mcmanusaur

This is an obvious troll. But since it plays into our narrative about SJW's we'll totally believe it!

Certainly a lot of ****lords in here. Good job to Obsidian for handling this professionally.

cautious but not afraid, liberal but not gratuitous, profound but not presumptuous

As my second choice (since I've already given my top choice), I would pick the exact opposite: activity, agency from other sources in the game world. I would give up all the reactive "Well, aren't you an established [adventurer rank here]" lines in the world to get NPCs that actually behave as if they have ends and means of their own outside of the player's power fantasy. A world that changes dynamically regardless of my involvement is so much more interesting to me than a passive sandbox. And importantly, that's not something that can be achieved just through clever writing; I'm talking about robust systems of AI.

Not to ruin the tone of the thread, but I actually own that figurine, and boy is it quality. I'd fully recommend it to any collector of knight figurines or crusader toy enthusiast, in fact. Now that I'm at it, I have a whole collection of similar ones; clonking them together fulfills all my desires for tactical party-based combat, and I think this is why I look for other things in my cRPG's.

Voted. Also, some relevant threads.

Honestly I'm wondering what elements you consider simulation-focused because most of the games you've mentioned seem very narrative-focused on the whole to me. My initial impression is that you are distinguishing between games that are 90% narrative/10% "simulation" and those that are 80% narrative/20% "simulation".

To be completely honest, probably a focus on things other than combat. Really, the closest thing I can think of is Crusader Kings 2, and that's not even an RPG. There's so much more to life than violence, and yet it forms the basis of just about every RPG. I admit, combat is very interesting, but it's given a disproportionate amount of prioritization in RPG design.

I'd say that anywhere between 14 and 36 units of information is a comfortable amount. Below 8 is far too little, and above 47 is out of the question.

If I cannot, in the process of completing the most unimaginably epic quest ever (thereby saving the world no less than three times over), simultaneously craft a functional unicycle and impale a pair of katanas into the kneecaps of seven (or any multiple thereof) children, while also reciting from memory in reverse-alphabetic order the names of all members of the in-world pantheon in the process, all within the very first 36 seconds of gameplay (not including any beginning credits of course), then I won't even be remotely content with this sorrily pathetic excuse for an RPG. Whew, glad I got that out of my system. What can I say? Everyone has their preferences in RPGs, those of some ever so slightly more particular than those of others.

Here's an idea! How about we wait to see how exactly the in-game cultures and societies (about which we eagerly await more information) function before assuming that they adhere to real-world traditional values?

Do you find this part of game unrealistic? It's funny, but my real life similar to Leisure Suit Larry and from my point of view i can't find nothing unrealistic in Witcher 's libido. I think sex must be important part of any mature themed game. Sex play very important role in human life (huge part of action of real humans related wit this, motivation etc) and world without sex looks mechanistic and unrealistic, if by moral reason dev's cut this form game. (sorry guys, I would be responding with text if I felt like words would form a more appropriate response, but...)

Nice avatar/username though.

Last I heard this was projected to happen in approximately one eternity.

I usually find replying to you to be unproductive but Ill give this a go. Im not objecting to anything. Im just some dude on the internet wondering aloud about the functionality of a game Im interested in. Sawyer mentions wanting to eliminate "whoopsy-daisies", which is a good thing to remove imo, and my mind wonders about how it will work out in this system. I wonder about a hidden "interpretation" column where the NPC interprets something the opposite of what I meant, but now Im completely unaware of that fact. I wonder if its better to have the "whoopsy-daisy" frontloaded, where I can see what my character said, than back loaded, where I don't know how the NPC interpreted it. Im just asking questions out loud. Gfted1 in WonderlandTM

Oh, so this thread isn't about wine, cheese, and caviar, I see? Hmmph.

Seems quite straightforward and I'm a bit confused why people have so many questions about it...

The fact that this phrase can exist in a manner that's not redundant makes me sort of sad, but it's true. Pretty much. Or maybe to give "most developers" a bit more credit, they turn it into a "role-choosing game" in the sense that there are only 2-3 options of narrative consequence.

Yes, wanting the game world to center around one's character as the primary agent is perfectly normal behavior for RPG players, in my experience... the polar opposite of how I like to approach RPGs, however. I can understand the desire to adhere to a character concept, but in both multiplayer sessions and well-done singleplayer settings that's never totally possible, and for me it just ends up as a conflict of agency.

That's cool with me, but I just really hope reputation and disposition have an active effect on the NPC as an agent, rather than a passive effect on the NPC as a tool for measuring the player's reputation and disposition. If all reputation and disposition changes is dialog, then it's sort of just self-indulgence for the player. What made me think about this was the "priest of mercy god" example. If you commit cruel acts, is he just going to insult and frown at you when you try to talk to him (regardless of the priestly way he does this it still amounts to the behavior of a passive-aggressive child), or might he actually engage you more actively because he sees it as a challenge to "reconcile" you?

I have likewise (wisely it seems) avoided this thread until now, because I am yet another who feels that these kinds of threads and the "discussion" they generate are not constructive. However, now that we have some borderline flaming directed at those who have expressed similar sentiments, I feel that I have to make my case. There just aren't "bad things" about Project Eternity, especially at this point when we haven't yet experienced the game, because it's all subjective anyway; there are some aspects of game design that I might construe as objectively good or bad but none of the complaints in this thread fall under that (since having it one way just achieves a different goal than having it another way). A better title might be "What are your dislikes about PE so far?", but even that's still quite premature. What this thread will likely achieve over anything else (since it is not a suggestions thread) is further cementing people's psychological biases regarding specific features (about which, like many have already said, we hardly have complete knowledge), so that they will approach the finished product from a more biased perspective and the whole thing just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That said, if this is what you guys want to do with your time, then you're free to do so- this is just my opinion about your "opinions"- and no, I'm not obliged to name specific posters for my points to be valid. I simply think there are much more constructive ways to approach discussing the game than "let's lump all the 'bad' things about the game into one thread!". Bu please, proceed.

I don't think it's anything as complex as that. Fact is, in a party-based RPG, it's more engaging for the player to be able control all of his characters in combat, as opposed to, say, watching them fight it out automatically (something which usually comes with a host of "dumb AI" issues). And once you've given the player full control over more than one character, you've basically created a small scale "RTS", whether you like it or not. And anything done, deserves to be done well. Well, you're entitled to see it how you will, but to me controlling multiple characters (while more engaging in the sense that it gives the player more to do) is somewhat less immersive and detracts from the experiential element of RPGs. I of course agree that those who enjoy such an approach deserve a strategically interesting system to support their play style, especially in a nostalgic game like PE, but I would be happy that all players aren't forced to grapple with the game in that manner. And I do think this is a case of tabletop RPGs influencing future trends in RPG video games. That's a bit of an odd thing to say though, because in tabletop RPGs, you do control only one character in the party. Your friends control the rest. I would think that the first computerized RPGs were simply experimental testing grounds for those hardcore gamers who couldn't wait for the weekly tabletop sessions, and thus it makes sense that such early computer incarnations of the genre would focus on ramping up the tactics for that demographic. In other words, cRPGs were essentially designed to let people reproduce tabletop games by themselves. While tabletop games arguably rely on a social aspect for the "experience", this was substituted for the greater control and tactical focus of controlling more characters in early cRPGs. It all makes rational sense, but personally I think it represents a trend away from the "immersive experience" as the focus of the game (say what you will about subjectivity, but I think we can all agree that taking breaks from gameplay progression to tweak characters' optimization detracts from immersion), or maybe you could argue that "immersive experience" has never been the primary focus until recently.

I don't think it's anything as complex as that. Fact is, in a party-based RPG, it's more engaging for the player to be able control all of his characters in combat, as opposed to, say, watching them fight it out automatically (something which usually comes with a host of "dumb AI" issues). And once you've given the player full control over more than one character, you've basically created a small scale "RTS", whether you like it or not. And anything done, deserves to be done well. Well, you're entitled to see it how you will, but to me controlling multiple characters (while more engaging in the sense that it gives the player more to do) is somewhat less immersive and detracts from the experiential element of RPGs. I of course agree that those who enjoy such an approach deserve a strategically interesting system to support their play style, especially in a nostalgic game like PE, but I would be happy that all players aren't forced to grapple with the game in that manner. And I do think this is a case of tabletop RPGs influencing future trends in RPG video games.

Forgive me while I venture off on a tangent to frame my response to this thread. Personally, while I do enjoy my fair share of hardcore strategy games, I tend to make a point of consuming them separately from my RPG's, which I treat as more of a [more-or-less] holistically immersive experience. I think RPGs have long suffered (with respect to my personal goals in playing them) from an expectation that they should essentially be "RTS's with narrative" what with all the focus on tactical combat, even if this tendency originated for valid reasons (abstracting systems for the board game format), Since the genre's presentation in the video game medium has unlocked much more fluid and inconspicuous methods of delivering experience, I'm perfectly content to simply absorb the RPG experience without the distractions of gamey optimization and pacing-detrimental challenges. I'm not ashamed to choose more "casual" settings (generally I try normal difficulty first, but you'll never see me doing ironman or whatever), and in light of all this I'm glad to hear that PE will be accommodating such play styles (which can be as much a consequence of player motivations as player knowledge), while not making compromises in other aspects (such as the amount of text).

Wow, nice metaphor. But wouldn't full creative license mean that you could essentially white the whole thing out and effectively make it that empty journal of consummate nonlinearity? To complete the metaphor, normal RPG linearity would be represented by Mad Libs.