Lephys

No no, you're right. I was mainly just being silly. I mean, the gist of it is mostly stuff we've already been privy to, but you can't really expect everyone at a formal presentation like that to just be up to speed on all the individual tidbits of information that are spread across the forums and web. And there are new little tidbits here and there; topics/information we sort of know about, but being talked about in a little more depth by Josh than it was previously. Overall, good stuff, ^_^. I skimmed through the video (couldn't hear it well at the time, even with my laptop speakers maxed -- the volume on that site is reallllly low...), and I'll probably watch the whole thing later. I just always like listening to Josh explain stuff.

Good question. Also, "godlike" should be like a separate modifier for race, since it's not a unique race, but rather a subset of all other races. For instance, you can be a godlike Aumaua, a godlike Orlan, a godlike Human, etc.

Methinks people are separating them, as if they're two completely different things, rather than simple co-op being a specific form of multiplayer. Maybe instead of whatever I posted initially, I should've just quoted Inigo Montoya: "You keep saying that word... I do not think it means what you think it means."

For what it's worth, I have a thought (wanted to separate it from my wall-o-text up there... I honestly try to be concise, haha... *sigh*): It might be best to at least group benefits and detriments by target, whether they're pre-paired or selected from a list. What I mean is, if you get a benefit that directly pertains to damage output, you should have to get a detriment that also affects the same thing. So you won't end up with "I do 20% more base damage, but get a -8 to all Lockpicking rolls, even though I don't even have the Lockpicking skill! 8D!". If you got extra critical damage, you might have to take decreased armor penetration, or lessened base damage, or attack speed, or -10% weapon skill bonus, etc. Something else dealing with the same equation. I think those are my favorite perks. The ones that sort of distinguish your character in a way that the rest of the system cannot. "Like... you're great at talking to men, but have a hard time talking to women." No amount of adjustment to a Speech skill (for example) or reaction modifier, etc., would produce that result. Also, I just wanted to point out that you can never eliminate non-trade-offs caused by a player's subjective views. If you don't give a crap that you're going to make terrible skill checks or have fewer useful dialogue options whenever you talk to women, the system can't make you care. All it can do is make not-sucking-at-talking-to-women a valuable character aspect. In the Good-Natured example you provided, you can't make the character care much about combat skills, even if they were more needed (in greater numbers) than they actually are in that game. You can only really balance their potentials against one another, not their actual effects. But, yes, if you just let everyone pick whatever, or pair nothing but really goofy things, then you might as well not have detriments at all, and just let everyone pick bonuses, with the detriment being that they DIDN'T pick some other bonus.

@PrimeJunta: I'm really not saying this in any kind of hostile manner, or calling you an idiot or anything, but I don't think you realize that I do get what you're saying. And that might be the fault of my not making it clear with my words that I understand it, and if that's the case, I apologize for perpetuating confusion on that. I realize I have a defective brain, and I almost always say things in ways that confuse other people. But, I really try not to, and I need other people's help to find the discrepancy, because it makes fine sense to me, and it's truly me intentionally striving to not just say the first thing that makes sense in my own head. Look at how many design specifics contribute to the exact situation of that one kind of falling into the non-trade-off category. The game content that requires/benefits from the various skills, both combat and non, the specific design of INT and its contribution to your skillpoints, the caps and values of all the skills in comparison to the amount of skillpoints you can potentially gain to make up for things, etc. Piggy-backing on that, here's an example of how things could be done in FO:NV, specifically. The skills only go to 100, right? (I can't remember, because in the old Fallouts, they went up to like... 400% or something...?). So, what if, with everything else staying the same, you upped the cap on the skills to, say, 115. Then, have various things throughout the game actually allow for actions/choices that can only be taken with over 100 in a given skill. Now, the game doesn't expect you to get anywhere close to 115 in every skill, so, without taking a trait or perk that boosts a given skill, you're basically going to cripple yourself by just pumping points into the ones you want to get above 100, because there are intentionally not that many points to be had. I'm going to go ahead and say that, yes, while that illustrates my point, it probably wouldn't be a very wise design decision, over-all. However, to put it simply, if the system is set up to allow for mere point-boosts (be it in a skill, or proficiency, or what-have-you) to be significant things, then such things don't become non-trade-offs. Is it feasible? Under the right circumstances, yes. It really depends on a lot of specifics. Which is why I'm not trying to emphasize anything but the mere relationship. There are only so many options: 1) Just don't allow trait/perk-type selections at all, so you have no benefits to balance at all. 2) Allow traits/perks and just don't balance them at all. 3) Allow them and balance them in some fashion with detriments (whether paired or individually selectable). I agree that having them be individually selectable is the most tricky method. I've agreed with that from the start. There are lots of probabilities that skyrocket, and the list of feasible possibilities shortens, I get that. But, sometimes, when you see a problematic non-trade-off in a game, it just comes down to the way in which everything was done, and not the sheer idea of having that trade-off in the first place. I think pairing them is definitely the most feasible way to go. And they still have to be intelligently designed, obviously. You can't just pair two things at random, or blatantly imbalance them. "You get 700 extra damage per attack, but move .00000001% more slowly" is clearly a terrible perk. But, still in tune with my point, it's a terrible perk because of the numbers (first and foremost). Not because it's inherently impossible to ever balance damage and movement speed. (again, not that damage versus movement speed is the absolute best pairing in the universe.) The point is the effect of the specifics, and nothing more. If you get what I'm saying, then good. I'm not trying to win or anything. The only reason respond with clarifications and explanations is out of respect. To do otherwise or just ignore you, in my mind, would be to suggest you're incapable of understanding the point or something. Like I said, a misunderstanding doesn't infer your fault. It could be mine, or yours, or any combination. I'm not worried about fault. If you have an interest in my point, then I'll do my best to clarify it. It's as simple as that. And, again, I'm sorry if I'm just not making it easy to take my meaning. But, if you can pinpoint the bits that don't seem to make sense, or don't seem to convey what I'm claiming my meaning to be, then please point them out. That helps us both. I don't disagree with you about your criticisms of specific examples. I'm simply focusing on a point/aspect that it didn't seem to me you were realizing I was focusing on, is all. It wasn't a "you're wrong, because (insert my point here)" thing. Just a simple case of seemingly mistaking my point for something else.

Will there be a skill to (partially) mitigate that slowing down ? I dunno about that. I mean, there'll probably be things that increase your action speed. So then, with the same amount of slowed-down-ed-ness (that's totally a word), you're still faster than you were. You know... 5-2 is more than 3-2. So... in a way, I guess it technically would mitigate the slowing down? But, it actually matters in mechanics equations (especially if the slowing is a percentage or something) whether or not you actually change the speed penalty (slow-downing), or just the base values to which that penalty is being applied. Of course, there COULD be talents or something, or proficiencies, that just decrease the penalty, as well. 8P

Companions, all the way. I have sort of a compulsion towards story-oriented characters. They are the flame to my moth. If I try to make an all-adventurer party, for example, I'll just get sad and switch back to companions. I'm weird...

With all the other options they're already offering, that would be a most interesting addition. You couldn't even show a bar, or "experience to next level" meter or anything, though, with that option on, or it'd just be a simple matter of doing the math to still know which choice game more XP, etc. *shrug*. I just think that'd be pretty interesting. I mean, ideally you don't have any "sweet talk this person and you get 50 XP, but kill them and you get 7,000" situations, to put it overly simply, BUT... I wouldn't even be worried about ANY discrepancies at all if I didn't even know any better. Just make your choices, and go. As long as you still got plenty of XP to level up appropriately and not be like 7 levels behind the curve when you reach the end of the game, you'd be none the wiser, and could simply enjoy your decisions for their own sake, without the distraction of considering the numbers. It'd be like blinders! 8D. Keep your eye on the track.

Godlike Elven Wizard. Hmmm... or maybe Orlan. All the races are so unexpectedly appealing. I definitely wanna give godlike a go, though, whatever my race, and I'll definitely be a Wizard.

^ I definitely think they should react dramatically when applicable. Either extreme is terrible. A goody-two-shoes' willing acceptance of your puppy-kicking ways is equally as terrible as a puppy-kicker leaving your party just because you don't decide to kick puppies everywhere you go. When everyone becomes a spoiled child who can't deal with the fact that other people get to make their own decisions and be individuals, you know it's gone too far. That's one of my only/biggest complaints about the Walking Dead game/episodes. Several of the decisions that the game regards as uber-significant are basically just expressions of opinion rather than actions. Everyone keeps getting into ridiculously huge squabbles, and essentially flip a big coin, and say "I think it's going to be heads, but HE thinks it's going to be tails! What do YOU think, player?!", and you arbitrarily have to side with one, and the other one hates you. OR, you can say something like "Umm. It could really be either, and guessing's not going to help." Then, they BOTH hate you. It's a little silly, to be honest. I mean, I get that there's a lot of psychological stuff going on that they're dealing with in that whole post-apocalypse setting, but, still. Anywho, I certainly don't want a Rogue, for example, who's going to go "We should rob some people at random!", and me be like "Erm, there are guards everywhere, and that's probably not a good idea at ALL right now. Maybe when we get to another city...", and have that Rogue just go "OMG! I HATE YOU AND I'M LEAVING THE GROUP, SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU WON'T ALWAYS DO WHAT I JUST HAPPEN TO WANT TO DO!" It'd be one thing if you just actively fought the Rogue every time he/she stole or even questionably-acquired something. I could understand that getting really grating on their nerves. But, it gets really silly when it's a simple matter of "you can either be just like me and we'll be best friends, or you can be different and I'll want to see you dead."

BTW, fully armored knight is grounded. Might get burns, but much less vulnerable to electrical attacks than someone wearing leather or something.. Well, I wasn't going to be the one to tell Fantasy Fysics that there's no Santa Claus, but, I guess now it knows.

I appreciate the responses. However, as I suspected, people seem to be automatically jumping to the conclusion that multiplayer = extra gamplay stuff. Rustypup talks about the bulk of content relying on other players. Junta talks about how the sheer fact that two people are in the same game somehow inherently dilutes the game itself. I don't know how to clarify what it is I'm saying. The world "multiplayer" might commonly dredge up a bunch of thoughts of heavily multiplayer-based shooters and entire multiplayer aspects of various games, but all it fundamentally means is "more than one player is interacting with this game, instead of just one player doing so." Has anyone ever played the Secret of Mana? It was an old SNES action-RPG that had multiplayer support. Player two could grab the 2nd controller, and control another character, instead of the AI doing so. That's it. Same game, same literally everything else. Just... now there are two players, instead of one. You weren't forced to have strangers break into your home and join the game with the other controller, or worry about additional characters popping into existence and ruining the game balance, loot-sharing, etc. I know this is going to sound really crazy, but utilizing online capability to be able to do this with your friend on his own computer at a different location, rather than on your very same computer, does not mean you MUST play with a bunch of random people online, or that people have to join random sessions and just put up with one another. The game doesn't have to have a bunch of servers that host sessions and stuff. The ONLY difference is that the game has to handle multiple clients. Host & Join. I realize that that's extra work to implement, and that it's not really the most beneficial addition to a game like a cRPG. The only feasible use of such a thing would be "my friend and I want to play through this game together, and he'll control one other party member while I control another." So, no, I don't think it's a priority. But, nor do I think it's somehow inherently ridiculous and pointless. Hence my conditional "if." IF it were just in the game, why would that be preposterous? Like, people are retarded if they want to co-op such a game? Not have a whole separate multiplayer arena, or have 2 people making double the choices, and extra characters, etc. Just "I want to play this with a friend." Basically, in an ideal world, where implementing that doesn't cost anything extra, what reason would there be for not having that in there? Thus, in reality, where it DOES cost extra and probably isn't worth the cost (not because it's detrimental, but because it's very so small of a benefit, in the grand scheme of things, versus the cost associated), I understand that that's a good reason not to put it into the game. This is why I asked about people's sentiments regarding its mere existence in the game, rather than the decision of whether or not to spend the time and resources to put it in. Everyone's acting as though the sheer idea of two people interacting with the same game is somehow preposterous, even if it was free. Like it would hurt the game. "Oh great, my friend COULD connect to me and join in my game, should I decide to set that up... NOW THE GAME'S RUINED!" So, there. I've explained myself, and I'm sorry for being interested in people's perspectives on things. But there's really no need to twist my words into some debate about whether or not we should put it in the game or not. I was simply asking a question about people's sentiments regarding the very idea of multiplayer capability in the game. If you think that's a dumb question, feel free to not-answer and consider me a moron. I really don't mind. Telling me to stop trying to be logical, however, isn't really doing anyone any good (for example).

Those are the best flavor! Thanks, Molto! ^_^

My my... Someone's a little ray of sunshine today, aren't they? Obsidian has told us on multiple occasions that they openly welcome and value our feedback. So, if you think they're liars, then you think they're liars. I don't see what that has to do with what I say or don't say. Frankly, I couldn't care less whether or not you agree with anything I've said. I'm not here to enforce people's beliefs. I'm simply sharing my insight. Value it or don't, but insulting my metaphors and trying to make things personal doesn't accomplish anything. There's simply a reasonable way of offering feedback, resulting in objectively valuable "judgement," and an unreasonable way of doing so. No matter how perfectly fine it is for everyone to have whatever opinion they want, it doesn't change the fact that some of them are objectively useful when it comes to making game design decisions, and some of them aren't. I had no hand in the creation of reason, so it really doesn't do any good to complain about what is and isn't reasonable to me. As if my suddenly changing my mind would have any effect on the truth. Also, food for thought: If it doesn't make any difference whether we provide feedback or not, then what's the point in convincing me or anyone else of that? What difference is it going to make, according to your belief, whether I read your post just now, or didn't? Whether I changed my mind, or just kept believing what I believe, true or otherwise?

My point is simply that, if you have a reason to want both things, the non-trade-off loses its "non." Shall I explain why I made such a point (maybe it's baffling WHY I'd say that, because it seems obvious?)? At least one example in here was someone pointing out something like "In that one game, you could take that perk that gave you a huge boost to Skill X, only, Skill X served almost no purpose throughout the entire game! Therefore, that shouldn't have been a perk!" In that scenario, I dare say Skill X should've been designed less crappily in the first place, thus killing two birds with one stone. Now you actually miss out on something if you don't gain a huge bonus to Skill X (by picking some other perk), AND skill X serves a purpose, instead of basically being useless or inherently inferior. Never did I say "in any given situation, we should just adjust the game to accommodate the perk." If the perk's crappy, the perk's crappy. But, sometimes it isn't the perk's fault. It's the rest of the game's. "It's not always the perk that's the cause of the non-trade-off." Really. Quite. Simple. @PrimeJunta: I'm so very glad you think that some kind of swords-vs-maces effectiveness trade-off would most likely not exist within a design typically seen in a cRPG. That is as lovely as it is irrelevant to my point. Replace "swords-vs-maces" with whatever you want (because the specifics have absolutely nothing to do with anything), and if the two things that you're supposed to be choosing between don't have equal usefulness in the game, then the perk is bad. Even if it's the best conceptual perk in the universe.

@Plutone00: I apologize for causing you to feel the need to go through this so many times, but I feel I owe it to you to to try my best to point out that that isn't what I'm arguing against. What you're re-iterating is glancing past its target, because my point is a small and simple one that co-exists with all that. To put it simply, all referenced examples are the worst examples of such attempts, ever (at least, factoring in game "size"/success/media attention). So, I'd agree with you exactly in regard to all the worst examples of choice/consequence carry-over. However, that does not make choice/consequence carry-over, itself, a bad or problematic thing. You don't have to plan out a trilogy just to have something carry over. Here is an example: In PoE, you could have the option of heavily influencing someone's life/situation, only to not see any significant result of that on the world by the end of the game. Boom... no crazy extra work done there. Then, if it's quite successful, and they decide to make a 2nd game (not "PoE, PART TWO OUT OF THREE!", but simply another game in the same world that continues the story of the world, if not the exact same characters that were in your party in the first game), then your data from the first game could be imported into that game. Then, if you influenced that character to, say, reclaim their birthright of rule in some particular city, then that city could be a completely different place (figuratively speaking -- in a far different state than it otherwise would be in) than if you didn't do so, or influenced that person to do something else, etc. I realize that's a bad example, because "Why should you have so much influence over a person?" is going to come up, but, that's completely irrelevant to the point of the example. The point is, the second game can be designed to actually take that data and make a significant alteration to the state of the world (in this case, a city) with it. Yes, at a certain point, you reach the boundary of limitation. You can't have one choice have all the citizens of the entire planet pack up and start civilizations on the moon, and the other choice have them all just continue on that planet, for instance. The 2nd game would essentially have two entire worlds designed, only one of which would be used by any given player. That's probably infeasible, resource-wise. However, you can still have things actually be significant, and not be forcibly episodically restricted like all the terrible examples that keep being pointed to. In other words, have choices then design the consequences accordingly. Instead of designing the consequences (especially not the specifics of several games at once), then just forcing the design of the choices to fit all that. If you'd like to just cease this, then I'll gladly do so. But, I hope you understand what it is I'm saying, exactly, and that "if you do things like these other games did, it's not going to work" simply isn't obstructing my point, since I, myself, am acknowledging the faults of those examples. I simply believe there to be more possibilities than: 1) The faults of ME and the Witcher, and 2) The complete avoidance of carrying over consequences into another storyline/lore/world state.

But see, you've already got skills that represent skill, completely separate from stats, and stats (such as, traditionally, Intelligence) that affect those skills. It seems awfully redundant/counter-intuitive for Intelligence to grant you access to more skill points and/or skill bonuses, AND just directly boost your damage (which is supposed to be derived from skill, but is derived from both skill AND raw intelligence?) outright. I at least like where the Resolve thing is going, and that it has an interest in giving Strength some kind of direct effect on a character's offensive capabilities. However, Strength boosting AoE spells is just as strange as Resolve boosting physical whirly attacks (why does my weapon get more reach in a Death Twirl, just because I have oodles of Resolve?). We either have to accept that abstraction one way or the other, OR find a way to eliminate it altogether. Also, if we change Intellect to Discipline, then what represents intellect? "Dumb" people can have oodles of discipline. Maybe Person A reads a book, and understands it all in an hour, while Person B reads that book 3 times before they understand it all. With discipline, they can make up for the fact that they couldn't immediately grasp it all. But, Person A doesn't just learn 17 books worth of information because he understands the book so powerfully. In a way, the rate of comprehension/learning is a larger factor in measures of intelligence than some kind of knowledge cap is. Our brains are capable of storing a ridiculous amount of information. It's mostly a matter of how much we can learn before we grow old and die. Super genius kids tend to figure out stuff that 40-year-old professors have already figured out, oftentimes. It's just that they've figured it out so much more quickly. *shrug* Annnywho. For what it's worth, I think a lot of the simple renames that fix one problem simply boot the representation of an entirely different character aspect right out the window. I dunno... I mean, you are being hit. You lose Stamina AND Health when you get hit. It's not as it the enemy has to first get through your stamina before they can actually cause permanent damage. So, I'm not sure "defense points" would represent stamina very well. VERY much a fan of this line of thinking. *thumbs up* ^_^ I wouldn't go that far. It's abstract. Sure, there are other approaches to it, but he's trying to make it intuitive. I don't think he's doing the opposite of what he wants to happen or anything. Just... there's still room for imaginative tweaks to the design, methinks, without it being completely unintuitive or overly complex or anything.

@Plutone00: I wasn't angry with you for anything. I was just honestly trying to figure out what I had missed. As far as I can tell, I did get the point. I realize I didn't read every single post in this whole thread, but, as far as I can tell, the gist of what you're saying is in bold. "I don't want PoE to be a lab rat." And that's exactly what I was making a point in response to. You're failing to see what it is I'm saying, in all of its accurate entirety. You say that if Bioware couldn't do it with its big budget, then how can PoE with it's small one? But, the entire point is that Bioware could've done it, but simply didn't. The only arguments I've seen (and that you've even reiterated so far) have to do with "Here are some instances of failure, thus it's not prudent to make any more attempts." Which would be perfectly logical if it all the examples were made by the same people, and wasn't the exact same mistake made by several different developers in several different instances with completely varied circumstances. Now, thatbeing said, NEITHER am I saying that "No matter what, I just want PoE to arbitrarily do this with their design." But, here's the thing. What's the difference between making a standalone game, which then has a sequel made afterward that takes place in the same world, and planning the two parts from the get-go? J.K. Rowling came up with the entire idea for Harry Potter on a single train ride. Sure, she had to hash it all out, but she knew what she wanted the world to be like, and the skeleton of the story, etc. You think authors just write a book, then begin thinking about anything at all outside the specific scope of that book's story? Of course not. If they make PoE, THEN decide they want to make a sequel, or even just another game set in the same world that doesn't take place 7 bajillion years later or something, then it seems ludicrously feasible to have a couple of different variables at play, based on things that happened in the previous game. And actually have it affect a significant difference. If you agree that nothing's actually inherently preventing these attempts from succeeding in these other games and referenced examples, then I don't understand how anything you're saying is contradictory to anything I'm saying. I don't want PoE to be a lab rat, either, but I also don't want it to arbitrarily refrain from attempting anything unique in its design. You say I'm preaching to the choir, but you're still suggesting that the only two options are "be a ME-like trilogy, designed exactly like ME, or don't even try to design like that at all." This isn't a binary discussion. I can say any number of things on the matter, and not just agree or disagree with specifically whatever's been said by the majority of people. Again, none of this is angry typing, so I apologize if it reads that way. But, I'm respectfully disagreeing with what it is you're saying, so I don't know how I'm saying the same thing you are (aka "preaching to the choir.") I dare say I can believe that PoE could very well utilize some carried-over-between-games choice consequences, AND still not really resemble ME's structure at all, for example. Or any of the other examples, for that matter. I'm not saying "They should plan their game just like Bioware planned ME, but THIS TIME IT'LL WORK!" And, for the record, Bioware had PLENTY of opportunities to make most of those choices much more impactful than they did. Saving the Rachni, for example? That wasn't bad because "Oh no, it has to impact the story in a huge way, but we can't do that." It was bad because all they did was contribute to a big "here are your final total forces" bar at the end of the third installment. Anywho... I could ramble about all this all day long, but I don't think that would do us any good. The fact remains that PoE COULD utilize choice-and-consequence carry-over between games without failing or "burning the cake," so to speak. I don't know whether or not they should. That's up to the devs, really. They know what they're working with, and whether or not its feasible with their tools and resources and their lore/story plan.

That's a bit of an overkill reaction (to the opposite extreme). It's not that we can't judge anything. We can judge plenty. But, mainly: 1) Certain things are pointless to judge (such as stuff that hasn't even made its way into the game build yet) 2) Judging things using "what this should do/be when the game is complete" is pretty pointless. That's all I'm saying. Don't judge a half-painted wall by saying "Man, the rest of that wall is TOTALLY still unpainted! That's a TERRIBLE design!" And don't judge things until you can actually see them. "I'm waiting for dessert, but it's not even on the table yet to taste, so... this absence of dessert in my mouth right now doesn't taste like I think dessert should, so I'm gonna say the dessert is TERRIBLE!"

Or your LIGHTNING! *villainous cackle*

Heh, if you think what all's been mentioned so far is bad, I was watching my friend play Space Colony, and he had this little harvester thing (much like the tiberium/ore harvesters in the Command and Conquer games) that would skillfully avoid dangerous lava/molten ground in its path to get TO some stuff to harvest, then became so distracted by its cargo-full contentment that it would drive straight over the deadly ground on its way BACK to the refinery/facility, thus ending its own existence. That means... the game actually had "good" pathfinding (with respect to this one particular situation), but then simply chose not to use it on 50% of the moment for that unit.

Now they can implement multiplayer! Shirts versus skins!

With all due respect, could you please explain where I've actually missed "the" point, and/or at least where what I've said is completely subject to the constraints of your chosen point, yet nothing is subject to the consideration of mine? Could you please explain to me the universal force/law of physics that ferociously prevents developers from simply keeping that continuity and acknowledging those world-changing decisions from previous games, instead of simply tossing them all? According to you, no story can EVER butt up against a previous story, unless the designers of a game specifically come up with a good story for one game, then intentionally shorten that first game to 1/3 of that story, then fill the whole game with completely inconsequential choices? Case and point: Those are all just examples of the bad way to do it. I mean, really, they're just pretending there was a significant choice there, to make the player feel better. If you scale it down, it's no different from offering 2 dialogue choices in a given situation, instead of one, and having the person to which you're speaking not acknowledge the difference in the least (I mean, even in the code). You say A, they say X. You say B, they say X. Just because someone does that in their game does not mean no one can put a Y in there, and have the character say Y when you say B (instead of X in response to A). Boom. Cause and effect. That's pretty much what these games are founded on, or there wouldn't be any point in all the ruleset's value variations (stats, skills, circumstances, reputation, etc.). So, I agree with you, in that, if a developer cannot actually follow through with the consequences of a choice in the game's design, then they might as well not put that choice in there to begin with. But that all comes down to smart design. There's no natural force preventing a developer from putting in a "save the council" choice, then actually having that affect significant things later on. In other words, the ME series and other such examples aren't bad because the developers wanted to have one big choice tree across three games. They're bad because they did it poorly. If you decide to bake a cake, and you leave it in the oven too long, it burns. Doesn't mean the decision to bake a cake inherently results in a burnt, inedible cake. And it is with that that I suggest that perhaps it is you who has missed "the" point, or at least the one I was trying to make. Yours is valid, too, but it doesn't supercede mine any more than mine supercedes yours. They are separate points that do not cover each other's ground.

I fail to comprehend hatred of the sheer aspect of multiplayer. As if the mere ability for a second person to partake of the same game is somehow bad. The necessity to develop multiplayer support in the game's code and such, I get, and I understand that costs time and money and effort. So, a developer deciding not to do that, I fully understand. But people act as though the very option of "multiplayer" appearing on a game's menu is somehow destroying their gaming experience. As if you CAN'T play the game alone anymore? Or, if you DO play it with someone, you can't select a friend? People do realize that Halo Matchmaking wasn't the origin of multiplayer support in a game, correct? If Obsidian could snap their fingers, and PoE would be able to be played by multiple people, I'd find absolutely no reason for it not to be supported, whatsoever. Even if 90% of people just play it singleplayer, the option of having a friend join in and control someone else in your party isn't hurting anybody.

Well, the kind of funny thing is, the act of judging something at all is only as valuable as what it's claiming/aiming to be. In other words, if you want a good wedding cake for your wedding, you taste a completed wedding cake (even if it's just a little piece). You don't wait 'til they've got some eggs and flour in a bowl, and drink that, and say "OMG, this cake is AWFUL!" Because it's not even a cake yet. But, that could be the absolute best eggs'n'flour mixture EVER, but that mixture, no matter how top-notch it is, is not designed to satiate your taste buds. It's not even claiming to. So, just as you wouldn't look at a wireframe model with a flat grey placeholder texture and say "I don't like the character textures!", with most of this, there's just really no point in judging it unless you're judging it for what it is. The character reaction animations are an excellent example. It's great to say "Hey, in case you were planning on them not having reaction animations, they look silly without reaction animations." But, judging the "current" (aka non-existent) reaction animations as bad quality animations is silly. Obviously they haven't even put anything in yet. It's not like they've spent hours and hours of effort polishing the hit-reaction animations just to get them to the point of the character just standing there idly as if nothing's happening. No, they don't even really EXIST yet. Anywho, like a cake, judge it all you want. But don't judge its taste until it's supposed to taste good. They're showing us all this stuff so we can see what they've got so far. This isn't your typical "we're a publisher, so we can ONLY show you stuff that looks in no way flawed or lacking in anything, because then we'll lose .00837% in hype/sales!" (exaggeration of a publisher). Obsidian isn't saying "every tiny detail you see is totally us saying 'we think this aspect of this screenshot is AWESOME and complete, and we'll only improve upon something from here if enough people tell us we did a crappy job with it!" My point is simply to keep that stuff in mind. I'm not pointing at anyone in particular, or suggesting that someone specifically judged the reaction animations in a ridiculous manner or something. It was just an example of something that, when you think about it, really doesn't make sense to actually judge. Consider what it is they're actually showing off, and what it is that just happens to be in the scene, before judging it. Even if it's to say something's bad. It doesn't do them any good to tell them something's bad until it's something they actually need evaluated. Sticking with the reaction-animation example, when you see footage of characters reacting to hits, but reacting like idiots, THEN say "Hey, I probably shouldn't do backflips and moonwalk-dance whenever I get hit. You should probably work on that." Saying "Incomplete game is incomplete!" doesn't do much for anyone, really, even if you say it politely.