Sacred_Path

1. Few things would be more important than food. 2. There can be choices about food - do you actively kill monsters/ animals and eat them, do you use a character's skill (like setting snares) to simulate hunting, or do you fight humanoid enemies to buy food with their gold? that is a primitive food mechanic, one that I'm not averse to. Sadly you don't even have that usually

So eating can't be in the game because it's more mundane than sex or talking to other people? Stay away from my stash, your stuff is better than mine.

# then why not make it one? I'm generally interested in why romance is preferrable to food that would imply that there is a food mechanic in the game. If no gold is subtracted from my party's bag than they obviously didn't buy any food. Nice, then why not simulate hunting? Does your wizard really catch deer with his little dagger? How come no arrows are used up in your quivers? I also think there will be enough delicious damsels frolicking about in the cities, so why not simply assume that your character gets some?

I can't understand this arbitrarity. If you allow for the fact that your character has enough experience in his world to take care of his physical needs, why don't you just guess that he also knows how to satisfy his emotional needs? Thanks, but that means there's more reason to have food in the game than romance, u know? When you hit a monster with a sword, it dies. Not much variation in the outcome there either. Still it's in the game Absolutely. If I could romance a pie [and eat it], we'd all be happy and I'd buy 10 copies of this game.

I disagree. Unless you think using sarcasm is a sign of maturity (I'm p. sure teens can pull that off generally). Morte was a gimmicky character like Bender. Due to their peculiar condition hey're both not or pretend to be not affected by things that would deeply affect others, so they can be entirely blasé about them. They're also both mediums or spokepersons for the writers. Thirdly, they're supposed to offer comic relief. The one thing that saved Morte from being just a nuisance was that he was using 'slang' that had been created for a fantasy game. In most cases where I've seen dialogue like your example I suspected it was at least in some ways the writer's understanding (and even mockery) of the fact that with the limited lines you usually have in a CRPG, it's very hard to create dialogue that is on the one hand well-tempered and realistic, and OTOH affects the player emotionally. Especially in an isometric 2D game where you have no body language to speak of. At least for the IE games, I also can't remember that I've seen such weird dialogue so regularly that it gave the impression that this was the norm in this gameworld.

I'd like someone who supports romance in games argue against a food mechanic. Anyone?

Erm no, I didn't. I was generally talking about over-the-top emotional dialogue, like your eample. puh-lease, do you mean to tell me you actually liked Morte's dialogue, but not the sobbing, weirdly emotional housewife? They're both not examples of what I'd conceive as realistic or well-tempered. Morte was entirely a gimmicky comic character (I just didn't mind because he was a floating skull and that made it clear from the outset what his role was).

I don't think that if you're against handling certain things like they were done in IE (like stealth) makes you any less of a backer.

Still, they paid you for the job. It's not like you just ended up on that caravan.

Don't make the player faster than most monsters, that should take care of most kiting. On higher difficulties, make sure that slow melee monsters are often accompanied by enemies with ranged attacks/ spells.

Yes, it's all about the presentation. Which is probably why rape is not usually portrayed in CRPGs, there are so many wrong notes you could hit there. [The other reason is that RPGs tend to be egalitarian and you'd need some female-on-male rape just because] This is interesting. Will people be happy to roleplay without a clear "moral compass"? Would you really just walk away from content, missing out on playtime, XP and gold? Will people miss the hero and villain routes, because they give you clear objectives and a pat on the head (alignment/ reputation)? Related to the question above, would people miss clear, "hysterical" NPCs if they're presented with more subtle dialogue? After all, it has to make an impact on you (or at least try to). Morte basically only had over the top, cheesy dialogue, but people mostly loved him.

But then, cutscenes often show mimics and gestures that don't totally relate to what's being said. And then you have to think of the semi-Aspergers (like me)

Reminds me of that one time where I romanced Arie. I just kept on doing it to see exactly how masochistic I am.

A few things that irritate me: - Abundant material wealth w/o any explanation. Village blacksmiths swimming in swords, gold everywhere. - Lack of citizens in cities. If for some reason you don't want to put many (filler) NPCs in one place, make it a town, not a sprawling city. - Unexplained (lack of) buildings. Cities that have no walls, or buildings that are far larger than any medieval couterparts (it's teh magic I know) - Thriving communities, again without walls or many guards, when the entire countryside is crawling with monsters.

That's the kind of thing I expect to see, too - creating the "grey" by having the player sway between "white" and "black". What I'm wondering about is what consequences they will come up with that really affect the player - without an alignment meter that satisfyingly (somewhat) drops or rises, will the consequences of such actions ever matter to anyone but you?

I second that (when I said it's neat and easy to tack this onto some dialogue I meant it's neat for the developers, not the players). What also bothers me is how the player usually stands outside of all these issues - they're never discriminated against, and they're never caught up in any devious capitalist mechanics that eat up all their gold.

In Divine Divinity, you had two skills that increased your sight. In PE, maybe make it a feat/ perk.

It's been made known that PE will explore MADSHURE themes. We're still left to guess as to how that pans out. I think that today, that inevitably means romances. I just hope that they will be written in such a mature manner and with such relevance for gameplay that they are more than the usual nuisance. Just as inevitable are comments about social issues like racism, sexism or class struggles. What is nice about these is that they can be injected into dialogue without much effort and give it a hint of maturity and relevance. I'd also expect some light philosophical dialogues as in PS:T. I'm not sure wether that's a good thing yet. What I'd personally like to see is more internal consistency of the world, like a somewhat believable economy. What do you expect to see, and what makes you feel like you're not playing a game that was made for kids?

It would be cool if the areas would be a little different during the night, not significantly safer/ more dangerous. I'm all for strongly limiting your sight during the night though, and if that makes fighting more dangerous, so be it. Did your characters infravision or lack thereof ever make a difference in BG? I never noticed, it was definitely not more difficult to navigate or fight at night.

Depends entirely on the game. There can still be fixed enemies/ bosses, and the scaling can allow for some difference in level (both are true in Wiz8). granted. Wait - do you mean these bandits didn't have the stats and skills to explain their gear plausibly? Were they too easy to kill still? If yes, that's more of an example of scaling done badly. If not, there's nothing implausible about them having this equipment. If you haven't read a lot of posts on level scaling with exactly this statement, then you haven't read a lot of posts on level scaling. Personally I'm not decided on the matter btw, level scaling can be useful if done right but there are drawbacks.

Speaking of banishment... Maybe make at least one city not so easy to enter/ re-enter. I remember being so baffled when (without reading the tutorial) I walked up to the first town's gates in U7: Serpent Isle and wasn't allowed in (hey I was 13). I had expected the game world to be as lenient as in U7/1. Also Darklands. I also remember how many were commenting on how lame it was to get into Barcelona in Lionheart (no matter what you said to the guard the gate always opens). Don't make the world the gamer's oyster. This would be especially cool if getting into a city was a really pressing concern (because camping outside is v. dangerous, for example). It could be something as simple as charging the player to get into the city.

Don't make one of the cities redundant, plz. Not like hub 2 replaces hub 1 at some point in the game and there's no reason to ever return to 1.

Companions should abide by the same rules that characters from the Adventurer's Hall go by. They shouldn't have weirdly high skills or attributes, and no shpeshul personal equipment (like Edwin's Amulet in BG2). Don't punish the player for creating his own party.

The game should be designed in a way that accomodates no-reload play more. For instance, if you have only very small chances of stealing something, and if failure means your entire game goes to hell (because of guards spawning that kill you), the only option in a no reload game is to avoid stealing altogether.

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