Lephys

Well, there's much more you can do than just have them stack and call it a day. They could stack in with progressively-reduced intensity (1 success is a .5 second interrupt, 5 successes is a 1.5 second interrupt, etc., for example). I was merely pointing out various example approaches/possibilities. Stunlock is a concern, but so is the situation in which you just command your whole party to attack that Wizard who's trying to cast a bad-news spell, only to only get 1 actual concentration check simply because you didn't manually ensure that everyone's attack fell 1.3 seconds apart. Does that make sense? Imagine if other stuff did that. "Oh, 6 people attacked all within 1 second? Well, you only got 1 armor penetration check." So, I'd say they're both concerns, which is why I'm curious what Josh's/the team's thoughts are on that.

Yeah... well, if magic lightning wasn't a little different, then every time a mage tried to blast chain lightning out of his palms, it would just travel back through his own body straight to the ground instead of hitting that plate-wearing warrior 30 feet away, would it not? I think we can deal with the abstraction. Again, it's not as if the plate is making you somehow MORE susceptible to shock than if you simply removed the plate. You're still getting more protection from the plate than from nakedness. I'm not any more worried about how full plate doesn't somehow Faraday Cage all electrical damage around your body than I am about how a Mage can even channel/direct electricity in the first place, to be honest. Maybe the metal heats up and burns you a bit? Maybe the Mage is able to forcibly alter its path to the ground? Who knows. How much does it truly matter? If it means 2 (example number) damage types being boss in a lot of different situations, and a handful of others being pretty much useless and/or hardly ever having their own, unique weaknesses to take advantage of, then I'll take the abstraction any day, in the interest of something like shock damage actually being significant within the combat system. That's just me, though. For what it's worth, I appreciate the in-depth explanations of the workings of electricity, and admit being a bit of a noob at that topic. I'm not trying to brush off the importance of how things actually work in reality. I know it's not a choice between perfect simulation of reality or complete and utter throw-physics-out-the-window abstraction. I just don't think being quite so accurate with it, in this particular case, is really all that useful. Especially considering the possibilities, as I've pointed out (mages' unnatural control over electricity, etc.)

^ Maybe the more cats you have, the fewer vermin you have, and, consequently, the less disease runs rampant. In your stronghold, I mean. 8P

The thing is, "romance" does not equal only what you specifically want it to just so you can go "Ahhh, you promancers. THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE IN THE GAME!" The thing about this OP is, I don't think he in any way made reference to "putting romances in the game" or anything like that. He simply analyzed the aspect of romance/relationship/emotional attachment in a virtual, interactive game, in general. Why the science? Well, why do we want to make any choices in a game with our character, whatsoever? Because of how we feel about those choices. So, yes, I want to be able to have my character make a choice regarding emotional attachment/interest (even if its to stave it off, etc.) just as much as I want to have him make a choice to do something good, or to do something out of greed, or any other emotional aspect or motivation. This doesn't automatically mean there must either be a whole sub-set of the game... a whole arc or sub-plot, devoted to the entirety of courting someone, then ultimately marrying them and/or being with them forever, any more than greed or any other of those aspects needs its own entire sub-story in the game. Just because some people can't deal with the fact that "romances" will not be in the game does not mean we're somehow not allowed to discuss, on a bloody discussion forum, how romance fits into a role-playing game as a mere aspect of character choice/interaction throughout the game rather than some huge, detached sub-plot that's just all about a love story or something. To put it simply... people are subject to feelings of emotional attachment, and virtual people are no different. I understand the animosity toward "the promancer" crowd, but I think it's about time people just ignore those who are never going to be happy and stop pretending that the word "romance" instantly means we've gotta devolve into a big yes-vs-no battle on whether or not PoE should copy Bioware games and allow marriage and children and arbitrary "yay I got this person to love me" choices. Many people don't want that, but also don't want our characters to be arbitrarily devoid of the human aspect of emotional attachment. And, since Obsidian hasn't said "there will be no such thing as the character aspect of feelings and emotional attachment," I'd like to know what might still be in the game, and discuss that, just like any other topic on these forums, if you don't mind. And if you don't wish to do this, then you can simply refrain from posting anything, just as with any other topic you don't wish to discuss.

Most of us trust that you guys are diligently smoothing all this out. No worries, On the topic of interrupts, I just had a quick thought/question: How will you handle the real-time possibility of a bunch of attacks warranting interrupt/concentration checks all within a very short amount of time (fraction of a second)? Will it just be "you can only be interrupted once every X seconds/parts-of-a-second"? Or maybe they'll stack? (you got hit by 5 arrows in 1 second, so you roll 5 concentration checks, and are interrupted 5 times in a row). I was just curious. It seems like if all the attacks aren't accounted for, then your party'd be kinda screwed if you didn't space out your attacks. *shrug*. Not necessarily the end of the world. Just something I was curious about.

You guys say "beating a dead horse," I say "making glue." It's kind of a half-full/half-empty thing. Seriously though... the dead horse is not the actual discussion of romance. It's the "who's right"/"Put/don't-put romance in PoE."

The funny thing about rolling stats is, even if you want a "bad" character, you still have to roll repeatedly until you get what you want (because you have no control over it). I say that because re-rolling for good stats is always pointed out, with many people suggesting that rolling is great so that you have to deal with not-awesome stats sometimes.

Well, it's quite likely that the mechanics will make plate weaker than other armors to shock. I mean, relatively. But, what it won't do is take you from getting hit by lightning for 20 dmg, naked, to getting hit by the exact same lightning for more than 20 dmg simply because you donned some plate. However, since plate's DT is halved versus Shock, then if there's some other armor that has, say, a DT greater than half a set of plate's DT, and 100% DT versus Shock damage. In other words, if Enchanted Elven Leather has a DT of 12, and has no Shock penalty, and steel plate armor has a DT of 20 but has a 50% Shock penalty, then the plate's going to be weaker vs. Shock than the Enchanted Elven Leather (12 Shock dmg blocked versus only 10 in the plate). And yeah. Like Josh said, it's unlikely you'll remain perfectly grounded the whole time in combat (what with armor being beaten and bent, and your whole body moving around a great deal), so it'd be a nightmare trying to program a system that actually accurately checked whether or not you were grounded in your full plate before determining the impact of Shock damage.

It very well could. What it means is simply that we can only choose from 4 different godlike variants when we create a character. Whether we will never see any more types than that in the world is kind of up to the devs' plans. It's entirely possible that there are more than 4 variants of godlike in the lore/world of PoE, but not available to the player because of race/sub-race design resource restrictions. It's kinda like how MMO's often have expansions that "add in races." It's not that those races suddenly were born into the world. It's just that you couldn't play as them before that. Whether it's because they stick to a particular region and the story of the original game took place elsewhere mainly, etc., is, again, up to the devs.

Yeah, there's a pretty big difference between "I'm not even claiming to be physically armored, but I wear this metal wrestling-champion belt/codpiece / this metal mantle/bikini because I feel like it" and "Wait, we're going into battle? Hang on... I'm unprotected! *puts on single, impractical article of metal 'armor'* Okay! Now I'm ready, with my high natural AC and all, thanks to these nipple shields!"

I wait patiently for someone commenting on the already-released trailer (or a future video clip) to actually be so ignorant as to say "Omg, this gameplay footage looks so bad... it's like they didn't even finish the game before putting out this video!" Honestly, I wouldn't worry about that stuff, though. The "faction" of people who are going to fail to comprehend that it's alpha footage aren't really the majority of people who were going to be interested in the specifics of the game's design anyway. To use Call of Duty in a cliche fashion (for which I'm not ashamed), if it were the next Call of Duty game, then yeah, it'd probably do a lot of damage. However, this is a game most of those people probably weren't going to check out anyway. You've basically got the ignorant judgers (know nothing but judge as if they're well-informed), then the neutral people (don't really bother to actively check out all games they hear about and judge stuff very much, 'cause they'll just sort of hear about them eventually, anyway), and finally the people who are actually informed and whose sole purpose in life it is to correct the ignorant judgers. Out of these groups, most of the neutral people will hear both sides and ultimately think "Oh, well, that's a pretty good video then, actually, and that game will probably not be horrible." Even some of the ignorant judgers will come around, because, if they cared that much about sticking to their opinion of the game, they'd be after an informed opinion in the first place. Essentially, people are either interested in actually finding out about the game, or they aren't. If they can't be bothered to do more than watch a 2-minute video, then decide the game will suck because the visuals weren't flawless, then they probably were never going to care about PoE in the first place, and they probably don't really run in the same circles as people who will (or, if they do, the people who actually care will still bother to learn about the video and state of the game, because finding out whether or not it's a game they want to get and play is more important to them than getting to boost their self-esteem by exercising their power to arbitrarily bash other people's efforts and creations.)

Now you've killed a whole 'nother horse and continue by beating it instead: The "Omg guys, talking about romance is beating an extremely dead horse" horse. The "I can't believe this thread is still going" posts might even possibly outweigh the actual romance discussion posts.

^ I would just emphasize that you can have oodles of disagreements between the characters, as long as they aren't extreme ones. The two options aren't "agree or disagree so hard we fight," is all.

I think the expansion for PoE is as inevitable as the expansion of a marshmallow in a microwave.

It's definitely quite heavy-handed in many games. I think the key is that you shouldn't be guaranteed to be able to influence them to some specific goal/point, but rather just to be able to influence them in general. Like you said, at times, it seems like ONLY the PC can affect companions, when obviously, many things should affect them (including other people, and even just situational factors, etc.). It wouldn't really make any sense if a bunch of other stuff could influence them while you couldn't do so at all. Thus, I think the best approach is to just make sure the PC isn't THE determining factor for things. And it definitely shouldn't just be some persuasion ability. The best example I can give is, with one party member who's up in arms about something, you might need to present an argument to them that shows how their own principles and reasoning can actually lead to a different decision than the one they're currently arriving at. Thus, they might reconsider, or do something slightly different, or even do something completely different. They might question the very nature of their current principles and such (maybe it's some code of their order, etc.). Now, with a different party member who's dead set on something, maybe no amount of conversation or reasonable points will affect them much. However, perhaps your actions will actually affect them. The things you do will cause them to reconsider/think about things. To use a very simplistic example, maybe they've been raised to believe that your PC's race is inherently self-centered and manipulative or something. And, while no amount of speaking will convince them of any other possibility, the way you choose to behave for the duration of your travels could very much affect the way they think about things. Then, that realization might ultimately affect something else not even related to your race, further down the road. Something that they feel similarly about, and reconsider. That's the kind of influence I'd like to see. Influencing "change" from within. Not "I gave you a really good sales pitch, and now you like this product instead of hating it." Maybe some Wizard is afraid of their powers (maybe they're mildly out-of-control, and they've hurt someone in the past or something?). So, maybe if you instill enough faith in them, that will affect their decision to actually attempt to confront that fear and be less afraid of their powers, rather than forever using them only as a last resort, ever. And maybe whether or not they use them in a given situation is quite important some other time(s). Etc. You should be able to affect things people are already dealing with. Not just everything they think. "Oh, you're a priest? Religion's STUPID! 8D!" "My gods, you're right, PC! THANKS FOR SWAYING ME!" Heh. No. But, if that priest's given order does something questionable, or he finds some conflict in their teachings that's only revealed by a particular situation, then you should be able to weigh in on it, and he should care what you think. I think the main thing, in relation to existing games doing it wrong oftentimes, is that the matters upon which the player is able to influence the given companion is often the wrong matters. Like, "I'm not sure if it's okay to be a bloodthirsty warlord, or if I should maybe start a church. What do you think, PC?" That's terrible. Because, you should be able to influence that character, but not over such an extreme distance. Maybe you can help a bloodthirsty warlord consider the value in not just always jumping straight to violence or something, as opposed to supporting the idea that the world's just a harsh place, and people who stand in your way are choosing to contend and deserve whatever you can dish out or something. But not "Is everything about me good, or should I become a completely different person?"

No no, no worries! I wouldn't have guessed you weren't a native English speaker, for what it's worth, based on how well you're using it. I understand there are still very specific disconnects, though, with certain words and phrasings. English is kinda weird anyway, a lot of the time. I think I understand you, and I probably just wasn't specific/clear enough about exactly what it was I had a problem with. I used Russell's arc as an example, because I felt it went the furthest with outcome-forcing: basically, it offered the greatest quantity of choices (that I could think of) and the least quantity of actual immediate changes, even though the situation the writers put Russell in felt like it should've had plenty of versatility. I'm not against any instance of "forced outcome" or anything. It's just... well, when you say "Are you hungry? You can have ANYTHING from the refrigerator!", then there's only one thing in the refrigerator... there're only so many times you can do that before it's just cheap, ya know? It's not a specific thing, like "You can only do that once," or anything like that. It's more of a general thing. Most of the stuff in Episodes 1-5 may not have affected the ultimate outcome, but it still actually let you do things differently, and that's what I'm talking about. It's kind of bad form to offer 50 choices, and have everything be the same immediately after each of them, no matter what. No "You went left around this thing instead of right, even if you ended up at the same destination," or "you used this stick instead of the hammer as a weapon, even if you still hit the same person with it and gravely injure them, no matter what." You're kind of self-defeating the feeling of narrative control you're giving when you make nothing change. It's one thing to have simulated choices. You know, "Oh, it turns out that didn't affect what happens next, but, no one really had any way of knowing that." I'd still rather actually get to have control over what my character decides to do, even if all options fail to change the inevitable, rather than just "I can say some different stuff, and have someone respond to specifically what I just said, then everything happens the same way." And I get that some of those dialogue choices affect character development (I'm assuming you're going to at least be ABLE to run into Nate again at some point in Season 2, and they probably affect Russell a bit). But, yeah... I dunno, the best example I can think of is this: I'd much rather have been able to have Russell decide "I won't let you hurt this old couple!" and tackle Nate, even if you just end up wrestling over the gun and the old guy (can't remember his name) gets shot anyway (old woman was already dying from a gunshot wound), so that they both end up dead either way. But, the fact is, all you can do is either TELL Nate he's a meanieface and leave, or stick with him (even though you don't even really get any options to say "Yeah Nate! You're the coolest!", so the game's basically forcing Russell to feel negatively about Nate no matter what). I hope that makes sense. Like you said, there's a way to force the outcome, and a way not-to. I don't think having nothing you do affect anything at all is how to do it. Or, to put it another way, I think when you're offering an interactive narrative experience like that, you have a duty to support the dynamics of the gameplay experience, itself. You've got the narrative aspect of choice/consequence, and you've got the actual "what am I, the player, dealing with and doing with my controller to play through this situation" experience aspect of it, alongside one another. I think the more static one is, the more dynamic the other needs to be, in whatever mix of both. That's another example. If I could've chosen various paths to get back to Nate behind the truck, that would've been cool, too. Even if I always end up back behind the truck, and unshot. Again, same outcome, but, I'd rather not just be railroaded the whole way, with just some flavor text along the way. I don't really care how many different ways I get to say "That wasn't cool" if all I can do is perform a linear sequence of tasks, followed by telling a person "that wasn't cool" through an entire arc. And, for the record, I didn't hate Russell's arc. I just think it was the worst offender out of the Season 1 episodes and the 400 Days arcs, is all.

I'd very much like clarification on whether or not specifically romance arcs as the stereotypical promancers advocate are what's out of the question, or if romance in any possible capacity whatsoever is out of the question. If NPCs feel romantically about one another all over the place, it's going to be mighty weird to have none of your PC's interaction ever touch that sector of the emotional spectrum, ever. I mean, there aren't manipulation arcs in the game, but I'd expect for options to manipulate NPCs. There aren't fear arcs in the game, but I'd expect to be able to make people fear me. What with the reputation system they're going for (as I've already pointed out, but will do so again, since it seems to have gone completely ignored), people will have -- what did they call them... Dispositions? I think Josh said they might end up calling them something else -- individual/personal preferences/perspectives on your PC. So, again, it seems extremely feasible for my character to be able to "romance" the noble's daughter, even if only to infiltrate his mansion and gather information about him, and/or handle some other situation. Take your pick on the situation. But, "romance" is merely another manner of interacting with/eliciting an emotional response/attachment from a given person. Doesn't mean there has to be an entire lineage of quests and content involving ultimately coming to marry and settle down with one of a handful of lucky bachelorettes in the game. Hell, if two NPCs are in love with one another, maybe you get the chance to cast an illusion spell to look like some girl's betrothed, again, only to get access to stuff you otherwise wouldn't, and you have to play the part. OMG! YOU'RE ROMANCING! BURN IT! Oh wait, that's actually kind of cool, and has nothing to do with a Bioware dating-sim arc. See, stuff like that. You know, stuff that's actually worth discussing, but that many in here are too busy pointing out all the stuff that isn't worth discussing to even notice.

I think you and others are just thinking of an unnecessarily heavy-handed/grand scope approach. It doesn't have to be that literally every single undead on the entire planet suffers minute-for-minute degradation or anything. "World factors" are just abstracted anyway. It's just time-sensitive checks, anyway. Quest or not, that's just semantics. When criteria are met (involving a virtual time or time-passed check), a trigger activates, and the quest content (that you haven't yet experienced) becomes different. There's functionally no difference at all between "Oh no you took too long so you failed" and "Oh no you took too long so these fampyr are now beyond fampyr." It's all the same to code. "Did X time pass since Event? Yes? Then Y changes." I'm pretty sure the suggestion is just that it would be pretty cool to have SOME instance (however big or small) of representation for the actual passage of time in relation to the cycle of undeath. Obviously some fampyr will keep themselves in good shape, etc. No one's saying "If it's an undead, then I want every day that passes before I travel to it to result in its progression towards a mere savage skeleton-beast." Hence the example of a specific scenario. A very vague example, the details of which people are focusing FAR too much upon, methinks. Maybe, at some point in the game, where you could've actively dealt with some situation involving a fampyr, you end up dealing with a situation now involving a dargul or gul (or beyond), because time. That would be cool. Quite simple.

Meh. What's the saying? You've gotta ramble a bit to make an omelet? I'm sure it's something like that, u_u... Really though, I sometimes find it useful to fan the noggin-concrete so it'll dry faster, so to speak. Even if everything in between the pouring and the hardening isn't quite as purposeful as I'd like it to be. 8P

Hells yeah. Of course, it should honestly probably be a separate topic, either new or existing. Promise not to get mad when I mention anything even remotely resembling characters taking a mere personal interest in one another? No "leading up to sex!", or "because it's a love story!". Just good ole dynamics to characters simply bonding with/liking your PC, and actual effects from that. Like, I'd actually love to see the tradeoff for striking up a personal conversation with a companion in a given situation being that you're both more distracted than usual, and are caught in a much worse position than if you had been all "Shutup and keep watch! This isn't a game!", etc.

Long story short, here's the sub-text for the "Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion" forum: "Talk about your gameplay experiences, hopes & dreams for Pillars of Eternity here." Looks to me like people are talking about their gameplay experiences with romance (both critically as well as inspirationally), and sharing and discussing their hopes and dreams for PoE. Hardly an injustice, methinks. Nowhere does it state "If the game probably isn't already going to have it, you're no longer allowed to share such hopes and dreams or discuss anything of the sort, u_u."

^ I think that's further evidence for the idea that writing dialogue options to support some system of behaviors/styles/alignments is a worse idea than simply writing dialogue options to support the situation at hand. Morality values and such could always be applied, regardless of which way you do it. They don't really need to give you an evil thing to say. They just need to give you a variety of feasible things to say, and let you and the NPCs of the world decide why you're saying them. If, say, a villager walks up to you and introduces himself when you enter a village, there are only so many things you can feasibly say/do there: You can remain silent or you can say something (can't do neither)... You can introduce yourself, or present a false name, or make no reference to your identity at all. You can ask him a question, or judge his words thus far, or ignore everything he's saying and just demand some information, etc. You can do something aggressive to him, anywhere from pushing him out of your way to running him through with your sword. Your choices don't need to be "give him a bunch of money and bless his family" or "teleport him to a pit of torture for all eternity" or anything. You don't need a "Be evil" option. It's not just "Look! A situation! Quick! We need to be able to do something really good, evil, snarky, gruff, or manipulative here!" It really depends on the situation. You don't need an evil response to a greeting. Plenty of evil people still politely greet others. Just for example... I think the best role for variety in dialogue option "flavor" is in how you can say things, rather than in specifically what you can say. For example, if you want to tell someone they need to leave, you could deliver that message in a variety of ways. Maybe one option is to simply grab them by the shirt and throw/push them out the door. Another might be to simply point at the door. Another might be to politely tell them they should leave. Another might be to logically explain that it would be prudent for them to leave. Another might be to sarcastically tell them how great it would be to stay and have bad things happen. Etc. Obviously it becomes an awful lot of writing to have 15 different ways to say everything there is. But, I think it's a good ideal to aim towards, even if you've gotta go for a target closer than the horizon.

First of all, you're not ever going to find a single, unified intention behind an entire topic. Topics are made up of everyone who dares jump in and discuss. That being said, yes, a lot of this applies to RPGs in general, but so does oodles of stuff in these forums. However, we're talking about them as they pertain to PoE. We don't know enough of PoE to only discuss things that we know for sure will be relevant and or fit in perfectly with the rest of the game's design, hence all the game mechanics discussion topics and brainstorming about what could be in. I agree that romance has been discussed an awful lot on these forums (and probably in all RPG forums everywhere), but this thread is here because it's pertinent to the fact that it pertains to a recent decision made specifically regarding PoE. If we're going to present feedback discussion about PoE's design, then doing it in some general RPG forum isn't doing Team Eternity much good. Of course, I'm not about to tell you it would somehow be preposterous to have this discussion in a non-PoE specific forum. But, like I said, the same goes for a lot of other things. Durability. Why was durability being discussed in PoE forums when people were just talking about why they don't like durability in cRPGs? Because it was specifically brought up in relation to PoE's design. Anywho, where this discussion takes place isn't a big deal. It could easily be moved. But, none of us really have the power to do that. And, even if it gets moved, it doesn't change the fact that it's a valid discussion, is all. So, maybe it should be moved, and then continued by those who seek to continue it.

This'll be the third time in a month that I reference the "there won't be misses in attack resolution, only grazes" decision, that was followed by apparently-useless-because-a-decision-was-already-made discussion, which Josh and co. didn't find so useless. According to your own line of reasoning, there's just as little point in arguing against it, since it's already not in the game, right? Also... You do realize that the post you just quoted me on specifically pointed out that not every comment advocating romance is stating "but you gotta have romance in PoE," right? Example time. If you're throwing a party, and you decide to buy 3 bags of chips, is it pointless for me to make observations regarding the effects of that decision, and the effects of, say, the hypothetical of buying a different amount of chips? I might point out to you that there will be 50 people at the party, and that you may very well run out of chips before everyone's had any, much less their fill. Would I be somehow DEMANDING that you buy more chips? No. I'm not even telling you you must buy more chips. You may not care if everyone gets chips. You may be on a budget, etc. And yet, observing the effects of your decision is still useful. I could even hate chips myself, and STILL objectively point out the impact of the amount of chips you decide to buy upon your party. Just because you don't use something doesn't mean it isn't useful. You might keep a hammer in a toolkit, and you may not need it while changing some brake pads. That doesn't mean hammers are useless. It just means you didn't use one for the task at hand. If Obsidian doesn't wish to use romance, then that's fine. But we can still talk about its usefulness and brainstorm about it, in case they find anything useful in that. I really doubt there's going to be literally NO romance whatsoever in the game (no NPCs courting one another or falling in love, etc.), so discussing the potentiality for romance and its effective implementation into the game is hardly irrelevant. Even if the devs read this discussion whilst writing an NPC, and get some tiny insight from it, then it was useful to them. It's a friggin' discussion forum for crying out loud. If you cut out all the discussion of things that aren't likely to be in the game, this would be a sad place. Besides... If the decision were "Romance is IN!", how many people do you think would be in here worried telling people "OMg, stop pointing out reasons you think this shouldn't be in the game. It's in, forever, darnit! Get over it!"

Yeah, 'cause you can't be minorly bothered by something without being a rabid extremist. Like in a game where you can't go down a certain path, even though the only thing blocking your path is a 3-foot-tall shrub. Only crazy people would think "You know, it'd just be nice if there were a dense thicket of foliage there or something, or something at least blocking my view of treasure and/or some other reason to want to go that way, instead of a 3-foot shrub that I could easily step over/walk past." You could give people talents early, but then, that still doesn't explain why no one starts out as relatively very strong from the get-go, instead of distinguishing their strength soon after the adventure starts. "I know I'm like a 30-year-old ex-soldier, but NOW that we've gained a level in our current adventure, I'm finally stronger than that Wizard over there!" Simply put, Strength/muscleyness/what-have-you is a perfectly feasible thing to measure in the way that stats do. I get why they're going with consolidated Might, but that doesn't mean I have to pretend it makes sense in all ways. I'm perfectly comfortable with accepting the decision, while simultaneously being bothered by it. The sound of a screaming child bothers me. It's unpleasant. But that doesn't mean I don't care about my 1-year-old niece, or that I'm hostile towards the existence of children. If simply taking the time to think about things that you deem pointless to spend brainpower on makes me a rabid simulationist, then I'll take that title, anyday. Sitting around pretending everything makes perfect sense and nothing has flaws certainly isn't doing anyone any good. You really can't. Either the game allows the results of a distinction to occur in some scenario, or you're just RPing that anything is actually happening at all. If combat wasn't in the game, you could PRETEND that that NPC who just gave you an item did so because you whooped his arse in combat, but that doesn't really change the fact that the game isn't representing combat at all.