Lephys

False. PoE will most likely have romance in it. It just won't have what have become typical video game romances -- entire quest chains/sub-plots/minigames dedicated to a romantic story between your main character and another character, usually of the party-member variety. "First-person" mechanics inherently do not exist in a fixed, 3rd-person isometric game with completely 2D environments. Of course, they haven't really announced that there will never be any instance in the game in which the camera is zoomed to 1st-person view, and some 3D environment assets are loaded, and 1st-person mechanics take over -- maybe for an archery minigame or something. By the criteria set forth by the "Why is this being discussed if it's been announced that PoE's not doing romances?" crowd, you are absolutely free to discuss the potential of 1st-person mechanics in PoE. Now, could we please post words relevant to this topic, or none at all? Writing in your own option C is getting old.

I didn't know there was a feature like that in Shadowrun. Was it useable whenever you're stuck in "combat mode"? 'Cause it got a little annoying (in the original campaign... in Berlin, combat seems to toggle off pretty regularly whenever no foe/threat is nearby) when you had to move everyone, turn-by-turn, just to explore an area with no more enemies left, just because you technically weren't through the whole denoted section that involved combat. I might've missed some functionality, there, heh. Also, I don't know if this is exactly what you meant by "follow in your footsteps," but I've always thought that to have a toggle for your party to quite literally follow in your footsteps would be SUPER useful when simply avoiding traps and other terrain-based hazards. As for just general following or not-following, it's common for these games to have a "select/deselect party" toggle, which moves everyone at the same time (in formation, it would seem, in PoE, like in BG). But, yeah, it'd be pretty nice to actually have them follow behind you, like phone Snake.

So yeah... In the Stormlord trilogy, by Glenda Larke, the "snuggeries" (basically brothels, but the "our girls are educated and trained in much more than mere sex, so we hate being simply labeled as 'whores'" kind... kinda like companions in Firefly) were sort of the hubs of information. If you had connections at a snuggery, you could typically get information not only from those who frequent that one, but also from the rest of the snuggery network, so to speak. Maybe something similar could exist in PoE, if there's going to be anything like that. And a more personal relationship with someone in such a position could lead to a variety of intel opportunities, as well as potential dangers (you don't know who else has access to info about you and what you've been asking about.

You are seriously baffling. I asked a question. If I was trying to make an argument for you, it wouldn't have ended in a question mark. Quite frankly, I don't care if there are a billion. The number instances you can come up with that don't support romance-based conversations doesn't in some way nullify any instances that do. Like when you're chillin' at a tavern, or playing the part of courting nobles to infiltrate an event at a palace/manor, etc. Point out that there aren't any instances that would feasibly support any degree of romance in a game like PoE, and I'll gladly acknowledge that. Pointing out more situations that don't support it isn't really helping. "Also, while the characters are unconscious... that would be silly for them to talk about romance. Or, as an expletive-reflex-response to being hit by a sword, or basically whenever crap's hitting the fan, etc.". I'd agree that it hasn't worked that well. Still don't agree that it somehow is incapable of working that well. Combat-centric does not mean "there's literally never not combat." There's plenty of other banter, philosophical discussion, etc. that goes on during lulls in the intenseness. *shrug*. People get bored while traveling, or while waiting on night time to execute plans, etc. I don't know why people's emotions and fondness are off-limits, but your character has all the time in the world to listen to various NPCs recant the entire history of factions and nations, and your companions get to tell you their life stories throughout the game. Totally no room for "you know, I feel like at some point when the world hasn't gone crazy and we're not on a schedule, you and I could actually enjoy some peace together." Shun the topic! SHUN IT! *makes cross with fingers*. Oh, Druid companion wants to talk about botany? Okie dokie. The only thing I'm doing is trying to figure out what the hell kind of magical syntax you require in order for things to not be nonsense. You see these marks " " ? When you see those around words, that's when I'm claiming to be quoting your exact words. Otherwise, I'm merely using general words to describe the idea I think you conveyed. Example: If you say "It's sunny outside right now," then I might say, "So, you're saying it's not night-time?" I'm not suggesting your exact words were "it's not night-time." I'm asking if my words are accurately describing the idea/information you conveyed. I can't believe I just had to explain that... There are only so many possibilities of potential point here. You're either saying romance doesn't belong in this game (because of game type, or whatever reason you'd like), or that it belongs in some amount of the game, but not in the rest of the game (wherever you'd like to make that division), OR that it belongs literally anywhere in the game. There are no possibilities beyond those three, at the most macro-level of this possibility tree. Please, comprehend this, process it, then respond. Instead of just looking at the screen and going "Oh, I see Lephys typed some words. Better go ahead and assume they don't make sense, and apply a super-specific scope to his statement so that I can technically say it's wrong." Awesome. Is this the case with PoE? If so, please explain, if you don't mind. No, in the case of PoE we've got the Developer simply saying there will be no romances because they don't have the resources to do them. LOL In a forum with Sane people, this would normally end the discussion outright. But some of us aren't sane, are we Lephys. That would've been effective sarcasm if romance had been modded into the Zelda games, instead of just an inherent part of them. Instead, it was arbitrary sarcasm, and conveys no constructive point whatsoever. ... *Jackie Chan face of ultimate confusion*... ... What? Okay... I'm going to give this a shot: You see, in a refrigerator, ingredients are separate from one another. Your ketchup and bread and cheese and vegetables aren't all in one container, or in any way joined with one another. Then, in a dish (as in a food dish), some number of ingredients are combined into a unified entity. Thus, if a game is like a dish, then that means all its ingredients are combined into one thing. Every spoonful of soup you scoop and eat consists of all the various ingredients in the soup. In a video game, you don't buy new equipment and manage your inventory and converse with NPCs and fight kobolds, all at the same time. Every "spoon" of game you eat can be made out of different ingredients, because all the ingredients of the game are not conjoined with one another. You just criticized my use of the refrigerator as a metaphor for the game, with the components of the game being ingredients inside the refrigerator. Then, when I pointed out the "everything in a dish is all combined" point, you made a remark about a refrigerator. I do not comprehend why you would even mention a refrigerator if you had already dismissed that aspect of the metaphor, and I made no further mention of it at that point. I would almost swear you're just here to entertain yourself. You act as though the simplest remarks are confusing and elaborate.

^ Maybe they even learn from YOUR mistakes, sometimes! Like, instead of picking all the "Hey, you should totally be calm and collected all the time, because anger leads to rash decisions that may come back to bite you in the arse" options, and urging a given companion to do that all the time, you instead just pick all the rash decisions you can (the "wrong/bad" decisions), and bad stuff happens as a consequence. Then, that companion thinks "Whoa... you know, I've realized that rash decisions can be pretty problematic on down the road. I'm not sure I want problems like that. Better keep my temper in check." Just for example...

What, making sense? So, your argument is "Right as you're facing a great dragon is not the time for someone to talk to you about marriage, therefore, there's obviously never any time it would ever be appropriate for anyone to ever talk to you about marriage."? You just said you weren't claiming romance shouldn't be in a whole game, hence my question above. Please make up your mind. Awesome. Is this the case with PoE? If so, please explain, if you don't mind. For the record, the entirety of Legend of Zelda games is basically non-stop combat, puzzle-solving, and traveling, and yet the entire plot essentially revolves around a romance. And yet, there are no "get Princess Zelda to like me and marry me and have my babies" minigames. So everything in the game is always mixed with everything else in the game? That's what you're saying? You have dialogue, WHILE fighting, WHILE solving puzzles, WHILE sneaking past things, WHILE purchasing goods, WHILE upgrading your stronghold, WHILE crafting things?

It can be, yes. I didn't say it couldn't be. I just think there's constructive criticism, and nonconstructive criticism. For example, I wouldn't tell you you spelled some stuff wrong, and not say what you misspelled or how to spell it correctly. Nor would I pretend that nothing you spelled correctly mattered anymore, simply because you didn't do everything perfectly. You don't have to accept the OP's one-sided analysis or be interested in actually acknowledging what it does say. But then, you don't have to post in this thread at all, either. *shrug* They were constructive towards the thread author's knowledge of what would've made his first post better, but they (and many others' criticisms, although you're at least being a lot more reasonable than most) aren't really doing any good for the discussion, the productivity of which is not the sole obligation of the thread-starter. I mean, someone could start a thread with simply "I want to know what everyone's thoughts are on the potential for eating at taverns being a thing in PoE," and everyone could just reply with "You didn't even post your OWN thoughts on it!" all day long, for pages and pages. And yet, the discussion doesn't actually go anywhere unless people share their thoughts. It's not like someone else being less constructive than they could've been somehow makes your doing the same thing okay. In this example, I'd share my thoughts, then say "you probably could've posted YOUR thoughts on this, too, thread author." I'm really not trying to be snarky here, but everything in a video game is literally pre-determined. It's all just a bunch of code, executed in succession. It cannot execute unless it was pre-determined and compiled into the program before you even started playing the game. You only get a given dialogue response when certain conditions are met. You're not wrong about romance being pre-determined, but I'm not seeing the significance there, or the distinction from anything else in the game. That's simply not true. People have hardly presented everything to me. They've presented a handful of very specific examples, each of which were not actually pointing a finger at romance, itself. I could pick something all the presenters of these examples/arguments like instead of hate, like combat or something, and point out examples of how "combat causes problems" all day long, from existing games, and I guarantee you no one would say "You're right... because of those examples, combat should not be in any RPG." No, they'd tell me exactly what I'm telling you. "Yeah, but that just tells us [/i]how not to do combat[/i], not whether or not to do combat." That's the response I'd get, and rightfully so. I haven't seen a valid, inherent component of something as general as "romance" being problematic to the point of making sure the game is completely devoid of it. People have perfectly valid reasons to frown upon romance, because we're creatures of habit. There are plenty of bad examples, and flaws and problems throughout existing games' romance components. If 70% of the populous all had terrible, near-drowning experiences every time they visited a body of water, I wouldn't expect them to LIKE water. However, if they tried to convince me water was bad, I'd tell them that simply isn't the case. It can be dangerous, sure, but water itself isn't bad. What do I want? First of all, as I've said oodles of times before, what I advocate is romance, as an aspect of character choice/interaction (no different than greed, hostility, etc.), not romances with an S. The word usage wouldn't be such a big deal, if the plural didn't evoke such a specific setup. I think my character (and others) could be subject to romantic feelings/inclinations in certain situations, and that this could affect various other things in the game. I think my character can become romantically fond of another character without having an entire sub-system of the game devoted to winning over that character and/or progressing to the point of tent-sharing and making out at every stop on our travels, much less marriage and children. I really, truly do not know how to emphasize this any harder. I can make 8 billion examples that are exactly the same thing, and yet people still pretend I'm being really, really vague about this or something, or it's some mystical concept. Degrees/extents. Just because I can't be evil and take over the world doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to make selfish/greedy decisions. Just because I don't want my character to joke in response to everything anyone says, even when talking to the matron of that orphanage that just burned down with 50 orphans in it, doesn't mean I don't want sarcastic and witty dialogue options to choose from ever in the whole game. Just because I don't want a Bioware romance arc doesn't mean I want a game full of characters who never ever develop romantic feelings/fondness/desire, etc. "Oh, that person who lives, permanently, at your stronghold, the place to which you return/visit about 100 times throughout the game? Yeah, you can never ever choose to be more fond of them than of anyone else, ever. You're just platonic with everyone in existence, because it's either that or the two of you partake in a game-long side mission, the reward for which is sex, marriage, and children."

I'm sorry I mistook you, then. So, you're not saying romance doesn't fit anywhere in the game, but are merely saying that it often is put in specific places in the game where it doesn't fit? 'Cause... that's basically my point, exactly. I'm confused... By "wrong," I mean "contextually inappropriate or out-of-place." I didn't think I was very vague about my meaning. Maybe I was. *shrug* And yet, if you place both a bag of broccoli AND a container of chocolate syrup in your refrigerator, they co-exist peacefully without forcibly merging with one another into an abomination. Splendid example.

Now that you put it like that, I actually think even that exact same setup would've worked a lot better if the bonus they gained had simply been synergy with your character in battle instead of straight-up standalone bonuses. Still wouldn't be the absolute best system in the world or anything, but, I just never really considered that possibility. The more familiar you are with someone, the better you'd fight in conjunction with one another. If anything was to be represented by something like that, it seems to me that synergy would work the best. Aka, you do more damage to targets stunned by Steve the Party Member, etc. Sorry, mild tangent... but your words made me think of it. 8P

"Balance/imbalance" is always an inexact thing, when it's done right. It can only be perfect when everything's apples, and yet it's much more interesting to have a variety of different fruits. But then, you're balancing apples and oranges, as the saying goes. Of course, you can still get it really close. You don't have to get a bag of apples and a bag of oranges to weigh exactly the same amount, just to get one to not be twice as heavy as the other, etc. The most important aspect of balance is really restraint. How close together everything is isn't as important as how far apart everything isn't allowed to be. If character A has an ability that does 50 damage, but is pretty slow, and character B has an ability that does 15 damage but is quite fast, then you don't need to weed through the game, making sure that the number of enemies that are "strong" against slow attacks (easily able to dodge and/or interrupt) is exactly identical to the number of enemies that are "strong" against low-damage attacks (armored or something), for example. So, yeah, I very much agree with that aspect of uniqueness that you're getting at. It's nice when companions bring something to the table only they can bring, even if it's not the single-most game-changing thing in the world. In PoE, the classes already seem to be wonderfully diverse in their mechanics and such, which is great, but it'd definitely be nice to have the cherry of companion uniqueness on top of that sundae.

Coat, you have performed great deeds in service to the Cloth realm. Kneel, Coat... *touches sword to one shoulder* ... and arise *touches sword to other shoulder*, SUR Coat! *cheering accompanied by dramatic music* Now to serious business, surcoats are too legit to quit. I approve, nay, DEMAND surcoats in my PoE! And back to non-serious business for a quick second, "tabard" sounds like someone with a broken nose is just trying to say "tavern." . Tabards are also splendid. That is all.

I apologize. I was certain that the question I posed would cause anyone asking it to themselves to bump straight into the fallacy. I'll clarify: You claim you've given an example of why romance doesn't belong in a game, when you've actually just presented an example of where/when romance doesn't belong in a game. Basically, if she brought up that same thing in an appropriate situation, instead of an in-appropriate one, the issue you present in that example wouldn't even exist. It's functionally almost the same thing as a bug causing an NPC to respond to some other coded dialogue line that your character didn't just speak. That wouldn't mean that character should NEVER say that out-of-place thing he said. Just that he should say it only in response to what actually makes sense. Also, the semantics argument is a waste of time. The problem arises the second she says the wrong thing at the wrong time, regardless of whether or not it's banter (monologue) or the player is actually prompted to respond. Unless your response option is "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! THERE'S A FREAKIN' DRAGON RIGHT THERE! WHO CARES ABOUT MARRIAGE RIGHT NOW?!", and it turns out she's suffering some head trauma and is legitimately incoherent. So, see, that would be another fix to the problem, because what she said would actually fit the circumstances. None of that has anything to do with whether or not anyone should ever talk to your character about marriage at any point in the game. Nor does "romance" require that someone specifically converse with your PC about marriage, or sex, or that the game allow your player to marry and or fornicate with any of the companions. Those are specific extents/degrees of the aspect of romance. I don't know how to make that any clearer.

I think Josh remarked on the topic of "negative traits" in another thread in which we were talking heavily about it. I'm gonna go try to hunt it down now, but I seem to recall him saying that they definitely weren't doing isolated negatives/flaws that you can pick from, but that he wasn't against flaws attached to benefits (a la Fallout, sort of). So, I dunno how prevalent they'll be, but I'd bet we'll see some "this'll make you slower, but you'll also attack harder" type stuff (just to use a simple-yet-not-necessarily-awesome example). *EDIT* Found it!: So, yeah... he likes that sort of thing, but apparently independent strengths and flaws don't really fit the rest of PoE's design. So, hopefully we'll still see the detriments attached to benefits in certain perks/traits.

@Lurky: To be fair, I've neither claimed to have read every single post on the subject ever to be posted, nor do I have the time to guarantee that I've done so before posting anything, ever. Not to mention, there's so much debating whether or not there's anything to debate going on, it's a bit hard to just jump back and forth between actual topic discussion and frivolous discussion discussion. I'll try to be brief. Yes, you do generally analyze both sides of something when formally analyzing the dilemma as a whole. However, in a debate, one side merely defends one stance in the matter whilst the other side defends an opposing one. You don't spend time pointing out the other side simply because that's not how it's logistically set up. I don't think anyone would disagree that this is a huge debate amongst the users here (and probably all over the internet, in gaming forums all over), so it seems pretty moot to insist that the author of this thread was somehow obligated to cover both sides. He simply started off by presenting his side, then inviting others to reasonably present the opposing side. Not to mention that I haven't seen an objective analysis of the For Romance stance coming from anyone in the Against section, so I'm honestly not sure upon what grounds any of you are actually attempting to call out the OP. My apologies. I missed that. For what it's worth, though, I've responded to similar arguments, and I'll respond to this one accordingly: He makes very valid points... about problems with existing games' implementations of romance, specifically.. Besides, the analysis of "rewarding the player with this for these choices could cause the player to feel thusly" could be applied to almost anything else that no one's even arguing against the sheer existence of: Combat (game rewards player with virtual death/feelings of power), manipulative dialogue (game rewards manipulative choices with cool virtual stuff), etc. In which case, the majority of the game shouldn't be implemented, for some reason or another. That, and nothing's requiring romance's implementation in a given game to be "choose the right things and get rewarded with sex." You see, those points, like many, many others, I very much agree with. I think the example romances and such all have flaws that are being pointed out. The disconnect is that I keep seeing people associate those flaws with romance in general, rather than seeing them as data to consider when implementing romance in any way, shape, or fashion in another game. I can't read that article at the moment (inaccessible), but I'll gladly read it when I get home. The thing is, my biggest response to this is basically "define 'very present'." Maybe we should talk about it less, but I'm not really comfortable dictating what people can and cannot talk about on a discussion forum, simply because many are sick of hearing about it and get the feeling that its presence in the game at hand will be pretty minor. I've pointed out about eleventy-billion times now that an individual can easily advocate "not very present" romance, and wish to discuss just how present it will/could/should be in the game. Just because I'm here talking about romance doesn't specify the quantity or exact implementation of romance I want. Guessing with assumptions is a lot slower than just asking me. Also, asking me constitutes actual discussion, while assuming doesn't. I think you're bending things a bit, here, to be honest. The simple point was that putting romance into a game in no way causes characters to blurt out out-of-place things the moment they confront a dire situation. I dare say that if you had just finished talking to some NPC lady, regarding some quest, and the quest happened to involve the apple of her eye, and she worriedly vented about him, clinging to their hopes of getting married soon before this troublesome quest-situation arose, THEN Viconia asked if you've ever thought of marriage, it would be remarkably appropriate and perfectly within context. Also, the game knows what dialogue took place, and what the subject was, so it has no problem cue-ing such a remark from a party member, etc. So, I'm going to have to disagree with that whole attribution of those issues to romance, as well.

You got me. Faulty wording. Allow me to correct my statement: The case against romance seems to be doing fine in popularity without an in-depth analysis. People don't seem to need objective reasons for joining the Againstians. Or, simple answer: It's unnecessary. This thread was started with the idea in mind that many people are against romance simply because they feel there are no objective reasons for its existence. The thread's purpose was merely to convince them that this is not the case. There aren't any points I know of that I agree with on the Against side. Doesn't mean there aren't any good ones. But, I don't know of any. I agree with plenty of points that have been made that suggest specific implementations that should not be used without significant alterations, at the least, but I haven't seen anything that legitimately argues against the decision to incorporate the sheer aspect of romance into an RPG such as PoE's design. There are reasons not to actually be able to put it in, but just because you don't have any bandages doesn't mean a bleeding wound shouldn't be bandaged. It just means that it should be, but cannot be.

Why did the Druid choose Serpent form over Wolf form? He wanted to make sure it scaled. *flees*

Curiosity: satiated. Thanks, ^_^

This is an excellent example of the kind of fallacies that are frequently presented against the sheer aspect of romance. Instead of pointing out the flaw here, I'll simply ask: Would the problem in that example have ceased to exist if Viconia had blurted out some random bit of dialogue -- still completely unbefitting of the situation -- that simply had nothing to do with romance? What if she had said "I wonder if the next tavern we come across will have Elvish wine... it's quite delicious.", for example?

A) Because the case against romance seems to be doing fine without an in-depth analysis (hence the title "The Case For Romance"). B) Why is it that no one on the Against side of the fence can present their own analysis for that side? And, for the last time, "romance" and "romances" are two different things. "Romances" will not be in PoE. If you can find me definitive evidence that "romance" will not be in PoE, then that might actually be more of a case to stop talking about it at all.

Lucky for us, I believe PoE is taking the "meter" out of "reputation meter." (Well, there could still technically be a sort of meter, but... it's not one big meter, is the point...)

Or, it's an attempt at an intellectual discussion of the aspect of romance in a cRPG, which *gasp*, is what PoE is! There are plenty of topics (such as Armor and Weapon Design: Part V) that are discussions of "general gaming" stuff. And yet, people are on the PoE forum to discuss them. PoE will have weapons and armor, and people are interested in the potential designs of weapons and armor, even if they're not specifically talking about specific weapons and armor that will definitely be in PoE. Sheesh... What's being done here is like jumping into that Armor and Weapon Design thread and saying "you either want every single image you're posting in this thread to be in PoE in its exactness, or else you don't want weapons and armor in PoE." Good question for the mods, I suppose. Maybe you can badger them all day about it, since its presence here is so catastrophically problematic that you felt compelled to ask this question for the 73rd time.

That's true. I wasn't very worried about them landing at exactly the same time. But, yeah. I was just wondering how that functionally would work, is all. We were talking about the opposite of intensifying the effect. Thus, instead of "that'll be .5 seconds of interrupt, times 7 hits, so... you're not doing anything for the next 3 and a half seconds! 8D", it would be less for each subsequent strike within a very short window of time. *shrug* I think I was just curious about a mechanic, and am not trying to exaggerate the danger of anything, since I don't really know how much of this functions, exactly, in-game.

And then God said "Let there be gambling!"

You're clearly ignoring the necessity of your character's being devoid of flaw/weakness, u_u... There are only two ratings for any and all character-related numerical values in the game: 1) The best. 2) Bad. Duh...

That much flapping cloth anytime would serve as a shroud for anyone foolish enough to wear it. I certainly enjoy capes and cloaks, but that's a bit much. Maybe it's a defensive strategy, called "where is my body actually located? *smirk*" Maybe it's only for use on really windy battlefields. Instead of finding the high ground, you find the up-wind ground, and your opponent has to deal with tangles and billows of cloth in his face. *shrug*