Lephys

Yeah, in seriousness, I agree that a very nice format is to leave the first title without a subtitle, and simply subtitle the sequels/expansions in lieu of numbering them. Unless the game isn't based on a new IP (there are already a bunch of books/other games about the specific lore in your game), there's not much need for a subtitle in the first game's title.

Replace "afraid" with "hopeful," and you've got my feelings on the matter.

I'm still voting for honeybadger. Of course, it would probably break free of the game code's constraints and somehow become the antagonist of the main plot. At the very least, it would ignore all commands in combat, and have a chance to simply slaughter your own party at any moment, just because it felt like it. It would kill its own Ranger master, and still live on somehow.

My argument had nothing to do with giving Morrigan jewelry or banging her to produce an increase in her magical powers. Making sheer reference to a character in a game, in an example, does not automatically make me condone or tout any and all aspects of that character's implementation in that game. There are plenty of things that were done horribly with Morrigan, as well as romance, in DA:O.

First of all, welcome! Second of all, I'm curious... would you happen to've gotten that from Glenda Larke's Stormlord book trilogy? I only ask because I coincidentally just finished reading that. Welcome to the land of Here! 'Tis a magical realm filled with splendorment and wonder, ^_^. Also, the pun-weaver who lives in my brain, upon reading "Spellblade," immediately imagined a sentient, legendary sword who knows how to spell all things in all languages, and corrects you when you write stuff. 8P

My last off-topic comment on this: A concise explanation of quantum mechanics still isn't going to be "brief."

Nope. I just think concision doesn't always go hand-in-hand with brevity. And the only thing I'm intentionally going to do is attempt to be concise. Are you a psychic, knowing what other people have in mind like that?

Excellent. So everyone can point out 73 ways in which I can approach a discussion without frustrating people that aren't even relevant to the situation at hand. My words conveyed my meaning, which was more specific than your abbreviated suggestion above. I'm not going to take up being vague purely because people find specifics annoying. You know what? Heh, actually, I'm gonna take this advice. I'll start being brief and concise, and we'll see how much that helps things. It'll be a splendid little experiment, 8D.

True. But, why do there need to be classes that need to buff? If your party bumps into a group of 6 heavily-armed melee combatants, and they just start charging at all your characters, then yeah, it's probably situationally quite beneficial to throw up some kind of magical shields that make your robe-wearing Priests and Mages less "squishy." But, if you've simply got to put 3 buffs on a given character 99% of the time, just to make them not useless or instantly killed in every single battle, what's even the point in that design? They have to live inside a bubble, but it's not even a permanent bubble? Plus, we know Wizards will have a defense called the Arcane Veil. Not sure if it's a buff, or a passive/innate ability, or a modal ability, etc. But, it very well could be. It's something specific to their class, so it doesn't seem to be a spell, but rather an ability. *shrug*. The IE games didn't have that, so we can't just look at the IE combat system if you suddenly ripped pre-combat buffing out of it, and assume that's what's going to happen in PoE. For the record, I'm not saying you're assuming that. I'm simply suggesting that, if you're going to take the time to point out undesirable hypotheticals, that you give just as much effort to considering desirable ones at the same time. Since we know there will be at-will spells AND per-encounter spells, it's extremely possible that a buff your class's build relied on for almost every single combat encounter would be per-encounter or at-will, rather than per-"day". And that's understandable. I don't think anyone's intent here is to pretend it can't go wrong. But, I personally feel like thinking of ways in which the game could end up proving you utterly wrong is a worthwhile endeavor. At the very least, it's no less worthwhile than taking the time to think of all the ways in which it could possibly be horrible. About the only conflict we have is that you highly doubt it's a minor change (and believe it will most likely be problematic in yours and others' enjoyment of the game for various reasons), and I simply believe it will actually not be so horrible as you think and will end up being pretty minor and working out pretty spiffily. And, I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone they have to believe the same thing. I don't KNOW it's going to be great. I simply believe it will be good and not terrible.

Everyone knows Quarians don't sweat! Their suit environments are kept in a constant homeostasis. GAH, u_u...

Yes. That comparison makes the same point as mine did. And I'm not really concerned with arguing the semantics of what is and isn't romance options. So, even though lots of people would say "But that isn't romance," I prefer to simply take an objective look at what can and cannot be done with interpersonal relationships between characters in a story, and go from there. To put it simply, the problem with "romance options" in RPGs, typically, ISN'T that the player is allowed to make decisions that affect emotional attachment and personal relationships with other characters, but that the game completely isolates that as its own sort of minigame. I mean, take the following situation: You arrive in a town and are ushered off to baths and accommodations by rather flirty servants/staff (you and your whole party), and you keep saying "No no, we really must be on our way," and yet they keep insisting you partake of their hospitality. Hey, your characters like all these pleasantries, right? You've been traveling for 3 days, and haven't had a meal like they're offering you in weeks. And, why NOT just go have some fun with willing people who are offering, eh? So, you have the choice of urging everyone to leave, or taking them up on their offer to indulge a bit in food, wine, and company. Annnnnnd it turns out there's actually something horribly wrong there, and it was all an illusion, and now you're imprisoned and they're feeding off your souls (you know, the ole Siren/succubus/seduce-and-feed scenario). And design it such that your decisions actually affect how bad of a situation you find yourself in, or how the story of that town unfolds and/or how you get to handle the situation. Maybe if you urge everyone to stay and enjoy themselves, you fail to get everyone out alive? *shrug*. That situation's totally fine, right? That's just a story, that happens to involve sex/temptation. But, have something just as meaningful/reactive that involves emotions between your characters, and it's suddenly the devil. Now, there could just be a town where you can purely optionally go visit some brothels and stuff, for pretty much no reason except to go "huh huh huh" to yourself or laugh at the funny dialog, and THAT, in comparison to a scenario in which your interaction with the brothel actually affects the unfolding of the story, would be just as crap as the way romance options are usually implemented in games in comparison to how they COULD be implemented in games. Heck, Morrigan in DA:O... even if you're just mean to her the whole time, she comes to you with a proposal to have your baby, because she actually has some kind of agenda for your DNA or something that doesn't even have anything to do with emotional attachment or "romance". Heck, I think even if you "romance" her, she still has the same motivation for wanting to produce a child of yours, and it's not just "Yay, you people who like romance can feel rewarded by achieving child-bearing desires in the person you chose to make fall in love with you! You win the dating sim!" That's about the best point I can make for that. Ignoring, of course, the fact that I don't think anyone still has any idea what the hell the point of her having your child is in relation to the ongoing DA story. OR the fact that, in the expansion, she somehow, unexplainably has your baby even if you don't impregnate her. Which might be explainable... she is magic, ya know... *shrug*. But, the point is, the story uses a pretty romancey thing (sex, impregnation) in a way completely separate from relationship-building mechanics.

There is, but, unless they've changed it and haven't told us yet, there's going to be a damage range for many attacks. Not too long ago, Josh commented on that specifically, in relation to the attack resolution's affect on damage (half or 1.5x, with graze/crit, respectively). He was saying that the ranges won't be as vast as 2-16 and stuff like we see in D&D, because, he doesn't want you to crit on the attack resolution, but roll a 2 for damage, and end up doing 3 damage on a critical hit, then roll a graze on the NEXT hit, but roll 16 for your damage, and deal 8 damage. Your graze was almost 3X as effective as your crit! 8D So, yeah, there will be a damage "roll." (Oh, and just for informational purposes, I believe the default ranges are still 01-05: Miss -- 06-50: Graze -- 51-95: Hit -- 96-100: Critical) Fighters get an accuracy bonus with melee weapons (they're supposed to be inherently better-trained with them, etc., and thus more capable of using them properly). Then, there'll probably be feats and/or proficiency-type representations that we can build up as we progress. To my knowledge, there aren't any class-based passive bonuses to overall damage from certain attacks (melee for Fighter or magic for Wizard, as per your bit above), but there could be, I suppose. However, in relation to the whole "why is Might all-encompassing?" thing, these class-based bonuses wouldn't really help much, since they would just make all Class X characters really buff but magically impotent, and all Class Y characters really magically potent but physically feeble. Which, the ability to make a non-feeble Wizard, for example (who, in that class-based bonuses system would basically always be feebler than other classes), is kind of the heart of the matter, here. It's what we're "losing" in the transition from the IE games (D&D rules) and PoE's own, unique IP ruleset (that's inspired by the previous ones). In D&D, you could make a Wizard who had good damage with melee weapons (without ever making melee weapons a superior option to your spells), or a Wizard who was feeble and had crappy melee damage/capability (accuracy and such). Either way, he was still a Wizard, and still cast spells (according to your INT), but, both Wizards could have the exact same INT value, and be just as equally magically capable. Even then, a Fighter got inherently greater capabilities (like Fighter-only feats and abilities) that made him pretty much always better with melee weapons than just about any Wizard (definitely after a few levels, if not at Level 1), even if he didn't have the same Strength. Plus, all the stuff Strength affected outside of combat in D&D. There were a lot of situations that called for Strength checks, and it didn't care who your character was or what class they were. It cared whether or not they were strong enough to complete a given task/action. With Might, having those same checks would be like D&D checking Strength AND Intelligence for the exact same things. "Your INT is 18. You headbutt the guard when he gets too close to you, and it's so forceful of a headbutt, he loses consciousness and probably has a concussion. Now you can crawl over to him and retrieve the key. Good job!" So, yeah, I'm not feeling class bonuses to provide physical/magic potency distinction. Because, then all those stat-check opportunities are just going to turn into class-check ones. "Oh, you have maximum Might, but you're a Wizard? Well, you're too weak to do this. You're a Fighter? Awesome! Max Might + your Fighter bonus that makes you burlier than you are magically potent = success!" Or we might just not have Strength checks of old. Which would be really sad, given that we've got something in PoE that the IE games didn't really have: a plethora of scripted interactions as distinct from dialogue and the like. But, oh well. If we've got Might, we've got Might. The game will still rock.

Hear hear! It SHOULD mean that he's probably set up a lot more advantages for himself than the average joe. i.e., he can send all 30 of his lackeys after you, and/or he has an escape route and an abode full of traps, and/or he gets the home-field advantage because you're fighting him where he lives, and/or he's been doing this for a while so he's accumulated some nice things such as magical weapons or spells or protective armor and is pretty deadly. None of that increases his ability to take axes to the face and laugh about it. Now... a huge Ogre versus a reg'lar little human, sure. But, that's more that you're physically less capable of affecting him (your words are like small daggers compared to his larger size, thicker layers of skin, etc.). But if a fireball hits him in the face, his face should burn just like any other face. If you wanna make a boss "tough": A) give him a reason to be ("He's a boss" doesn't count), and B) Make him complicate the act of successfully striking him before you die and/or reduce the effects of your attacks in a feasible fashion. There's no need for "My 30 damage was really good against almost everything else in the world, but this guy's dealing in a completely different currency, and 30 damage is NOTHING to him!"

You actually sort of do. You get "crushed" between the force pushing you against the wall, and the wall itself. If it's not crush damage, then it's just plain old "physical damage," which pretty much anything deals. A sword blade cuts, but a sword blow can also break a bone. It's just force being transmitted throughout. I get where you're going with this, but I just don't know that there's anything in the game that really needs the distinction of the form of damage specifically being "concussive." I mean, it really just depends on what you're hitting. If you hit a stone golem, does HE take concussive damage? Or does he just take crushing damage? I mean, there could be a "blunt" damage, I suppose. But, that's kind of what "crush" is representing, methinks (maces, hammers, etc.). The only distinction is in how it is affected by defensive things like armor. Your slashy slashy sword will deal "concussive" damage to plate armor. The only difference is that the armor absorbs/distributes most of it instead of your body doing it. Blunt/crushing damage, however, would effectively disturb the armor's ability to keep its form, thereby allowing the force to reach your damageable bits. I'm not sure it really matters how we classify the force at that point (in terms of mechanics), is all. I mean, punching and kicking people in the face/body is technically "concussive" damage, but games usually just call it "physical damage" and allow for effects like "concussed" and injuries such as broken bones and internal damage and the like. If you can come up with a benefit from having that be specifically represented as a type of damage in the game, then, by all means, do so. Just 'cause I can't doesn't mean there isn't one. Right, but, with the way attack resolution works, Fortitude simply affects whether or not you're affected by the poison (or are doubly-affected by the poison, or are half-affected by the poison). If the deadliest poison attack in the game has an Attack rating of 50, and you have a Fortitude of 60, then you automatically are above being critically hit by that poison affect, thus effectively mitigating the extent by which that poison can ever affect your bodily system (while other people could suffer that poison for twice as long). So, without any second factor (like armor versus physical damage, with its damage threshold) saying "Okay, you got hit, but maybe you'll take less damage from the poison than other people, per tick?", the idea that some people are more resistant to poison than others is fully represented, without a real need for a "poison" damage type, specifically. That's why I don't find it surprising there's no poison damage, and is what I meant by the line you quoted.

First of all, that's not even a disagreement, partial or otherwise. It's simply a supplemental observation. We can have those tradeoffs with buffs, and also we can have other functions and interesting things done with buffs. And also we can restrict buffs to combat, and still even maintain the general idea behind the tradeoffs, as well as the other interesting things. I even talked about still allowing pre-combat buffing, but simply controlling it a bit better, so I'm not even just presenting such a rigid perspective as to say "they've decided no pre-combat buffing, so THERE SHOULD NEVER EVER BE ANY PRE-COMBAT BUFFING!" or anything. So, I'm honestly not sure what's wrong with my presentation of ideas in the context of this thread. I'm truly not trying to be hostile or anything here. Just matter-of-fact. But... do you not see the irony here? I respond to posts that seem to not take my point accurately (usually that I'm actually not disagreeing with something, but am simply trying to supplement the group discussion/analysis at hand) and that's somehow bad form, intentional or no. But it's only bad form because my posts seem to be ignoring other people's points and/or suggesting that they're "disdaining partial disagreement," in which case it's totally justified to call me out as the anomaly, the source of the trouble (again, regardless of intention)? I'm just trying to make sense of that, to be honest. At this moment, I fail to comprehend exactly how I'm supposed to approach a discussion without frustrating people by not typing posts exactly as others wish me to. I feel like we're playing a board game I didn't even know we were playing, and I don't know the rules. And, instead of telling me the rules, you're just telling me every time I'm not adhering to them. I really am truly sorry for being frustrating, regardless of the reason, and I honestly appreciate your consideration that it most likely isn't intentional (a lot of people just assume it is, which really isn't very fun). And, maybe it is best to agree to disagree. However, just to be clear, there's a difference between that and agreeing to allow everyone else to make whatever points they want, while I refrain from doing so because my presentation of ideas is somehow inherently frustrating. To be clearer, I'm not implying you're meaning it like that, but many often seem to do so, so I only wanted to make the difference clear. If you wish it, I'll cease addressing you, specifically, on this matter. But, should I feel the need to simply address the topic further, in general, in this thread, it's just going to have to go ignored by those who don't wish to address me (or be addressed by me) about it. Which is fine. I've said it oodles of times: My posts are not inherently valuable to all. If something doesn't make sense to you, and you don't want to expend the effort of making sense of it, that doesn't say anything bad about you. But, so long as someone's making the effort to clarify their point in direct response to something I've said, I'm going to do exactly the same with whatever I feel might've been vague or misleading, or just plain whatever will make my point better/clearer.

I'd swear you're wearing straw-colored glasses lenses or something. 8P All "you put niceness coins in until you get rewarded with sex" implementations are romance options, but all romance options are not "you put niceness coins in until you get rewarded with sex" implementations, to put it simply.

Along these lines, I'm thinking there might actually be room for a simple crouch toggle. Hypothetically... if trying to fire "through" an ally directly in your line of fire actually is represented with a penalty in PoE, then crouching would allow for a double-row of archers (pretty much only useful in narrow corridors, where a "row" is like... one person). AND, crouching could possibly be instrumental in sneaking (But not an automatic part of it like in some games, where, when you're sneaking, you're just ALWAYS crouched, even when there's no reason to be.) Maybe you're walking through some bushes/tall grass? You could just crouch, if you need to quickly hide. And, while crouched, you move more slowly, but stay lower. This would work for low walls and such, too. *shrug*

While this is definitely true, I can't help but point out how noticeable it is when a film/story arbitrarily ignores any semblance of "romance" whatsoever. It's almost like never ever seeing any food, or even hearing any mention of it (not even troops rations, or talk of having had lunch, or any footage of anyone putting any food in their mouth, at all). As I said, there are some plots that just don't really have any room for it at all, but those are pretty rare. Most are quite a bit strange to be completely devoid of any and all formation of emotional attachment between characters throughout crazy, life-threatening situations and dire circumstances. It's not like there's got to be some huge emphasis on romantic endeavors, and some huge, arduous process of falling in love, concluding in people doing it, OR absolutely no feelings at all. That's one of my biggest complaints about the treatment of this subject, in general, in terms of its actual implementation into stories (film, book, game, etc.). It's just this binary decision of "will we put in a dating/marriage sim, or won't we?" I think any time it's done, it definitely needs to be optional. I hate it when opting out of flirting and extensive emotional attachment is really just choosing negative romance options. That's what's most dumb. The FOCUS hardly ever needs to be romance. It's just a different type of bond, is all. It can go really far, or it can just be a lighter one. I want characters to be able to care about each other on an individual basis, and not just "well obviously you're my ally and friend, and I wouldn't save you any harder than I'd save some random stranger who probably also doesn't deserve bad things to happen to them." *shrug*. As with most things, the majority of legitimate complaints on this topic are all about bad/flawed implementations of such things. The biggest thing is that there's not just ONE degree of "romance" that has to go into the game. I think we use the term pretty lightly/generally in terms of game aspects, which is why they're called "romance options" and the whole thing isn't called a "romance game." It doesn't define the game. It's like... combat. Even adventure games have combat in them, a little. But that doesn't make them all about combat. It's in where it fits. Sometimes there's more of it, and sometimes there's less. Sometimes you fight-and-kill people, and sometimes you just stave things off and/or escape situations. Same with romance. It's not just dating options, sex, and marriage. It's merely the representation of interpersonal attachment in the situations and circumstances. Maybe you have your character care more about one companion than others. Or maybe you just treat them all as friends. It can actually affect different things in interesting ways, instead of just being an arbitrary "huh huh huh, you can dating sim if you want, as a complete afterthought and side thing to the story."

And bananas are mushy, brown, and disgusting. Oh, wait... that's just the bad ones. What you're doing would be akin to judging "movement" in general, in video games, and saying "It's really primitive and stupid. You can only move in one of the 4 cardinal directions, and you move one whole grid block at a time." There. We shouldn't have movement in video games. (See how that's inaccurate?)

Poison COULD actually deteriorate the flesh. OR, it could simply cease biological functions. It doesn't necessarily have to directly damage flesh to work. So, I can see how it's not quite the same thing. But, at the same time, in the context of an abstract system, I could see the game using "corrode" as the damage type if it needed one for poison. Because, well... it's close enough. . The specifics aren't really represented in-game, most likely.

I was simply clarifying things. This is text, and it can easily be assumed to be in any number of tones, but that does not make it so. My knickers are twist-free. The fact remains that I present ideas to present ideas, not purely in the hopes of gaining congenial responses. If my ideas are unclear to you, you can either help me clarify them for your own benefit (if you're interested in knowing/understanding them, despite the obstacle of the lack of clarity), or you can deem it unworthy of your time and effort. Either way, that doesn't make my ideas pointless, or my presentation of them meaningless. It simply means we have an unfortunate disconnect. You are disagreeing with my ideas on the basis that they're intending to do away with the things you've pointed out as beneficial in the buff system. Which is not the case. Again, you can ask me how that isn't the case, or not care, or think I'm a liar, or believe me. That's all up to you, whatever it is you wish to do, for whatever reason you wish to do it. However, determining the validity of my ideas without first actually comprehending them is utterly pointless. And discussing to what degree I should have made my ideas clear in the first place is a bit moot, too. To be honest, I don't understand exactly what it is YOU want in the buff system, which is exactly why I decided to clarify what it is I think should be done with it, rather than try to judge your specific ideas down to a T. If you'd simply take the time to actually join me in observing the potential of buffs and their role in an RPG in general, rather than narrowing the options at hand down to a way to do buffs, and the complete disagreement with that way of doing them, we'd probably get farther than we're getting now. Let me ask you this: What do you think shouldn't be done with the buff system, in the context of what we know of PoE's design, and why do you think that? I'm not here to argue about whose opinion is better. I want to understand your perspective, and I don't right now. And obviously mine isn't making much sense to you. So, let's try to get on the same page, and go from there.

Perfect examples of Balance Gone Wrong, or When Balance Attacks! You can't pluck any two things that are similar and balance them in isolation. But, it often gets used like that. There's no reason for a foe's difficulty to be directly balanced against you the whole game, or for one foe to be balanced against one other foe, or for some Priest ability that does damage to be balanced against some Fighter ability that does damage. It's a lot more general than that. Using the class-balance example, you have to make sure the best ability a Priest gets in the whole game isn't "Pick Own Nose" while the Fighter gets "Cleave Mountains." But, that's more about the complete lack of necessity or benefit for the Fighter to be able to be so sheerly powerful, and about the complete lack of utility or capability in the Priest's ability to pick his own nose. Basically, you just want to make sure the Priest can be as useful in progressing through the game as any other class. Not necessarily as damaging, or as armored, or as survivable on his own, or as loot-centric, etc. When you start zooming in too far, balance loses all significance. That's why I stressed approaches as a pretty good thing to look at. Picking a Priest as your class should be balanced against picking some other class. Not all their individual abilities. Not their DPS. The overall approach. Beating the game as a Priest should be just as viable (note I didn't say "easy", although it should be roughly as easy, just because of how things work) as beating the game with a Fighter. But then, playing as 6 Priests might be much more difficult than playing as 6 Fighters. Not to mention the fact that viability simply means you're ABLE to do what is necessary. So, again, with 6 Priests, you're going to have to do some figuring out how to build the Priests differently to cover all the capabilities you need. Simply picking Priests doesn't make you succeed at tasks. Being able to overcome obstacles, and overcoming obstacles are not the same thing. So, I dare say balance isn't bad. But, just like anything else, when used improperly, it's terrible.

I would imagine so. It could be "shock" as in trauma, but... that seems awfully weird as a damage type, rather than an effect type. Well... "crush" almost is concussive. It's simply impact versus inertia. If a boulder hits you, and compresses your armor and your ribs and your body before you're able to be pushed out of the way by it, then you're crushed, even if you're not crushed against anything else. *shrug*. They could potentially still have concussive effects, and simply represent them with crush-type damage, methinks. I know it's not quite the same thing, but... it's very close. Interesting question. 8P With things like poison or hunger, I don't think a damage type is functionally necessary, since damage is damage, and you can't really ever attack a protective factor with hunger or poison (like weapon types versus armor). I mean, a poison either gets to your bloodstream/internal tissue, or doesn't. At that point, attack resolution determines whether or not you actually take any damage, or only partial damage, etc. Same with hunger. You can't swing a hunger at someone, and have their skin negate part of its effects. They either are hungry enough (relative to their physiology/metabolism) to take damage, or they are not. *shrug*. Of course, there may be times when you want someone to be more resistant to hunger than to poison, for example. BUT, mechanically, having them as simply different damage-producing effect types, instead of actual damage types, probably works fine. Then, there's magic. It can obviously create regular physical results (corrosion, fire/burn, crush, etc.) in terms of damage type, but, usually there's some damage type that's unique to the energies of magic. In the case of PoE, it's soul-energy, I suppose. So, a good example is the Cipher. If they store up focus and tear at people's souls with it upon attacks with their focus-imbued weapon, then what kind of damage is that? That, and the whole potential for things like Magic Missile (usually "arcane" or "spirit" damage types, or something along those lines). So, again, good question.

What does League of Legends have to do with this romance analysis? o_O

We're using different meanings. I don't disagree with you. The reason I said "technically" is because you cannot replace romance options with not-romance options and somehow maintain the quantity of distinct option types, is all. Imagine you have 7 different foods on a table. If you take one of the unique dishes away (say... I dunno, salad), and you replace it with a second plate of another dish (Mac and cheese, for example's sake), then you've still got the same amount of food, but you could still say the table has "less" food than it did have, since it had 7 foods, and now it has only 6 foods. I wasn't trying to argue with you. I was just pointing out a technicality of the meaning of "less interactivity," because I'm a defective android. 8P