Lephys

To be clear, the player would still be the one to make the call. You would simply select a dialogue option along the lines of "Here's what we're going to do: (Plan details here), *Cast Greater Invisibility*", rather than just telling everyone what you're planning, then having to go into your spell book outside the dialogue, select the spell, and cast it on your character. Especially if the dialogue happens literally as your approaching the situation at hand, and you make some kind of "Yes, we're doing this now" decision, and everyone around you goes into some sort of "We're not going to follow you right now if you just leave and head back to town, and so the game isn't going to let you leave until you address this situation you just told everyone we were about to address" mode. It's simply, well, potentially not out-of-the-question is all. I'd rather it not be handled by dialogue, as well, but I can think of at least the possibility that there might be a reason for it to be handled within dialogue. I mean, unless you have a good reason, I would assume you're going to share the plan with your party, rather than just randomly casting Invisibility on the Rogue and staring at everyone until they figure out what to do. So, the dialogue and the chosen action kind of coincide at that point. I get what you mean, though, I think. I just realized: If the dialogue says "Okay, we'll do this *cast spell*," then now you know, just by reading that, that that's a valid strategy, whereas you may not have known it if you hadn't read the dialogue option. Hmm? Good point, that is. The only thing I'll say there is that you have to be careful, also, not to design the game, all the while saying "I have to make sure the characters never provide insight into a certain strategy or action that the player never would have thought of on his own." Because, they're characters in the game world, and they know a lot more than you, sitting at your computer, do, about it. But, I do see the potential problem, with this specific example. It's a fine line, it is.

Obviously, human(oid) eyes and brains and psycology. Since real-world human sapience is being modeled in the game world, such notions must also exist. Of course, I believe you should be able to cosmetically customize your character however you'd like and have their beauty be a completely mechanically-recorded thing (Such as if you choose some kind of background/trait, so that your character is found attractive by most in the world). Well, all other things the same, physics does. If my forearm muscle is 3 feet long, and yours is 6 inches long, I have more mechanical strength in my arm than you do (not to mention more leverage, etc.). But, again, I think that, in an RPG, character cosmetic customization should warrant a bit of abstraction (like playing a 7-foot-tall character with 5 STR, or a 4-foot-tall character with 20).

I believe that's quite possibly what the OP is getting at. When some monarch literally owes you their life, why do you get .000000000000000001% of their treasury as your reward? "Thanks, have this blackjack +1." "Uhh... maybe a few gold pieces would help, since we're pretty much broke, and we just saved your life." "Okay, THAT'S it! I'm taking the blackjack back! u_u" Really, though, when the reward doesn't seem logical (in the context of the game world), that's when it feels like some guy who was sitting at a desk, programming this world, just jumped in and decided how much money you should get from this monarch so as to keep the prices of all the goods he encoded in the next town in-check.

It's mental fatigue. Manipulating the forces required into the desired spell is generally lored as requiring a great deal of non-physical effort. Just as you can get very tired from reading an encyclopedia for 10 hours straight (even if you didn't do anything physically taxing that day) AND can get quite tired from pulling weeds in a field for 8 hours in a day, so can you get as tired performing sword maneuvers as you can casting spells all day in a fantasy world. That's the idea, at least. And it tends to make sense. *shrug* Also, as for your "wouldn't the level 20 Wizard be a BAMF?" point, P:E will actually represent this exactly as you say, as progressing into higher levels of magic-usery will cause your lower-tier spells to start refreshing per-encounter instead of per-day(rest). So... yes.

That it does, . As always, your breakdowns are very nicely done.

First of all, welcome to the forums, ^_^. Now, with all due respect, it seems as though you've cited 2 different examples of crafting systems, both of which use the bare minimum of involvedness in their actual crafting process (acquire mats and maybe recipes, click a button, maybe make a given item). But, then, you go on to conclude that making crafting any more involved would only hurt it. Now, I know you said that's just in your opinion, but in the interest of answering the question "How could we objectively make crafting better, in general?", your opinion matters in determining this, as you are a player of these games. I'd also like to say that the fact that you point out various different other systems, pointing out how they tried to "change" things, plus the fact that they basically all still use the same rudimentary "Gather/click, click/done" process seems to support the idea that we need to improve the actual crafting process in a game to have any hope of improving crafting. I realize that EQ2 attempted to make crafting more interesting, but most of the difference in its system were cosmetic and/or just-plain poorly implemented things. Just because EQ2 failed doesn't mean that sheerly striving for more engaging crafting was the cause of the failure. Allow me to make an example, though, of what all these differences in the crafting systems of various games (while still using the same core process) are equivalent to: Imagine combat was rock-paper-scissors, on an enemy-by-enemy basis. So, your character, Blarg, runs up to a goblin in combat, and now they rock-paper-scissors it out with their stats and stuff, and after a brief 3-second loading bar for the rock-paper-scissoring, one of them dies and one lives. That would be pretty lame, right? Yeah. You want combat to consist of more than that. Okay, well, now imagine that that was real-time combat, and you want to make it more interesting, so you make it TURN-BASED, but you keep the rock-paper-scissors approach. So, now, it's even more in-depth, with tactical movement limitations and second-by-second strategy adaptations, only there's still pretty much no strategy involved in such a simplistic combat process. So, now combat's still lame, AND it takes even longer and requires more effort to achieve the same lameness. That's what games do with crafting. "Ooooh, what if we put in like 7,000 more ingredients than other games?!". Now the boring gather-and-click process of crafting is a chore, because the problem wasn't "there aren't enough ingredients in the system." "Hey, let's put in things that will gather the stuff FOR you, like SWG! 8D." No offense to SWG, but that's simply an admission that you couldn't even integrate the gathering process into the game well enough to make it not literally a chore. That's like saying "Okay, we're gonna make this terrible, and no one will want to do it, but then we'll introduce a means by which we counter-act our own terrible design, thereby making the terrible design less annoying, but not as good as if we had simply designed it better in the first place." It's like lighting something on fire, then providing a fire extinguisher, and saying "Hey, at least you can put most of that fire out, 8D!" And don't get me wrong... I know why they do it. A lot of people enjoy just the sheer logistics behind crafting (what ingredients combine into what items, etc.), so it's one of those things, especially in MMOs, that they need to put in. But, then, there's that whole "publishers are afraid of change because it's a risk" thing, so they try to both change the system AND simultaneously keep it the same. But, yeah, I'm with the OP in thinking there's a way to make the crafting system, itself, more fun and interesting. I don't want it to steal the spotlight from combat in games like P:E, but that doesn't mean "Oh well, let's just leave it out completely, or keep it at the same level of mundanity."

New Orleans or Mississippi? Mississippi. New Orleans(/Louisiana) is famous for TONS of other stuff! Haha. But, yeah, while not getting flooded as much as New Orleans did (because my city is not 100ft below sea level, or located so close to the ocean), I was on my university campus when the eye passed directly over us. So, we literally got directly by the hurricane. But, a hurricane is a big thing, and it affects coastal places a lot more than 80-100-mile-inland places.

Maybe, like with what Amarok was saying, you could design the system so that sticking to the roads/paths provided you with almost no random encounters (maybe even none that are purely random... so only progress/story-based encounters would strike you, unless you literally wandered off the beaten path).

The "not" is really confusing me here. Am I only allegedly not 6 people in real life? o_O How do you play the game? You control one or more characters to accomplish things in the game world via the characters, as per the game's rules. What do you do with your "NPCs" in combat? You control them and have them do things. So, yes, I'd say technically, you are an entire party of characters. You already even have limited control with your main character, since you can't give him a Swordsmanship skill of 100, then go around having him suck at swinging his sword. There is no "strike crappily" command in combat. You get do make his attack decisions, and he carries them out with his own skill and precision, as dictated by the game. So, there are things you cannot get him to do, just as there are things you cannot get the rest of your party to do, and yet you still control them all. Notice I never argued against this. Also notice, though, that you're talking about large-scale battles that are made up of more than 6-concurrent party members that must all exist within the same combat interface at the same time. I don't foresee any "Wait, is that Sir Cedric down there where we're about to aim this cannon? I don't know... he's in my party, but now he's 3 miles away, down on the plain, fighting those goblins, and it's foggy today. It's a good thing he's wearing that brilliant, yellow armor and that hydra crest on his tabard. I can JUST make it out with my spyglass." Also, I have yet to insist that visual distinction "*must* ALWAYS exist." I even specifically stated the contrary. It doesn't HAVE to happen. It's simply an important thing in a video game, with a player-character interface that has you controlling multiple characters, that, however unlikely, COULD be of the same race but different genders, and bear the same type of armor, and not have any optional decorations added to their armor specifically to tell them apart (which wasn't a problem until they put the armor on). See, here's what it keeps coming back to. I'm playing a game, and I'm controlling 6 people (potentially), so I want to be able to know who's who. Oh, look, there's Human Tom, and there's Human Suzy. Okay, I can already tell them apart. They are easily, EASILY distinguishable from one another, because of the culmination of all their physiological differences. Okay, hey! I found some plate armor! They're both Warriors! I can afford 2 sets! Okay, I'd very much like them to both have some good quality armor, so I equip them both with plate. Wait, what's this? Now, the majority of those physiological differences are covered, because Suzy just put on twice the padding under her armor to make up for the fact that the armor is basically the exact same as Tom's. So, now, all I have to do is go out of my way to make Suzy distinctive again. Let me ask this, at this point: Would you call me silly if I went out of my way to make them look identical, THEN complained that they looked identical? I mean, I gave them the same haircut, same hat, same clothes, same little customizable accessories and plumes and such. THEN said "Hey, this is ridiculous... they look identical!" Wouldn't that be silly? Well, here's the difference between that and plate armor: With plate armor, my goal is to improve both Tom and Suzy's armor effectiveness. NOT to make them no longer visually distinguishable from one another. But, if the armor does that, then I have no choice. It's a packaged deal, at that point. And it doesn't need to be. Guess what? In a video game, it doesn't MATTER if you stray 15% from reality. You can get out your calculator and say "Wait a minute! Her armor would actually have a 1.2-point lower rating than Tom's, because of the way the developers decided to fit the armor slightly differently!" all day long, and it doesn't matter, because there're no inherent video game world physics that dictate whether or not the armor is any less effective. Would a 3-foot-tall Gnome's suit of full plate be as effective as a 9-foot-tall Half-Ogre's suit of plate? Probably not. And yet, no matter what your race in a typical game, plate is plate, and you get the same bonus. It's an abstraction that we accept. You're already much more physically frail than a Half-Ogre, as a Gnome, so why the need to make armor suck, too? Why, then, is there ANY need, whatsoever, to say to me "Yeah, okay, but there's absolutely no reason for any of that, that you just said there's at least some kind of reason for, but there's TOTALLY a reason to make sure it's 1000000000% realistic, because that generates highly helpful affects across the board, versus your zero-reason abstraction." And, for the record, subjectively, there IS no right and wrong. That's kind of the whole point of subjectivity. The rightness or wrongness depends on the perspective. Where as, OBJECTIVELY, you're right that a lack of abstraction is more realistic, and that realism has positive benefits, and I'm right that, here, there is A purpose to be served by abstraction, and that it's more of a purpose than pure realism serves in this particular matter. As I said, you can agree with that, and still not WANT the abstraction (so, subjectively, you'd still opt for the realism.) If the game were only made for you, and not a billion other players, I'd agree that the abstraction would be pointless.

Nor do I. But I also don't think it would in any way be bad or inherently undoable to put a stronghold in. And, they didn't make me give 'em more money. I did that of my own volition.

Sorry. I left it up to possible inferral that maybe you advocated some of that. You're just like the 17th person who's questioned this in exactly the same way, and so many others keep advocating such things. Also, I'm really being serious here: Would that "rather confusing rant" have been better if I had refrained from elaborating my point? It would have looked something like this: "Bob and Suzy already look different, while Bob and John already look very similar." ? Because, when I JUST say a one-liner like that, I get asked 92 questions. But, when I attempt to elaborate, I get told I shouldn't have explained so much. Seems like a lose-lose, and if I'm gonna lose, I'd rather have explained than been vague. That's just me. *shrug*

It wouldn't, if all the enemies were doing the same amount of damage, and attacked with the same frequency. Let's see, you get hit 10 times and each hit does 10 damage. If your armor deflects 25%: 1. On average, 2.5 of the hits miss, leaving 7.5 hits. That's 75 damage. 2. Each hit gets reduced by 25%, leaving 10 hits of 7.5 damage. That's 75 damage. (You get bruised and such.) 3. In the second case, we can round that down to 10 hits doing 7 damage (damage threshold), leaving 70 damage. Now, your armor also absorbs 25%: 1a. Each hit is reduced by 25%, so does 7.5 damage, rounded to 8 damage. * 7.5 hits = 60 damage. 1b. Each hit is reduced by 25%, so does 7.5 damage, rounded down to 7 damage (damage threshold), * 7.5 hits = 52.5 damage. 2a. Each hit is reduced by 25%, so does 5.6 damage, rounded to 6 damage. * 10 hits = 60 damage. 2b. Each hit is reduced by 25%, so does 5.6 damage, rounded down to 5 damage (damage threshold), * 10 hits = 50 damage. 3a. Each hit is reduced by 25%, so does 5.25 damage, rounded to 5 damage. * 10 hits = 50 damage. 3b. Each hit is reduced by 25%, so does 5.25 damage, rounded down to 5 damage (damage threshold), * 10 hits = 50 damage. If your attacker hits you for 2 damage, you would get either 2, 1 or 0 damage, depending on which variant you use, and if he hits you for, say 100 damage, the difference is marginal. Of course, if you want a damage threshold, you can do that when rounding down. That makes the difference for small damages larger. I may be mistaken, but you still seem to be missing the point I made about different enemies doing different amounts of damage relative to their attack speed. Basically, you're looking at the factors without looking at time. I don't have as fancy of math to whip up (I'm slow, and it would take me too long... and I'm not making fun of your math, by the way. It is admirable, ^_^), but to make an example: If you're wearing armor that grants 25% deflection (no-damage -- hit fails to penetrate armor and/or connect properly), and you're fighting an enemy that attacks once every .5 seconds and deals about 10 dmg per strike, then you're going to miss out on a certain bit of damage from the misses, but there are going to be so many hits it's not even funny, so the 25% absoption (making all the hits 7-or-so damage) might be better, maybe. If you're wearing armor that grants 25% deflection against a foe who attacks once every 7 seconds and deals 170 damage, then he's not going to get very many attacks on you before you can take him down (maybe 4 or 5?), so the chance to deflect is probably a lot more valuable against this foe than the guarantee to absorb 25% of the 170 every time and just take all 3 or 4 or 5 hits. So, my point was merely that the difference in effectiveness is situational. As long as the slower-striking, higher-damage enemy is always going to have enough hitpoints to allow him to last long enough to attack you the same number of times as the faster-striking lower-damage enemy, every single time, then yeah, it wouldn't matter, statistically. However, you've got more factors that your armor is in the pool with than JUST "What would happen if you got attacked this many times with this much damage, while wearing one armor or the other?"

Let's test this hypothesis of yours... It IS possible that I'm imagining this quote right now. 8P A) I've already addressed this (this is why threads are 17 pages long... no one reads anything and just jumps into a debate with their gloves off). B) Let me use your exact same line of reasoning to ask another question: "If Dwarf Bill and Dwarf Steve look super similar, then why the hell should Dwarf Bill and Beholder Sam look any different?" The fact that we happen to be talking about the male/female difference is pure circumstance. Whether or not you can tell the difference between two things that happen to already look the same, once you cover them in armor, has absolutely no bearing on whether or not two things that already aren't twins should suddenly become "homogenous," as you said, once they've donned armor. The "that doesn't fix every problem in the world, so it therefore is useless" argument doesn't really fly. Look, are the Obsidian concepts BAD or something? Do they look terribly stupid and infeasible? Because, I don't think they do, not even SLIGHTLY, and I can easily tell the difference between Tom and Suzy (whom I could already tell the difference between before they ever put bulky, rigid armor on). I don't comprehend how "Take away all their visual distinctions, but then don't worry, because you can always optionally give the armor some visual distinctions to undo the removal of visual distinction" is supposed to make more sense than "Just leave some visual distinction in place to begin with." Notice that I didn't say the former makes NO sense. I just don't see how people are baffled by my thinking the latter makes oodles of sense. How silly is it to preserve 100% realism in the armor design at the cost of extremely simple, intuitive visual distinction between already-visually-distinct entities, THEN be totally fine with the Full Plate Power Rangers walking about in identically-formed-yet-variably-colored/decorated suits of armor? Either the world and story are devoid of anyone who's ever going to be discreetly trying to find and murder you (which is a lame slap-in-the-face to realism) OR everyone who's ever even mildly curious as to where you are can find you in a heartbeat, and you'll be ambushed left-and-right, 24/7 by people who look at your vibrantly-distinguished-from-one-another characters and say "A blue one, a green one, a yellow one, a red one, and a pink one, all in plate... yep, that's them all right." That's horribly unrealistic in that your characters would never agree to do that. So, I'm all for realism, but I also understand that certain things are better off abstracted. So, get with the program. If slightly altering armor to fit the character in question is too much, then so is allowing them to have all kind of distinguishable-to-assassins markings and accessories all over their armor as they travel about. But we allow that. Why? Because it's a friggin' game, and the satisfaction of making your party uniquely your own FAR outweighs the notion that "Oh no! Everyone will know who and where they are, because I chose red armor instead of camouflage armor! BLAST!" So, we say "You know what? You get to customize your character, and you won't suffer for it simply because you chose your favorite color for that helmet plume.

There actually is a reason, that you keep ignoring (you're not even addressing it and arguing why it isn't a reason, you're just pretending it doesn't exist), and that's that, in real life, you don't control 2 different people who could be confused with one another, and in a game, you do. That is, factually, A reason for visual distinction between characters. Additional cues being inherently all optional things is A reason why you shouldn't have to use them to achieve some semblance of visual distinction. You see, subjectively believing that pure realistic design is better than an abstraction in this case AND acknowledging that the above is objectively true are not mutually exclusive things. Yet you seem to argue against my objective observations with subjective arguments. And I'm sorry, but "I didn't call you unreasonable" doesn't fly when you're literally arguing that my statements and observations are completely devoid of reason. If you hold a sword at a man's throat, and he claims you threatened him, do you say "I never said I was going to hurt him!"? And, for the record, the only way in which you're being unreasonable is in your insistence that the things I'm saying are unreasonable. Also, if my words are white noise that bores you, why are you even responding? "I don't really care about this discussion, but I'm going to adamantly keep 'discussing' it." I'm genuinely asking. Your words are pure frustration for me, but I'm actually responding to them as if you're simply missing a few specifics of mine, here and there, and trying my best to make those things more clear to you. I've even asked you for clarification on many points, and yet you prefer to tell me what I meant, what you didn't miss, and how silly what I'm saying is. I just... I don't even comprehend what you want at this point. I understand your stance, and still subjectively disagree with it (even though it is not nonsense, or objectively wrong or flawed). Why can't you at least understand the objectivity of my stance, even if you subjectively disagree with it? Ask me anything, and I'll clarify. But, if you don't even acknowledge that you've misunderstood a point of mine, even SLIGHTLY, then I don't know what to do other than attempt to clarify everything I've said thus far, or rudely say "Well, you probably just are incapable of comprehending this matter, u_u" and simply avoid a response all-together and end the discussion there.

I live in that place that's only famous for getting hit by Hurricane Katrina. 8P

There are 2 main ways in which to ensure something like food & rest is well-implemented: 1) Abstract it enough to work with the gameplay mechanics so it isn't reduced to a detriment-avoiding-chore. 2) Incorporate it into the reactivity of the world. I would say a vast majority of the problems with the implementations of such things in existing games is that you've only got 2 states: The stat-penalties-because-you-didn't-use-an-inventory-item-every-5-minutes state, and the completely-neutral-because-you-used-an-inventory-item-every-5-minutes state. Nobody likes detriment juggling when there's not even a positive to be had (or much of one). And there are VERY simple abstractions you can use, such as "Your characters automatically eat when they need to, and you only need to keep rations on-hand." Along with, perhaps, an easy way of managing which rations are the preferred "Eat this first" ones, etc., instead of just treating them like 50 random different items in an inventory and having to drag them into an ammo spot or something. Your character selecting what to eat when he needs to eat requires so little brain power, it should never be turned into an unintuitive system in the player's interface. We can compare a food system to combat. Obviously, if you outfit your party with sticks and mud, you're going to make even simpler combat encounters that much more troublesome. But, it's pretty easy to outfit them with standard arms and armor, and have a moderately untricky time of things. Then, you'll have those encounters that are quite difficult, and they can be made less difficult with even MORE attention to detail and micromanagement (changing out armor/weapon sets for different enemy types, applying tactical compensation every 5 seconds in the battle, etc.). It should work similarly to that, in general. The goal isn't to simulate the process of eating food, just like a game doesn't try to simulate the process of donning armor. Off the top of my head, maybe having a good enough meal should have the potential to grant benefits that take several days to fade (But only ever stack back to the initial maximum bonus). In most games, the best you get from food is like a buff/potion duration. "For 6 hours, you have additional strength." I think it would be great if your taking the time to acquire high quality food items instead of general/mediocre ones would grand you something like +3 Constitution, initially, which would then fall to +2 after 8 hours, then +1 after another 8, then finally completely fade. Instead of "Okay, we're about to enter this cave. QUICK, EAT SOME FOOD FOR BONUSES!" I think that's something that makes it feel like a chore, too. Because, other things (like potions and buffs) already grant you similar bonuses, so it starts to feel redundant. But then, when you think "I'll just stick to potions and buffs, and not worry about food," you start getting all the "you didn't spend enough time worrying about food" detriments. So, it becomes something that you HAVE to do, but that isn't actually benefitting you simply because it's not an interesting/different enough mechanic from other benefit-management systems in the game. TL;DR -- NARM narm narm!!!

I actually just failed to stop myself from bumping up to the $275 tier for Torment... ... I REALLLY want that stronghold to make it! I love strongholds (especially what with their talk of how it might be fitted into the Numenera world). But, yeah, Project Eternity was the first big RPG I backed, and it's still the one I'm most focused on. If it comes down to us getting some alpha/beta builds to test mechanics and such, for multiple Kickstarter games, and I don't have the time to do them all, I'll probably make sure I help test P:E above the others.

The only assumption it rests on is the following: If your world, fictitious or not, possesses something capable of being sensed, then a living creature within that world bearing the ability to sense it is not inherently some artificial, forced construct. Forget the snake, if that's somehow confusing to you. Saying that "Skuldr's ability sure is a convenient way to stop people from easily sneaking" is like saying "Those merchant's guards sure are a convenient way of preventing someone from just stealing all the merchant's goods and waltzing away." Neither the Skuldr or the merchants' guards' presence in the world relies specifically on their placement by the dev team, as they could believably exist (under the workings of an established world) "on their own." Now, if a super-poor merchant had 10 decked-out guards, then it would start to seem like maybe they were purely placed as a controlling-the-player choice, rather than a choice that fits the lore where appropriate (the merchant probably wouldn't be able to afford such guards). I don't know how to be any clearer with such an extremely simple point.

^ Point acknowledged. Don't forget, however, that, for a lot of this stuff, you've already got the dialogue options and check systems set up in oodles of previous games. They simply fail to represent more than a single scale of final effects. So, in a lot of instances, instead of having 4 dialogue options grant varying amounts of negative points, and 4 grant varying amounts of positive points (to the same scale), you can simply work in the extra scales/demeanors and have each of the negative choices affect a different scale, and each of the positive choices affect a different scale. This isn't so much a purely new giant block of content to add to the game. It's simply a new way of handling lots of already-existent cRPG content. Granted, I won't argue that it probably wouldn't be extra work as compared to NOT-doing it. But, almost any complex system/addition is, and it wouldn't really be as much as it seems (a default game doesn't have 1-2 choices per dialogue, and now we're trying to bring that up to 9 with our 9 demeanor factors, to put it simply).

Them's... Fightin' words... HAHA! Get it?! 'Cause... Fighters?! 8D!!!!! Okay, but seriously, u_u. We'll see how your fist does against my arcane veil... AND my 3 +1/level Telekinetic COUNTER-fists! You swing a fist? Please... I weave fists for BREAKFAST! O_O What! WHAT! Come at me, bro! *glows*

I didn't ask that question, but thanks for answering "my question." Keyword being "seems." See, the biggest point of conflict here has actually been your failure to comprehend the specifics of my argument in the first place, followed by your insistence that this initial misunderstanding was, indeed, my point from then on. Point recap: It's a game. Games have factors real life doesn't. Visual design decisions affect these factors. Being able to intuitively discern my characters is just one of the factors. Perfectly-realistic designs and details suffer integrity loss at small scales anyway. Women are shaped differently than men. Fitted armor is real. Armor that fits a character (no matter the gender) will provide enough distinction between that character and any other character who doesn't possess the exact same physique and proportions, easily, even though you can still use various other armor decorations if you so choose. It doesn't even matter if you're doing it specifically to distinguish between them or not. The perfectly reasonable difference in fitted armor size/proportions allows that distinction even without it being a goal. In response to all that, your argument, thus far, has ranged from "female armor shouldn't have silly little boob humps in it" to "I don't have any problem telling people apart, and when I do (which I don't), I just use optional things like floating names and extraneous armor decorations, which are, of course, optional, but you should HAVE to use them, so long as you wish to distinguish between your characters, which you have the option of just not caring about, and then you don't HAVE to use the optional options. u_u" Yup. I really need to stop being so unreasonable. I dunno. I've apparently been debating against myself this entire time, and pretending there was another person involved meeting me swordstroke for swordstroke. o_o Also, I love that you feel the need to emphasize "maximum zoom," as if that's some super-distant abnormal viewpoint for an isometric game that's different from the default for most previous games in the genre. Makes me sound extra irrational, 8D. "I WANT TO BE ABLE TO ZOOM OUT INTO SPACE, BUT STILL SEE ARMOR DIFFERENCES! BWAHHHHH!!!!" *giggle*

Are you starting a... Fight Supremacist movement? o_o

Not necessarily. In the OP, you've only actually got 4 scales. 3 horizontal scales, plus an overlapping vertical one. You're not going to have a response that makes an NPC like you, one that demands respect, one that produces fear, one that produces hate, one that produces... etc. The point of these factors is that they can be altered and reached by what you do. Not to give you the dialogue tools necessary to directly craft the exact effect you want in every single person you talk to. Some people would be immune to one or more scales. And, even with the ones who weren't, it wouldn't make sense for you to have the means to affect them on every possible level, all at your fingertips. You can't go around saving orphanages for 70% of the game, then get to a person and suddenly be ferociously intimidating. You've got no practice, experience, or reputation to back you up. There would be VERY few dialogues with such a plethora of options.

... I really hope you're being sarcastic. Methinks that perhaps he meant successful-great, rather than quality-great. 8P

It wouldn't, if all the enemies were doing the same amount of damage, and attacked with the same frequency.