SophosTheWise

Couldn't get more generic than this xD Thanks I guess, Heaven forbid someone doesn't have as great and all knowing taste in writing as you do. I thought this was a discussion of writers we'd like to see contribute not a "lets bash those that don't read what we read". The writers I recommended have written many great adventures and have told some wonderful stories, obscure does not always mean better. These writers became well known because they have a knack for painting a picture with words, there was a time when only a few people had heard of them, I guess then they would have met your criteria for being acceptable. Woah, take it easy dude. Also: why on earth would I care more for them if they were not famous?

I generally speaking do like darker literature(loved the road), Me too, though I also absolutely appreciate the more lighthearted attempts - like the ones I mentioned (and of course Douglas Adams, how could I forget that one? Edit: Goddamn, another one: Oscar Wilde) That wasn't all too serious, it was intended to be a bit tongue in cheek Not what I meant at all. I was referring to the so-called cultural elite that has been established in many feuilletons and intellectual circles who have a dogma that says only "serious" stuff is good. I think that's the conservative wing of culture while the newer artists are more open and more progressive in those ways. But those old "it's only good if it's angsty!"-elitists are just pretentious snobs in their ivory tower. Definitely not. But forced seriousness is as bad as forced humour. It should just come naturally, so I think we agree here. I just noted that 3 out of 5 authors you've mentioned share more or less the same cultural background because I think that cultural background is extremely important when it comes to writing, especially eastern European and Northern European authors share that "grim" worldview. So you can't really use one style of writing as an example for whole literature. I could also take Kater Murr und Kringler by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Don Quijote by Cervantes, Das Leben eines Taugenichts by von Eichendorff as examples for "funny" and satirical writing, but that would also give a wrong impression of literature as a whole. Have you read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett? It's an incredibly philosophical and deep yet screamingly hilarious novel that kind of question the whole concept of Gods and religion in general, with "The Great God Om"as an extremely funny example. Gods can be funny too if written right Edit 2: You can also break our religions down to kind of silly bits. Christianity, after all, has an omnipotent space-zombie. If there are enough serious believers for a religion, the religion itself doesn't need to feel silly. This is directly connected to the aforementioned Great God Om from Small Gods.

Couldn't get more generic than this xD

I'm gonna name more than one. Yes. **** the system! Jack Kerouac: Travelling is bland for most of the RPGs I've played. Make travelling interesting with cool people to meet, interesting discussions - like Kerouac did with On the Road. Terry Pratchett: For the not-so-dead-serious-parts of the game. David Eddings: Because he made really engaging characters. Neil Gaiman: His takes at absurd situations are simply awesome.

Yes, yes a thousand times yes. I can't take the over-seriousness anymore. Even though I seldom agree with Dream, I agree with him/her here. Art doesn't always have to be angsty to be good. Yeah, there are many other great authors such as Mark Twain, Christian Morgenstern, Ernst Jandl, Allen Ginsberg and so on absolutely threw in "fun" because "fun" is not always stupid. Fun - well crafted, witty jokes absolutely have a right to exist. There are different approaches to crafting a great story and by dismissing humour as bad, you're just enabling a bunch of pretentious snobs that are still stuck in the age of scholasticism. You know, I absolutely love classic literature from Homer over Shakespeare to Goethe, but I also see the merit of Terry Pratchett's novels which are in NO way unintelligent. By the way you chose Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi - all of which share the same cultural "darkness", so it's not especially surprising that they are absolutely serious. And Camus basically had to take himself serious (and overall, imo, he took himself TOO serious, as did all existentialist, but that's a different discussion there ) because some philosophers already frowned on him for writing novels. Also there are many games with a good kind of humour in it. I didn't like the Borderlands meme explosion, but for example I liked the absurd humour of claptrap. I agree with you - I like humour that is inherent to the world and doesn't necessarily break the fourth wall if that isn't a general concept of the game. Not because it breaks immersion but because I generally feel that it doesn't fit. Example Divine Divinity: Two skeletons in the first dungeon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6zb8HFfLj0 Edit: Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night :D

Depends what jurisdiction you're in. Anyhow, it's still theft. No it's not. If at all, it's a new kind of crime called unlawful copying. You are not stealing anything, because stealing implies something isn't there after you take it. Also Piracy does not withdraw you of the ability to use your software.

This is not going to happen, as long as the current copyright laws and intellectual property laws exist. We could just flip the whole situation: Intellectual Property is theft from the Public Domain. What about that? Also, DRM is doing the exact opposite: it's driving away normal users and creates more pirates. Funny enough, one could add: as long as piracy exists, the offers are simply not good enough.

I don't think Obsidian is my friend or anything like that. I'm not supporting Obsidian because I love them. I'm supporting them because I benefit from it as they do. There is a contract between the backers of the game and the developers. We paid them; they promised to make a game. Until they break that bond of trust, there's no reason for me to act tactlessly and without consideration for the other party. Acting suspiciously to every action that they make would be to surrender to some weird paranoia. I'm not suggesting that we should be suspicious, I'm simply implying that this contract is all there is. We paid money and have fulfilled our contract, now Obsidian makes a game. That's it, that's all there is. So you basically don't have to act at all because you've already done your part. I think discussions on this topics are not going to help as long as they focus on premises upon which not everybody agrees. Discussions about piracy should be handled entirely different - by grabbing the topic by its roots and talking about sharing in general, about economic mechanics, about ethics and such, about alternative ways of enforcing a "copy right" and so on. IThe point where we disagree is that I do not think that pirates suck. I think piracy is a constructed problem to artificially maximize capital and not a problem that is doing any real damage. But I think we should leave it at that, it's getting off topic If this game does not sell any copies, the contract means that we do not get an expansion pack. Sales only come if the game isn't completely and utterly pirated. Pirates are actively taking funding away from myour expansion. No they are not taking away anything. I think it's preposterous to generalize pirating as a "loss of revenue" because that constructed revenue doesn't even exist virtually. Just to use an example. If there is a free or cheaper alternative to Project Eternity about which I feel the same way - does buying this instead of Project Eternity also take away revenue? Or does the dev of the cheaper/free game take away the revenue of Obsidian by creating an alternative? No they don't. As much as I'm not taking away any revenue of things I wouldn't have bought in the first place by instead downloading it.

I don't think Obsidian is my friend or anything like that. I'm not supporting Obsidian because I love them. I'm supporting them because I benefit from it as they do. There is a contract between the backers of the game and the developers. We paid them; they promised to make a game. Until they break that bond of trust, there's no reason for me to act tactlessly and without consideration for the other party. Acting suspiciously to every action that they make would be to surrender to some weird paranoia. I'm not suggesting that we should be suspicious, I'm simply implying that this contract is all there is. We paid money and have fulfilled our contract, now Obsidian makes a game. That's it, that's all there is. So you basically don't have to act at all because you've already done your part. I think discussions on this topics are not going to help as long as they focus on premises upon which not everybody agrees. Discussions about piracy should be handled entirely different - by grabbing the topic by its roots and talking about sharing in general, about economic mechanics, about ethics and such, about alternative ways of enforcing a "copy right" and so on. IThe point where we disagree is that I do not think that pirates suck. I think piracy is a constructed problem to artificially maximize capital and not a problem that is doing any real damage. But I think we should leave it at that, it's getting off topic

Indeed. Although I will say a few things. I'm a pirate, I support the pirate party of my country (where pirating is mostly legal). I think copyright laws are a mess and the whole concept of intellectual property is inherently wrong. I'm not in any way saying I'm a valiant defender of freedom but I'm not going to say that I just do it for my own good either. This goes out to you OP, one can be anti-DRM and pro-pirate without being a hurrdurriwantmywarez1!1-dude. One can be pro-pirate also because one thinks that the proposed economic dynamics are just a load of absurd, made-up crap to maximize profits. I don't want to start a flame war, I just wanted to clarify that there is more to the piracy-debate than OP implies with his post. And what I find baffling, especially as a journalism and corporate communications student (and maybe because I'm also a bit of a cynic sometimes) is the fact that you seem to think that developers like Obsidian are your friends, altruistic knights in shining armour that pay their respects to the gamers. As much as I'd like that to be true and as much as I like Obsidian myself, you're just romanticizing. Obsidian is still a business with an interest in profits and not some sort of philanthropist organization that creates a game out of idealism. PE is very clever marketed, Obsidian does a hell of a job in branding themselves and they clearly know how to appeal to their targeted audience. To me, it just seems a little bit illusory to talk about a bond or relationship between "us" and Obsidian. To be clear: I'm not suggesting Obsidian isn't an authentic team, I just think everyone should treat things attached to emotions (and we're talking powerful emotions like nostalgia here) with caution.

Well, frankly no recent launch of a game was without problems. Dragon Age had delivery problems (at least in my country), same for Two Worlds 2. World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 and Age of Conan had bad launchs, not to speak of Diablo 3... The same will happen to Project Eternity.

I wonder about the concept of saints, since I think they're a lot more interesting than Gods usually. Most of the time Gods just stand for certain, very general things, while Saints exist for anything ridiculous :D

To be honest, I wouldn't have expected it either. They got pretty hard when that baldursgate.com site and countdown appeared but the news about an Enhanced Edition wasn't THAT big because everyone was rooting for something bigger. Based on that I would've thought that the EE would just appear and disappear again.

I'd love the concept of belief that "creates" gods, like in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather and the O God of Hangovers! :D

Still not playing because the Beamdog website is slammed. I should go back to Divine Divinity.

Even though "optional" things are a real challenge. For example difficulty and ironman mode. Games have to be design to work in both way there. And they don't always do. Example: Hitman: Absolution. Extremely hard on expert but a cakewalk on easy. The level design there is so flawed that the only choice they had to make the game "harder" is to limit the player's abilities (limit Instinct for example) and put more guards in it. For me that's cheap difficulty. If you tone down that cheap difficulty there is just NO challenge at all, because you can walk through everywhere. You could do that in Blood Money as well, but Blood Money had a completely different level design which gave you challenges other than "hide somewhere or walk through" Absolution on expert-purist is a pain in the ass and on easy it's just not a game. Compare that to Dark Souls or Demon's Souls, which is hard but extremely rewarding. I'd rather have one difficulty setting and play the game like it was meant to play than to agree to compromises in level design which may just create many flaws. =/

I think thinking outside the box would help Project Eternity a big deal. Most RPGs I've played use the same orchestral sound with an adventurous/epic feeling. While I mostly like that, there are also a few good examples of "something different" like the Soundtrack of Divine Divinity by Kirill Pokrovsky, Dark Souls by Motoi Sakaruba or Risen by Kai Rosenkranz. They all tried something and created a very "different" and "otherworldly" atmosphere.

Well hello, lead designer from Silent Hill 2.

Ok I guess my problem is I always come into these threads thinking we are talking about BIS and Obsidian games. So I get confused. You are bored with the way other people's RPGs have worked in the past? Great but why would Obsidian make somebody else's games? Is that even remotely in the cards? Do you have issues with how Obsidian games have worked in the past? Because it sure seems like their games do what you are saying. I know, I simply wanted to try to answer the question you posed about why people would prefer gray morality

The very first post of that thread started off by saying how certain armor designs (not even examples of other games) are superior (not preferable to the op; straight up superior) to the choices made by the devs of GW2 and Tera. That's exactly what you railed against the op of this thread for doing. No, we did not. Wow, another rabulism. I'm impressed.

I wouldn't say people prefer it because it seems more mature or realistic, but because it simply makes the game better for them. Some people are just bored with the way RPGs worked in the past. We all have slain evil overlords countless of times as a saviour of light - having grey morals is, in my opinion, more of a challenge. A simple good/evil-scheme makes it very easy to roleplay your character, while gray areas also creates some meta-gaming, where you reflect on your own values not just your characters values. The Witcher is a stellar example of that, where not every knight in shining armour truly is a knight in shining armor. Sure, it's more realistic, but people don't prefer it because of "it's more realistic" but simply because they can relate to it better, because similar stuff happens in all of our lives, and I think we can safely agree that life is everything but black and white. Also a good example is Inquisitor. I remember a discussion on the GOG forums, where some people declined to play Inquisitor, because they didn't want to make choices that may lead to torturing people, others absolutely threw themselves into the role of an inquisitor on some people just tried to avoid it. That's a pretty cool reaction if you ask me, because Inquisitor never leaned towards "You're a bad person if you do this!" - it was more of a "Well, yeah, decide yourself" and that's where the gray area and the questioning of your own morals starts. In what situation would you give in and use torturing? Why? Why not? In what cases is torturing really necessary or a viable option? In every other game, torturing is just an evil-by-default-action that kind of patronizes the player behind it. He can be good and evil - he simply has to live with the consequences of that definition. Someone else basically decides for you. I hope that is more or less coherent. Still difficult to write and think in a foreign language Even though that would still be some sort of reward, because "content" seems to be a basic reward. That's why we always risk our death for really silly tasks and that's why we do every little quest in a game. It's because we have content that we want to play and that's also why being evil doesn't work as good as being good in my opinion. Being evil just provides more money and power when being good gives you more content, more story, more fun to play. I realized that when I was playing Fable 1 some years ago. I realized through stealing everything around me I get more powerful but that makes most tasks easier and therefore the game less challenging and less fun to play.

Replying to a thread that asks "what kind of armour would you like to see in PE?" is not the same as creating a thread wanting to teach experienced developers what to do. Besides: I'm baffled by the fact that you still can't let this go. Different people with different preferences exist. Not accepting that is just juvenile Oh I was all about accepting everyone's preferences if you'd remember; it's you who wanted the whole game to be exactly and only as you liked it. Also, I did let it go seeing as I left that little circle jerk to the half dozen or so of you to enjoy; I just can't abide hypocrites so I felt the need to point it out (you'd do well to read the first post of that thread again by the way). Oh, the rabulism. 1.) Of course I want it to be the way I like it. That's how the whole preference-thing works. Nobody in that whole thread did ever declare this forum to be a dictatorship of history fanatics that were going to decide how the game is going to look. We were sharing our views on armor design and how we would like that to be in PE. The only juvenile idiot who came back all the time to flame on everything that people advocated for in this thread was you. I mean, you weren't even constructive. I absolutely don't know what your guilt trip is all about. If you really have problems coping with other's views, I strongly suggest a psychiatrist. Or just open your own "Armor Design Plea Thread omg i want kool spikes on my giant power ranger shoulder armor" - no one is stopping you. Just stop that childish pestering. 2.) I did never ever want to give the devs any basic advice on how to make a game. I stated my preference, that's it. And, as I recall, these things are not the same, but I know, you're used to generalize things, so I don't condemn you for that. Just, please, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, stop this personal war of yours. If you really want to keep on pestering me, just PM me and don't egoistically destroy topics.

Pavises in Mount & Blade actually work?

And now, two pavises. I LOVE pavises, they're so colorful and so underappreciated. I've never seen a pavise in a game, I've only seen helpless crossbow-users....

So I should have choices that produce no emotional responses in me? How...um...compelling? 'I want a completely emotionless dry game where no themes of morality play a part' That cannot be what you are getting at but I cannot piece this one together. I think it would be better if they did it so that you can have guilty decisions, decisions which actually would make you feel something, rather than just option a,b,c which do nothing to the player. I think you guys misunderstood me. I don't want dry, unemotional decisionmaking, but I also don't want decisions that shove the guilt in my face for making a reasonable decision. I don't want a game to teach me ethics, I want a game to challenge me ethically. I just don't like these in-your-face-decisions, I'd rather have things on which I have to reflect on myself than the game solving those problems for me.