Lephys

Please forgive my ignorance, but I have no idea what this means. 8( True, there's a bit of illusion to it, as you have it make it seem like the player is actually conversing with a fully-realized person, within an imagined world, using a handful of dialogue lines and various sets of consequences. That in no way means that the accepted goal should be nothing but the tiny semblence of the illusion. I'm confused as to how Coke Zero plays into this. Coke Zero isn't nutritious, so why would you gain anything but caloric fuel to do things? And I'm not talking about STRength, the stat (although that could be a factor in the abstraction of the "well-fed"ness) here, just to be clear. If you eat a full meal, you're going to feel a lot better as you go along than if you ate a bunch of berries. Or, to use your steak and apple comparison, the steak is going to give you more to work with, in the long run, than just the apple. Sure, you're "just going to be less hungry" 10 seconds after you ate either one. But, 3 hours later, I don't think that apple's gonna be holding up, calorically, and it's not gonna help your muscles repair themselves and maintain mass as you go, if you just run around eating apples all day every day. There's plenty of factors within the realm of nutrition to allow for some simplified, abstracted system in the game. It's not "OMG, we can't take this dragon out! Let's go eat the proper foods! OKAY, NOW WE HAVE +50 TO ALL STATS! WOOOOH!" or anything.

Easy there, Mudd1. He's simply making suggestions, based on his limited knowledge, that he hopes are helpful. He's interested in the processes at hand, and has know way of knowing what the devs already do or do not know. What's the harm in that, hmm?

I don't know about "enlightening" you, heh. But, I can share an explanation of a metaphor. "Humor is the lubricant for the engine of life." That's a metaphor, suggesting that humor is to life as lubricant is to an engine. Even though it states that humor "is" lubricant, and that life has an engine, it's a figurative comparison. The things I said were simple examples, not metaphors. I'm not trying to be an arse, I just thought you might like to know. For realsies. It's not about parts of the city being "boring" and literally not worth visiting. It's representative of the idea that they happen to be less-significant parts of the city, circumstantially. Let me put it this way: If you have a city with 1,000 people living in it (that's not even that huge, really), your party isn't going to visit every single person, right? I mean, you're not vacationing in that city. You're doing stuff, within a story that's constantly developing. You've got stuff going on. So, you might hit a couple of taverns or inns, but you probably won't hit all the taverns/inns in the city. You might visit some seemingly insignificant commoners, but you're not going to visit every commoner in the city. There's just no time. That not only would make little-to-no sense, it would also be a RIDICULOUS amount of effort and resource-cost for the dev team. We'd have a city, and like 2 other little areas, and that would be the extent of the game. So, you have 2 options: A) Shrink the city, and just make ALL the lore support the idea that you're dealing with warring nations and such with 70-person cities, each with 1 of each type of craftsman/merchant and 1 inn. or... B) Represent the city as large, and somehow represent the fact that you're not going to be able to just vacation around through 100% of it at your leisure. They've both got pros and cons, but I don't see the 2nd one as having more cons and fewer pros than the 1st. Just because it's been done in such a way that could've used improvement in prior games doesn't mean we should just abandon it now, instead of trying to improve it. And I'm not seeing how "Omg, there are sections of the city we don't go to?" is just completely unacceptable, unless you want to literally visit every single person in an entire 1,000-person (or larger) city, then do the same in other cities (since the game will have more than 1). Which I don't think is very feasible.

Applying that line of reasoning to the entire forum, we get: "Hey, it's just game aspects, people... they're going to be how they're going to be in the game. End of story. No sense in typing words about things." 8P. Not very productive. Not that this thread has been overly productive, but that's not discussion's fault.

I can't believe that, after 17 pages of disbelief, you just made the thread longer. 8P

Exactly. And only seeing commonfolk housing districts from a distance and not being able to see them outside of that supports the notion of commonfolk housing districts as a generic form of non-significant city area rather than a unique city area in and of itself.

Methinks you're not quite up to speed on what a metaphor is. Also, the point was that, even though you COULD physically climb and traverse the mountain, you don't need to do so, because there's nothing important there. Not that a city strictly resembled a mountain. Just like the cutting off your arms thing. The point was that the game has no need to provide you with the opportunity to cut off your own arms. Arguing that it is some kind of crime or appalling that the developers of the game force you into a linear path simply by preventing you from traveling to every square inch of a city is akin to saying "They didn't put fishing boats in, so I can't paddle out to the middle of this lake and fish! But there's a lake right there! I should be able to do that! They're forcing me to decide that's unimportant!" No, what they're doing is building a finite world, from scratch, and they can either build a tiny world, or build an appropriately-sized world and understand that you're not going to go literally every place in the entire world, since this isn't Cartography Quest VIII.

^ Maybe the chainmail-bikini-wearing female in question is a magicky female, and she wears heals because she just phase shifts around to dodge things (and her physical dexterity is quite average), and she regulates her body temperature via magic. I'm not one to advocate these things throughout an entire game, but I'm just saying... in a fantasy world, it's not completely out-of-the-question for believable characters to simply desire to dress in impractical ways. Now, the type of thing you'd generally see that would be more reasonable wouldn't be high heels and chainmail bikinis. It would be slightly stylish leather armor, or scant Barbarian hide with those strategically-placed bits of metal (bracer, single pauldron for your defensive shoulder/side, etc) that, while less functional than full-on armor, would be a decent compromise between style and armor (for that crazy character who actually cares enough about how they look to want to sacrifice a bit of functionality). Also, though, the types who typically don't rely on lots of armor (casters, ultra-dexterous rogues, Barbarians, etc.) would have more leeway. You know, "this tunic is hardly meant to stop blades anyway, so I can fashion it to my crazy heart's content."

I think under "Always," there should be a sub-option, called "Anime Ability Callouts." The Rogue could be all like... " *waits*... Re-VERS-allll!" when he dodges, and the Wizard would have to recite lengthy poem-like incantations, like the high-level kido in Bleach. (Not really, though). . As long as there's the option for rarity, things are pretty fine.

^ I think their rarity is definitely flawed almost across the board in most existing games. I'm sorry, but I don't need to hear some quip EVERY time I score one of the 10 critical hits I score in the game. 2) They need to be brief reactionary lines. None of this "Hahahaaah! I can't believe you totally fell for that! What are you, stupid?!". By the time your Rogue is done saying that from his little dodgy move, he's ready to use it again, and the saying just loops into infinity. And C), They need to be varied (helped by the brevity bit). This is literally the first thing that popped into my head, haha (so terrible), but if I hear my characters shout a different expletives or short phrase every time they get stricken by a critical hit, I wouldn't mind so much. That would seem to fit. And hearing "SMURF!" (insert expletive of your choosing) every 20 seconds is WAYYYYYYYY better than hearing "Alas! It would seem that I am to depart from our adventures upon this eeeeeeeeve...!" every 20 seconds. It needs to sound as though they're actually reacting to the situation they're in, and not rehearsing lines for a play in the middle of battle.

^ That's just people, though. That doesn't include non-humans, like familiars, or interns...

But that's not all it does. It does not simply toggle a binary switch. "Have weapon? Things die now. Don't have weapon? Things live." You don't just carry a bunch of keys around. There are actual differences to static items, alongside differences to situations and dynamic factors. So, SOMEtimes, one item is better than the other, and sometimes it isn't. This is exactly what we're talking about in the Crafting thread. "Did you gather some things and click a button? Then you made an item! Did you not do that? Then you didn't make an item." There is no dynamic to it. It's just a switch. Switches are boring to the human mind. Especially when the switch is between "detriment" and "no detriment," with no option for anything beyond a lack of detriment. Yes, the number-cruncher may always try to find the best possible food, but, in this case, you're literally not even giving him a choice. "Do I pay 5 silver and get to travel and rest, or do I pay 2 silver and get to travel and rest?" Those are his options. That or "Hey, my Ranger can find 73 berries in like 10 seconds of Foraging, whereas Sandwiches, in town (the cheapest food item I can find) are 3 silver a piece." Boom. Berries it is. Buying sandwiches is LITERALLY just throwing money down the toilet, unless you're incapable of foraging. Forget number crunchers. Let's take roleplayers, and dialogue. If you give people 17 dialogue options, and they all produce the exact same response, they're going to start viewing dialogue options as clutter. You can only pretend SO hard that your wit had some kind of effect, if, in the game, the person responds in the same manner as if you had threatened them or been super kind and offered them some of your delicious berries. Roleplaying is quite literally about options. Otherwise, you just end up on a role-ercoaster. So, even if it's something small like food, it needs to provide at least SOME form of variance. Hell, 2 different food items with 2 different effects would be INFINITELY better than 100 food items, all with the exact same effect. I agree with you there, at least in games like MMORPGs and such. If it's not really that important to the world lore, etc, what you're wearing (and you've got all manner of enchanted items and such so that a robe can provide as much armor as plate), there's no reason you shouldn't allow the player to mix-and-match aesthetics and function. ESPECIALLY between armors of the same type. Like, this ugly plate armor with awesome stats, versus this awesome-looking plate armor with terrible stats. But, I'm not so sure a game like P:E needs to offer quite such a degree of freedom with such things, as the effects of the aesthetics have a lot more focused story/lore with which to clash. I mean, I don't think you should be forced into certain stats/effects if you make your armor blue instead of green, or if you adorn it with embellishments. But, I don't think you should be able to just pick a loin-cloth model and have as much armor as full plate, etc.

I understand. For what it's worth, I firmly believe there are both subjective AND objective aspects to immersion. I try my best to completely ignore the subjective (even trying to rule out my own preferences as best I can) when discussing such things like this, because it is rather pointless. To converse and share subjective views? Not pointless. To debate subjective views? Quite pointless. Who can say whether or not blue is prettier than red? I have no idea. With the graphics thing, that is true. But, you've gotta look at it this way, too: They don't HAVE to do the graphics they way they did the graphics. Wii graphics suck, right? Relative to all other systems? Yup. But Metroid Prime 3 was pretty amazing-looking. You could even see a quite-detailed reflection of Samus's face on the inside of her helmet visor. And the game made you feel like you were running around in this awesome Chozo suit, being Samus. So, I look at games like that, and I think "If they did that on a Wii, why do other people act like graphics have to take up 90% of a 40-million-dollar budget in most games?" If your graphics aren't supporting the artistry of the game's design, then you need to do them differently. It's really as simple as that, as far as a decision. Doing the graphics, not so simple. 8P But, basically, immersion is more about not breaking it than it is about building it up. Shopkeeper just stands at his stall all day long, 24/7: Not very immersive. I can't believe that that's in any way feasible (granted, it's a very minor issue, but an example nonetheless). Shopkeeper SOMETIMES leaves and goes home to sleep? That's better. I don't even need to see where he goes. But, if I never see him leave, ever, and he's just always there, at all hours of the day, then I can't even believe he ever goes anywhere, much less to his home, which is somewhere in the city, where his family lives. And yeah, there are certain things that people talk about (like menus) that are ridiculous to even bring up. That's like saying "My own brain prevents me from being immersed, since I can see the edges of my computer monitor, and the stuff on my desk, and things around me, and I feel the need to pee sometimes, etc.". "Immersion" does not automatically = "true to life simulation." It simply means "coherence," for the most part. You establish a world, and then you support that world. You establish characters that the player can control and experience things via, and you support that. That's all.

Yes, but on some subconscious level, we say "Why isn't any of this stuff any different from any of this other stuff?!" In other words, you give me a candlestick worth 3 silver instead of a pouch of 3 silver in coins, and I'm going to yearn to find some difference between the candlestick and the coins, SOMEwhere in the game. When I don't find it, I'm disappointed. Then, I either try to find a difference in all the various other pieces of "junk" in the game, and am subsequently even more disappointed every time I verify they are naught but money, OR I just assume that they're all naught but money, and I no longer care about them. That's why so many games recently have a "junk" category in your inventory, accompanied by a "sell all junk" button at a merchant. There's pretty much no value in the variation, at that point. Without actual item differences of any nature, you can't bring yourself to actually care whether you found a candlestick or a broken knife, because they're both just a handful of silver. If you have different foods that don't do anything different, then they'd have to all cost the same, right? And if they don't (if it turns out to be cheaper for some, or just easier/cheaper to forage berries or something), then everyone will just do that, and all that food variety serves no purpose anymore. The player can't help but reduce the system to a single food item, for all practical purposes, because it mechanically amounts to nothing more than that. Then, of course, it's just a chore. "I can't rest or fast travel without food? Well, then I guess I'll buy food." There's absolutely no other reason to buy food, or to worry about WHEN you buy food, or what kind of food you have, and it doesn't affect the game in any other way whatsover. Just "Have food and you can do this, don't have food and you can't." That's pretty much a chore. Something you don't really want to do for any reason, but you have to do it.

I would say the exact same regarding something like limited resting as the mechanic in question. Like Hormalakh said, if you can't wait to mod your game when it comes out, and just wipe out limitations you don't even want to deal with, then more power to ya. Really. But, I don't see the point, personally, in deciding there shouldn't even be a limitation on something just because something could've been done better in other games. Like you said, you don't want to hike all the way out of the Endless Paths from the 11th level, but maybe hiking "all the way" back to the 10th level wouldn't be so bad. In this specific example, if you can't make it through a single level of a dungeon without needing to fully rest, then you've got an issue that has nothing to do with how far away the nearest rest area is. That's the whole point of a limitation like this. Health, in P:E, is designed to last you from Rest Point A to Rest Point B, with enough leeway there for it to matter. If you get to Rest Point B with 30% Health left, then awesome. You can feel like you did pretty well there. If you get ALMOST to Rest Point B, and you're down to 15% Health, then you probably need to change up your tactics in combat (maybe you've been being too aggressive, and you need to be more conservative?). But, combat is now dynamically altered by the fact that you couldn't just rest to full 10 seconds before every combat. Besides, if you could do that, then each and every combat encounter should be designed to be SO difficult as to potentially outright kill your entire party, because once combat's over, you'd recover to full. The point is, the limit needs to be REASONABLE. If you play the game, on Easy, and you're needing to run backwards to go Rest up every 2 combat encounters, and there are 30 combat encounters between Rest Point A and Rest Point B, then yeah, there's a problem. If there are 3 combat encounters between them, then maybe that should be encouragement to alter what you're doing. Go better outfit your peeps before tackling this task, or maybe change up your tactics or party makeup (if available). The whole point of a game is to actively overcome things. Not just be dragged through the story on a chain attached to a tractor that never stops moving forward, no matter what you do. Sorry... I rambled. I'm aware. 8P

No worries, Sensuki. I wasn't trying to be an arse, haha. Much of what I said was unnecessary, but I simply wasn't aware that wasn't what you were getting at, at the time. It happens. 8P

^ That's what I don't get. It's almost as if people are saying "This is why I don't craft things in REAL LIFE! I don't wanna click all those buttons over and over again!" As if there's nothing to a crafting process that could ever be represented with anything more interesting than a recipe and a 3-second progress bar (that isn't even necessarily a progress bar if the game allows you to fail a crafting attempt). Honestly, I don't think an abstracted "fight through the crafting process" would be entirely silly, even. You know, you're forging a blade, and the metal gets too hot in one particular point, and you have to hammer different ways to "defeat" the irregularity in the metal and produce a nice, uniform blade. If you break combat down, that's really all it is. You're trying to do something (dispatch your foes), and things beyond your control are trying to stop you (your foes). Things that detriment the production of a quality blade, goblins that try to kill you and stop you from killing them... I don't see much of a difference, from a purely logistical standpoint.

That's not a bad idea, Iyanga. I'm just trying to think of how different foods could have a varying affect. Especially on the fast travel. Because, if they don't, then there might as well only be one food item in the game, simply called "food." Maybe it could affect the speed of fast-traveling (if it's just actually really fast traveling, a la Fallout/Arcanum, instead of insta-traveling), and it could probably affect the extent of resting benefits. I mean, if you sit down for a couple hours and have some broth and bread and jerky, you're probably not garnering as much strength from that as you would from everyone enjoying an entire chicken-pot-pie. *shrug*

It would be a little weird, but they wouldn't be popping up in the middle of the screen, completely by surprise (by "middle of the screen" I mean "near your party as opposed to out at the edge of the viewable area"), since they'd be visible within your sight range (should be decently formidable) unless they are otherwise enstealthinated (that's a word now). I kinda like the idea, really. Maybe they sort of fade into detail as you get closer to them? You know, as far as you can possibly see, you can only make out movement or general shape size. Then, you get a little closer, and you can make out more details. Up until a reasonable distance, at which point you can make out all the necessary details. This could be especially interesting in darkness, where it's not so much that you can't see people/things, as much as it is that they just look like shadowy blobs and it's hard to distinguish where the actually are, which way they're facing/moving, etc.

It's not that the areas are supposed to be "closed off," as in you cannot access them. It's that they're unimportant, so you, the player, are prevented from forcing your characters to access them, the same as you're prevented from telling your characters to cut off their own arms with their weapons. Basically, the point being made against tiny Skyrim-style "cities" is that you can present a bustling city with the appropriate amount of people-traffic without being about to follow each of those people back home and see all the toilets, etc. If you leave the market area, and there's nothing of note between there and the palace, then it "skips" the area in between. But, it's still represented in the game, because it's there. Just because you can't explore it doesn't mean it isn't there. There are plenty of mountainous areas devoid of passable terrain, yet you still know the mountains are there. You still say "wow, this is a huge, mountainous region." So, yes, you can essentially exclude specific areas within a city from your game's playable area and yet still represent the full size of that city, non-explorable areas and all. That isn't to say I think we should follow the exact equation used by previous games. Just that zone-structuring huge cities in RPGs is not an inherent evil.

Understandable, but it's arbitrarily being applied to yet-to-be-designed food mechanics, unless you're suggesting that we can only choose from the exact implementations that have already been tried (which I don't believe you are). We're human, and we do that, but it doesn't make it correct to do. We have to try our best not to do it. If you have a bad experience at even a couple of different restaurants, do you just say "Meh, this is ridiculous... I'm just not ever going to go to a restaurant ever again."? Or do you rule out THOSE restaurants (or at least approach them with extra caution if you try them again), then keep on trying other restaurants? That's the value that can be taken from bad experiences. Not applying the way they make you feel to all potential future experiences of the same type. See, this is where abstraction comes in. I don't think there's too much value in the manual control over when the characters put food in their mouths. That would almost be like controlling how quickly they eat their food, and whether or not they get a stomach ache, etc. I'd assume they can control all that just fine on their own. Also, I think the whole "How often have you eaten?" thing could be abstracted a bit. It should probably be something that, if managed, provides benefits (depending on the types and qualities of food you're giving your characters), and if neglected for too long, provides detriments. Maybe even no detriments. Maybe the detriment is the lack of the benefits from actually taking advantage of the system. After all, that's how it works with equipment. If you don't get newer equipment, your armor doesn't start LOSING armor value. You simply lack the improvement to armor value from the newer, better armor. So, there doesn't need to be a food-o-meter. You do plenty of traveling, so your characters should be able to snack on some trail rations, etc. as they go. Maybe if you don't spend money on any food, it is understood that they just hunt/gather basic provisions. I don't know that a starvation mechanic is actually necessary. See, one of the problems I think that occurs when things like this are incorporated into video games stems from the need to micromanage and maintain a whole 'nother system simply to prevent regression and maintain a state of normalcy. First of all, how you manage your food isn't the focus of the game. The story and reactivity of the world is the focus of the game. Everything else is meant to support that. So, if managing your food starts hampering the focus of the game, you have a problem. As cool as a lot of food management mechanics would be in some game, I don't think they belong in every game. But, to get back to my take on this, I DO think that food/nourishment could be implemented in P:E in a manner that's both immersive AND non-detrimental to the game's focus. In a way that supports the rest of the gameplay, in other words, both mechanically and lore-ily (that's a new word I just made up). I'd like as much valuable depth as possible in it, but that doesn't mean that the food usage, itself, has to be extremely complicated. Your characters eat, and if you provide them with better food, they eat better. And MAYBE if you neglect their food completely for 3 days, they get all hungered and feeble. Maybe...

Except it does, because the armor doesn't COME WITH capes, tabards, etc., but it DOES come with an aesthetically-represented-on-your-screen physical form. Just like your characters already come with, and already look different. The dev team doesn't say "Hey, you can always put various tattoos on them, and maybe paint symbols on their backs to tell them apart, 8D!" No, they're different from the get-go, and that's not just a coincidence. And I'm sorry, but it IS a video game, and in a video game there is no reason not to have such intuitive visual distinction, along with other only-because-you're-a-player-viewing-a-screen aspects of character design and such, from the get-go, even when your characters are of similar general size and don the same armor (unless they happen to be twins). Why? Because there's plenty of freedom for it to not harm anything at all. It's no different from putting in magic. Are the world's physics shattered by the existence of magic? The lore team probably doesn't write an entire Advanced Particle Physics book for the game world, in which magic is fully incorporated and explained. And yet, we just go "Hey, that's cool, because the benefit of experiencing a world in which magic exists is better than having a fireball be 100% realistic and destroying entire rooms thanks to physics." Same thing, but on SUCH a smaller scale it's not even funny. "Oh, hey I see everyone has nicely fitted armor that's maybe 10% less effective than REAL armor, and people wouldn't really fit armor quite that way in REAL life, but it's quite aesthetically pleasing in a video game, which is designed for human entertainment and utilizes literary and aesthetic artistic license." You really can't have it both ways. You either want a game with ABSOLUTELY ZERO abstractions in visual design or realistic physics-based factors, or you accept that there are going to be abstractions in things of that nature. And before you say it, no, that doesn't mean "literally put in as much abstraction as you want." What I'm saying is, it's pretty silly to nitpick so hard about ever-so-slightly not perfectly realistic armor models, while simultaneously accepting that magic works for magical reasons and just happens to get along with physics. Especially when the armor in-question is more similar to perfectly-realistic armor than in almost any other RPG we've ever gotten to play. I don't think you did. The question mark makes the sentence interrogative, which means that I was asking. So, a 3-foot-tall gnome just totes around like 75% of his body weight in plate armor, while a 10-foot-tall ogre only totes like 20% of his body weight in armor around? The scale of the armor never has any impact upon its thickness and/or effectiveness against the same weaponry? Ever? You miss my point yet again, Starscream. I'm not trying to claim I know all the factors involved in helmet effectiveness. I was simply trying to point out ONE factor that isn't typically represented in video games. I'm aware I'm no expert on this, which is why I'm not claiming to be one. I just figured a Human-sized maul would more easily crush a tiny Gnome helmet than it would a huge Ogre helmet (or vice versa... different surface area shapes as compared to the exact same-sized weapon). Or, you'd at least think that, at some size, the metal would need to become thicker/thinner than a differently-sized set of armor, as a breastplate 5 feet across is probably going to be easier to crush in the middle section than one that's only 2 feet across, without it being thicker. Who knows. Maybe I'm wrong. ENCHANTMENT! Sorry, I thought we were emphasizing words for the sake of word emphasis. 8P What part of "The player controls the party, just to a slightly lesser degree than the player controls the main character" don't you understand? You can argue semantics all night long, and that still doesn't change the fact that you play as the party. That's why they JOIN your player-controlled party, and some NPCs just follow you around for a bit without actually "joining the party." Once they're in your party, they are marionette dolls for the player, even though some of them come with fewer strings. Whether or not that's an abstraction of their loyalty to the main character is not in question here. It still is what it is. I'm fairly certain that's way too few words to represent what I'm saying.

Plate-wearing knights want to look cool with their lions and dragons and custom-shaped helmets in battle. So, why not? Hell, current military folk still paint personalized logos on their planes and such. I'm sure if they had the benefit of enchantment that made the plane no-less camouflaged for being painted to look like a huge eagle all over, they'd do it. You don't don armor so that you can look a certain way for the orcs you're slaughtering (you put it on because it protects you, and not-putting-it-on doesn't protect you), so how you want to look, regardless of whether or not your in battle, shouldn't really change in that respect.

Well, now that you're no longer being irrational... Nope. You established that you don't like it when I use it, and you like to pretend it doesn't exist, and simply argue the subjective. "I don't THINK there's a boost to visual distinction when 2 armor models are rendered differently than when they are rendered identically, and therefore THERE ISN'T!". But then you like to ask me why I keep talking about the difference between subjectivity and objectivity, like it's not even pertinent to what's going on here. Fun times. ^_^ Now I'm all the more glad that isn't my argument, but even sadder that you still think it is. Because you keep reading like 7 words (when we all know how many I type), then just drawing lines around them and calling them my main point. See, here's a counter-example of me doing what you're doing to me: "Because it's not realistic" isn't a valid argument, and that's you're entire argument because I just concluded it was! Observe how crappily that works in constructive discussion, as I'm well aware that your stance is more complex than that, but above, I failed to address more than a tiny snippet of it, completely out of context, even though you have argued that a lack of realism is AN aspect of your stance/argument. And what about when it doesn't specifically state that the physical properties have no impact, then a tiny gnome helmet isn't any easier to crush than an ogre helmet because the game didn't actually represent the physical properties and differences for whatever reason? That's fine, but then it's not fine to take advantage of that when they're not going to be represented in a purely abstraction-free way anyway? You can't have it both ways. Exactly. Which is why it's pointless to argue the subjective. And I didn't pretend you didn't already tell me. I wasn't even asking you a question. You just snippeted out a rhetorical question and acted like I'm actually asking you to answer it (as if I didn't type anything after that and answer the question myself), which is yet another reason this whole "discussion" is getting us nowhere rather swiftly. Man... he's got some amazing Charisma if he can "influence" Steve the Wizard to stop attacking, mid-swing, and instead begin casting a spell, all within the span of a fraction of a second, all while your main character is lying unconscious upon the ground. Gotta love subconscious telepathy. So, lemme get this straight... part of what you've been saying, "from the start," has included the fact that there are legitimate reasons for "my" approach? Because all I've seen from you so far is essentially the following quote from Billy Madison: "... Mr. Madison... Nowhere, in ANY of that... did you even come CLOSE... to ANYTHING... that could even be conSIdered a rational thought... I award you NO points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Tim is writing next week's update. Maybe he could write it as if engaging in a casual chat with us for a bit. 8D