Lephys

Yes, I have. And yes, in the ones I've played, they've been dreadful as well. Which is why I wouldn't design the pets exactly like they are in MMOs, but rather "kind of like" that, hence that exact quote in my suggestion. You can't just imagine a pet design straight from an MMO, slapped straight into PoE, then evaluate that as the ultimate conclusion of any possible experimentation. In MMOs, you can't tell the pet where to go. JUST THAT would change things tremendously. I'm not even saying "the pet never gets its own abilities." I just mean, instead of simply "here's your ranger, and here's your extra character who also does things," it might be interesting to have a lot more focus on the collaboration between Ranger and Pet. One way of doing that is to have abilities (of an unspecified quantity) that involve your Ranger USING your pet to do something. A better example than the super-basic "charge a spot I choose" would be some kind of "BACK TO ME!" ability, that had your pet (if it was the right kind... like a stag maybe?) charge back to you from wherever it was, plowing down people in its path. That's interesting, because it's not just a "your stag has the ability to charge places." Your stag is not a whole 'nother character. He's half a character, as far as the class system is involved. So, I just feel like that type of ability is one way to make it a lot more "this animal companion is part of my Ranger class," and not "I just made one character that's really two characters." I mean, if you summon something as not-a-Ranger, does it feel any different, commanding that around, than it does as a Ranger commanding around your animal companion? If not, there be problems. 8P

I was just curious. I was confused by the "blatant." You have no forum badges, and I don't exactly track all your posting activity (nor do most people, I'm sure), so it wasn't exactly blatant. However, the lies are indeed lies. I'm still not sure how they constitute fanboy-ism, rather than simple incorrectness.

I kind of wonder if it would've been better for the ranger's animal companion to simply function off of Ranger abilities. Functionally, the ranger would "cast" an ability that's called Animal Charge (for example). And would pick a ground target. The companion would then charge that spot. As if the animal companion were a persistent spell effect. Kind of like how MMO pets work, functionally. Or some of them, at least. Your pet is an actual entity, but you don't have to select two individual people just to have your pet do things. *shrug* Something like that that suggests the bond between them could be an interesting design.

So you are a backer and have played the BB?

^ Me too. I wish they'd learn that. You don't have to get the WHOLE market. In fact, it's not even really normal. It's not even good for the industry, as far as creativity goes. There are a lot of people that don't pay much attention to "little" games, and the big games just sort of peg them as "weird" or "complicated," exaggeratively so. Now, I'm not saying it's not up to people to be intelligent and actually find out for themselves. But, I just... I can understand that one facet. If I hadn't really had a lot of "little" games around when I grew up, and seen how awesome and diverse they could be, I'd probably be a lot more narrow in my gaming preferences now. But, yeah, I get how/why Farmville and Angry Birds are fun, for example. But the fact that "everyone" plays them doens't mean they're THE pinnacle of gaming. I had to laugh when over the last decade, you kept seeing articles about "Will mobile gaming make consoles and PCs obsolete?!" There are just really, really clueless business executives out there. And I don't understand how they're so clueless.

Probably every damned thing that was printed? Now now, armorb... guesswork is pointless... UNLESS your guess is that there's absolutely no reason for anything to have been shipped overseas. u_u

I just imagine them having a week-long party after release (once there are no Code Blues or anything going on with release/day-1 patch, etc.) I know they probably can't, really. But they should. One kind of neat thing Bethesda did (and apparently does on a regular basis when their games launch?) it just have a week-long code jam, where everyone just gets to design whatever they hell they want that would hypothetically go into the game. It can be a really cool character or creature, weather effects, a weapon, new animations, etc. Just... free range. Sounds like fun. After all that time rigorously following all the super-specific documents and whatnot, but being so familiar with the tools. Just getting to play with them for a week.

See. Obviously, McDonald's should've somehow willed their french fries to make it to their restaurants. Or maybe started up their own shipping company real quick and hired a thousand or so of their own workers to transport their goods. There's no reason not to blame McDonald's for allowing a delay to occur, instead of preventing it with mere force of effort. So, instead of just saying "Man, that really sucks that we don't have french fries," the people who were lacking french fries should be pissed at McDonald's, because McDonald's is to blame. Also, any effort they put into trying to get their shipments to their restaurants counts for nothing, because they clearly don't care about their customers having french fries, or they would've just gotten them there on time, u_u...

Well, sure, but, like I said, there could be a maximum. If the max were 6, and some more powerful Invocations required 6, then you've already got the same principle in place -- wait twice as long as you'd wait to cast a 3pp Invocation, and instead cast this way more powerful one. You couldn't just wait longer and cast 2 6ers back-to-back, because limits. But, it just seems silly to burn away your pp (phrase points). It's now ALWAYS a terrible idea to not-cast an Invocation immediately whenever you reach the appropriate amount of points. Waiting to cast that 6-pointer, but when you get to 5, something happens in combat, and you decide to cast a 3-pointer instead? You just wasted 2 points worth of time. A Cipher can build up Focus, then use two abilities back to back if he has enough Focus for them, can he not? It just seems strange, on principle. That's all.

Oh, the irony of your posting that. No worries, . Enjoy your bliss. Sorry to have bothered you with difficult points. But you get to belittle mine? Seems legit. Also, wasn't aware discussing the particulars of Obsidian's fulfillment process in a thread about Obsidian's fulfillment process was derailing anything. What... derailing it from RageVille?

My mistake. It seemed as though your intent was to counter my points, which is why I confusedly wondered why we were saying the same thing. Not to nitpick, but I didn't say that. Merely that it's quite obvious that removing ALL of something is too far. My point there is simply that, just as you can't remove something purely because it isn't "necessary," you can't include something merely because it is nice. Or rather, that cannot be the criteria by which you decide what to include. Otherwise, you would include infinite things that may-or-may not follow any rhyme-or-reason. I realize that subjectivity is at work in a game. I mean, 7 weapon types isn't "necessary," but that doesn't mean we should only have 1. If an additional weapon type didn't contribute any new mechanics, though, then it'd be a lot less cost-effective to put in, regardless of how nice some people thought it would be. But, as we are talking about things the player is allowed to be directly responsible for, there are certain things that don't serve much purpose, examples for which are hard to produce without being blatantly overboard (such as "the player can control pooping" or "the player can pluck individual blades of grass out of the ground, until there is no grass.") Essentially, it is implied that if you, the player, decide in your head "I want to see what that corpse has on it," the decision to move close enough as to be within range of looting that corpse is a given. That's why people's examples of PnP sessions are so great. How many people tell the DM "How many steps away from the corpse am I? Okay, I'd like to take that many steps toward the corpse. I'm there now? Okay, I'd like to reach down with my hands and remove the corpses backpack. Okay, now I'd like to dump the contents of that backpack onto the ground and observe them." No... you just tell the DM "I'd like to loot that corpse." It's understood what the required actions for physically looting that corpse are, and being able to control those does nothing, unless you're (for example) playing a game involving detective work/forensics, and it's designed to be first-person.

Zero. That's... admittedly a bit disappointing. I mean, if it takes 10 seconds, let's say (because I don't know, and the exact amount of time is irrelevant to my point), to build up 3 "charges" of chant. Then, you could fire off an Invocation, right? But you wait 20 seconds to do so. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to fire off 2 Invocations (if you can build up 6 charges, that is... I comprehend a maximum limit on charges stored, so you can't build up 700 or anything). If you had fired one off earlier, you could've fired another one off now. But, you just waited (and survived) twice as long. *shrug*

That's actually true, more or less. I do have beta access, but I wouldn't say "overlooked." More just, "I've never picked up less-than-everything when looting a corpse, so I'd have to check to say for sure." Hence the "unless it works like this" clause I tacked on. I realized I was assuming how it worked, since I'd never tested the other situation. 8P Sorry about that.

Ohhhhhhhhh... Sorry. Yeah, I thought you meant the container indicator/highlight itself. Much appreciated info, ^_^

Obviously, they felt that anything above 1 would've been too loud. 6_u

I think they have their stats assigned and all that. I mean, you're not going to get an Eder, then Max out his Resolve, Intellect, and Perception, while giving him like 5 Might, Dexterity, and Constitution. That, and their personalities remain the same. You only get to decide how they progress from level 1, in terms of things that progress. So, yeah, it doesn't make sense that you get to select their skill progression, but it kind of already doesn't make sense that you run around, achieve some things, and "level up," progressing your knowledge and ability in certain skills. It all just kinda falls under video game abstraction. *shrug*

Who gave birth to the people who made that decision in the first place?! Do you see how silly the blame game becomes?

Exactly. They should've called, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have been late. I seem to recall there being more than just the two of us in this thread, and I don't recall quoting you on the points I'm making that don't pertain to you. You seem to be missing the point by being overly focused on the chronology of the process. The point was that the production and finalization of the physical goods was not divorced from the development process of the game. You can't just make the goods whenever you want, because they contain information specifically related to the things in the game that may still change up until a certain point in the development cycle. Beyond that, if we're still going to go with "well, they should've finalized those thing earlier," then I could respond, along the same line of reasoning, with "more people should've backed the game, so they'd have enough money to hire the necessary people to do so." Also, why isn't anyone calling out Paradox for anything? They're the ones publishing the game.

How do you suppose they remedy the situation? With a Delorean and 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity? And there was a followup to the opt-out selection. If they never said anything else about it, obviously they couldn't do it. Or, maybe our only choice is to assume that the answer is "Lolz... oh, we could've EASILY done that with no problems or effort, but we just didn't feel like it, ^_^". Yes, when you don't know one way or the other, always assume. That's constructive all right. Once again, they probably should've said "Sorry guys, but we can't really let selective people opt out of this." And they probably should've done the poll better. And they should've been clearer about international orders definitely having some amount of delay. I'm sure you're not suggesting that if they had simply avoided these information snafus, everyone would be overjoyed to get their stuff 2 weeks late, and still be unable to opt out of the "disc later" program. That's the frustration I'm addressing. And if you're not trying to suggest a lack of caring on Obsidian's part, then you're not the person that bit pertained to. Also, for what it's worth, to the people posting Amazon's "guaranteed" shipping date... did Amazon make their OWN copies of this game, all by themselves? because, if they didn't, then I don't see how on God's green earth they're going to ship you something faster than Obsidian can even ship it to them. Unless Amazon just has blackmail on all the couriers or something. "The crown jewels MUST go straight to the royal treasury!" "Sure, just gotta make a quick stop in Europe to get all these PoE copies delivered on day 1!"

It's just a bit childish not to acknowledge understandable factors in things. You should be able to experience frustration without having to assign blame for it. They should've been clearer with their information. Blame assigned. Other things are frustrating, too. That doesn't equal "Obsidian doesn't give a crap." These are people, and it's human freakin' decency to wait until you actually have a reason to call it like that. It's like when you get stuck in some horrible traffic jam on your way to work, and your boss is all "Hmmm, obviously you don't care about punctuality, u_u"... What a crappy thing to say. Yeah, I guess you should wake up 4 hours early and get to work 3 hours early every day, just to make sure there's no delay that could POSSIBLY make you late. Maybe they should've just printed all the game manuals and guides a year before they finalized the mechanics, you know... so they could guarantee you'd have them on March 26th. *eye roll*

I was just covering it in case, since I wasn't certain you didn't JUST mean corpses. I have no idea whether or not the mechanic covers non-corpses, but it's pretty moot either way. I kind of thought this: ... conveyed my uncertainty about that, as well. I guess not. *shrug*. BUT, I do appreciate the confirmation of how it works. Also, I guess I should've said "would" there, instead of "could still be a problem."

I want to believe me, too. . I can try to find the post. But, I'm 99.9% certain that's the idea. I distinctly recall someone else asking the question, and getting an answer from Josh or someone... I just can't remember where or when.

I don't know why the strokes are so broad. I'd say they screwed up on the information about the shipping. Not on the entirety of the shipping process. I haven't seen a Kickstarter campaign YET that didn't have some fulfillment issues. Are we suggesting that no one who runs Kickstarter campaigns gives a crap about their backers? Or can we give people some credit for such things being frustratingly hard when you're not EA and you can't hand someone 10 million dollars and say "Make it happen."? Good lord... Does anyone really believe that, if Obsidian only cared a little harder, everything would've worked out perfectly?

What's you're solution for someone liking it, but wishing it weren't nonsensical, then? "If you like it, still don't use it"?

I don't recall that. I looted a blue-tinged container, and "got caught stealing." In the temple just north of where you start, in fact. The only red-tinged thing I found was a trapped container. I just figured red=danger. *shrug*. I could be remembering things incorrectly, I suppose. I'm fairly certain, though, that the things I got caught stealing from were blue and/or purple (purple is for hidden/secret things).