why does this have to be fixed with an intrusive gameplay mechanic? - but that was already brought up)
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The reason is because there are a lot of .. uninformed players who will take crafting in multiple companions because they don't understand or didn't read the mechanics. This is something that really bothers Josh Sawyer as a designer, and the proposed relation of the crafting skill to item degradation rate is one way of making such a choice not a bad one and giving more characters reason to take the skill.
Good intention and not a bad way of lessening the impact of suboptimal skill choices, however I think it could be done in a way where Item degradation doesn't have to be a part of the game.
I don't think elaborate mechanical constuctions are a better way of solving this than simply explaining the fact very clearly at character creation. And in any case, there are tons of possible bad choices at character creation, and not all of these should be accommodated by creating bizarre gameplay mechanics. Figuring out an effective character is of course part of the challenge in RPGs.
Uhm... I think the more obvious, practical reason is that otherwise, every party will have exactly that one skill monkey with a high crafting skill and nothing else. It's basically like saying "select one of your companions at the start who will receive less skill points than everyone else".
Are there no non-combat skills for the others to take/specialize in? What's wrong with having a character focused, at least outside of combat, on smithing (which, if I'm reading it right, one will probably have anyway for crafting rather than for maintenance)?
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Why can't the one dude/dudette with crafting skills take care of the entire group's equipment on a daily basis, rather than everyone needing to look after their own stuff? Shouldn't the degree of wear on weapons be tied to the skill of the wielder rather than their crafting skill, especially if there is someone already in the group who knows crafting? This system makes less sense the more I think of it from the point of view of in-world logic, which isn't even to mention the gameplay annoyance.
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To elaborate on the previous post, I don't think the design problem (?) of money accumulation should be solved by making the player deal with an intrusive and annoying mechanic. The former problem at least doesn't constantly intrude upon gameplay, and never in the active manner of item repair.
(I did like the BG1 way of doing it, even if it was too easily solved due to the equipment system by carrying spares, since it was both tied to the story and it didn't present itself as a constant annoyance but rather as an occasional and sometimes terribly significant breakage)
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The inclusion of such mechanics strikes me as a waste of effort on everyone's part.
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For example, you might have a sword with high accuracy and a Flaming Sword recipe that adds fire damage to any sword.
PLEASE DON'T trivialize the existing items/lore by allowing the player's crafting efforts to improve upon or surpass the best items to be found in the game, esp. if these items have legendary origins. Having a generic adventurer improve an eldritch creation from the beginning of time by slapping some random enchantment of his choice on it just ruins the weight of its discovery and its role in the setting unless this is to restore the weapon to its former glory.
If there was a specific thing one had to do, a ritual sacrifice of souls or combination of crafting materials to awaken such a weapon to its full strength after aeons of neglect leaking out its power or forgetting its hunger in the corner of some crypt without a living soul about, that would be neat.
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Nobody ever asked for it, but here's an equally crude version of the layout with portraits twice the size; it still takes less space than either of the originals, but there's plenty of room for buttons (which also are close at hand to the portraits) and the expandable log.
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writh a poem you know you will not find in EP.. here is mine
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by centurionofprix
Oh man, drunken political freestyle. Embarrassing!