Lephys

I believe they should be 100% of that, with the addition of a bag of very thin, crispy slices of potato. u_u

^ I know that feel, bro. I hate it when that happens. Oh, hey, it might be saved (or most of it might). The forums autosave (if you have that feature activated, which I think it is by default), and you can go to "More Reply Options," then somewhere there's a "view autosaved content" (I think it's under the body box where you type/edit your reply.) Of course, it might be gone forever now. Maybe it was overwritten. *shrug* *Pats you on the back* There there...

He can rest his freaky-looking hands when he's DEAD... TIRED from signing all those games/posters/books!

^ Probably for an undisclosed reason. They're going for a theme, I guess. 8P

Well, true. It's just, the humans tend to just be humans. They might get the spotlight, but I think that's a different matter (that also shouldn't happen -- you're right). But... well, look at Lord of the Rings, the foundation for like 90% of medieval fantasy today, haha. All the most interesting races in that story are the NON-humans. I mean, it's Tolkien... the guy was like a cultural flavor factory, so the humans actually had a lot of detail to them, still. But, basically, it was all "Humans are petty and humany, and they hold keeps, and fight each other. What do the Elves do? they use effing MAGIC! And they know about all kinds of awesome stuff! And they have super-exotic looking architecture and equipment, and lembas bread, and they're all ancient and did all kinds of cool stuff in places that are merely ruins now... stuff that humans don't even know about!" See what I mean? You see humans, and they're just you. It's like everything else in the game is medieval fantasy, but the humans are just one, single group, and they're just the young'uns compared to everyone else, so they don't even really have that much difference or cultural depth amongst them. Ehhh, true... Maybe I'm too much of an optimist? Or, at the very least, too True Neutral. You know, maybe not trying to find a way in which it could be a positive statement, but just a way in which it's maybe not negative? Heh. Again, my hope for the meaning is weak, but I still don't think it's entirely impossible that they meant something along the lines of what I'm thinking. Kinda like how, on the wiki pages and such, there was almost no info on some of the classes for a while, while the others had pretty good descriptions going. I don't know that they're hashing out all the races at the same time. So maybe they started on Humans, and he just didn't make that very clear in his words, and instead made it sound like they're just intentionally focusing on Humans more than all other races in their design. *shrug*. Lotta "maybe"s... Yes! Haha. It's just something I encourage. You can be bummed before then if you really want, I suppose. 8P. Just trying my best to save you some potentially unnecessary bummedness.

Not at all. You actually even specified "as standard," which doesn't mean that they never exist in any rarity. Just thought it was interesting, is all, Also, @forfs... Your signature is PRICELESS!

No, I'm sorry. The fault is mine. I was just sort of going off on some context, as I liked that your idea tries to affect what can be affected (people who consider things, and their considerations) rather than what cannot, really (like using DRM to "stop" piracy). See, your idea falls under "be a fluffy kitten," as opposed to "be an annoying kid who's constantly shouting things at you and egging you in the face." The fault was mine for not directly addressing your idea. I apologize. It was late, and I was tired, and I read the initial post, then a bunch of responses regarding DRM and such, so I just kinda went off on what was in my head, contextually, which was "Here's really the deal about DRM and this whole piracy thing." But, yeah, basically, you let the pirates be the bad guys, and you maximize the number of people who will actually buy the game, rather than trying to convert pirates into buyers, or spend all your time and resources trying to prevent them from pirating. That's like shutting down a hospital to siphon more funds to cure-cancer research. It's self-defeating. And, like Iucoonu said, the majority of "pirates" are just lazy, and nothing really forces them to acknowledge the impact of simple laziness. "Well, someone told me I could get this for free, so I was all 'Meh, it's not like the game company's gonna go broke, and I wasn't really sure whether or not I wanted to buy it, so...' *shrug*... now I'm playing it, and I didn't have to buy it or anything, so why go through the trouble now? It's just not that big of a deal." So, yeah, I actually like your idea, and I'd even go with variants of it, such as loading screens occasionally popping up "Liking this game and somehow got it for free? Well, we'd appreciate if you could at least anonymously donate a few dollars to help us keep making games like this." Something along those lines. Appeal to the humanity in people, ya know? "Look, we worked really hard on this, and we don't want yachts. We just want to be successful so that we can get paid, and make more games for you to enjoy." Of course, it helps when that actually shows in your game. When it's not "Look, we made a bunch of people churn out a bunch of copycat content, and while individual artists and designers toiled diligently, we really planned this whole thing from the get-go as a half-assed way to make sure we made exactly 10 million dollars profit, based on statistics and projections. It's another shooter, and market research shows it'll sell well enough, regardless of whether or not we actually put effort into making sure it's unique and awesome." But, yeah... Annnnnnnywho, hehe. Oh, one more thing, 'cause it's interesting. There was some little mall cafe that was going out of business a few years back, and the owner said "I'm desperate, so I'm gonna try something. Because, if I do nothing, I'll be out of business in 3 months, for sure. What's there to lose?" So, he instituted a "Pay what you think your meal was worth" policy. Customers still had to go up to the register and pay (or the cops would get called, for walking out/ stealing), but you got to pay whatever you wanted. Basically, your entire bill was the tip. He said he wasn't sure it would work. Everyone told him "That's business 101, man. If you let the people set the price, they're all just gonna say '1 cent' and screw you over." But, lo and behold, people actually were very interested in that method, and it got a lot of people asking why he did that. And if they liked the place, and they found out, they'd gladly pay more than their food was even worth. He said that sometimes, you'd get the occasional person who just paid 1 penny, or a dollar for a sandwich and coffee, but he said it was EASILY counterbalanced by all the people who dropped like 10 bucks just for their coffee, because they liked the coffee, and the service, and wanted to see the place keep going, and they could spare some money. The next month, he was so busy (and was making so much more income), he was able to hire several more part-time employees to help out around there, and expand his menu, etc. So, he literally just did the opposite of going out of business. Why? Because he got people on his side. He made it perfectly clear he wasn't going to GET his money out of you, he was going to EARN it.

No worries. I wasn't trying to scold you or anything, heh. Just sharing information is all. 8P *beep boop beep*... oh crap, my batteries are dying! Gotta go plug myself in and run some diagnostics.

Ahh, no problem. And, I've gotta say, your English is pretty good. Really. Nahh, . True discussion is cooperative, not competitive. I'm just trying to make sure I understand exactly what it is you're trying to say. And I'm still just a little unclear on this bit, because you initially said that turning OFF the scaling ADDS challenge. It might be that I misunderstood what you meant, but you seemed to be asking "Why should anyone get mad because someone wants to add some difficulty by using the 'turn off level scaling' option?" But, it seems if you turn it off, then the only possible change will be enemies that are lower level than they could've been, because the scaling would've raised their level at a certain point. *shrug* I was just a little confused by that, is all, and was trying to make sure I didn't miss something. You're right that we don't know exactly everything that will be affected by difficulty options, but what it will definitely affect (unless it's not doing at all what it's supposed to do) is the difficulty/challenge of combat encounters. Whether it does it by changing levels, or just making the AI crappier, or making the player characters better, or all of the above, we don't know yet. But, the problem brought up with level-scaling is that it will increase the level of enemies when some players might not want it to. And no matter how scary or wussy an enemy is, it's going to be better and more challenging if it's a higher level. It's going to be more capable of killing you than something at a lower level. So, specifically, the problem brought up was "No, I earned that level 7 thing being easily stompable into the ground, because I leveled up to level 10 before fighting it. I don't want it to be level 8 or 9 now that I'm level 10!". Which means "I don't want that thing to get more difficult than it's 'supposed' to be." But, my argument is, "How do you know how difficult it's 'supposed' to be?". Let's say you CAN fight something that's level 7, but it could possibly be scaled up to a maximum of level 10, if you level up past it before trying to fight it (and that's as high as you can go before you either have to fight it, or quit playing the game forever and never progress). Well, if they just decided the thing was level 10, no matter what (even though you don't know what level it is until you encounter it -- it's hidden underlying game-code knowledge), would that be totally fine, suddenly? Is it more important HOW the level was decided (by some guy in an office while the game's being made, then never again will it change as opposed to by the character's level, to some degree) than it is whether or not the level's appropriate, or what opportunities the game presents? If the enemy were just-plain level 10, then it would be harder, relative to the rest of the game. You'd pretty much have to get to maximum level (10) before fighting it, JUST to be able to take it on on an "even" playing field (you'd be the same level, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'd have the same HP, damage, abilities, etc.). So, the game becomes more linear, if not perfectly linear. You COULD fight it at level 7, or 8, or 9. But then, if everything in the game were like that, then your options are pretty much hard mode, or a perfectly linear game. Because, every time you don't take on things in a particular order (to be higher level whenever you fight the high-level thing), you'd have a ridiculously high challenge there. Does that make sense? I don't want everything to scale, all the time (and neither does Obsidian). So since it serves its purpose when there's a purpose to serve, I don't see removing it as anything but statically shifting the difficulty of the game either up or down, and introducing more a more obviously linear path to the game. You know what would be awesome? If there was an explanation for the "scaling," and if it were time-sensitive. What I mean is, if you have the option of: A) taking out a bandit outpost that's causing trouble in the area, or B) investigating a cave, maybe choosing to investigate the cave FIRST gives the bandits more time to better outfit themselves and train, etc. So, since checking out a cave takes time (maybe a few days, or a week, with travel in there, depending on where it is, etc.), the bandits have existed and done things during that time, as well. Maybe that's a good way to look at controlled level-scaling. I mean, if your whole party can gain levels in the amount of time it takes to investigate a cave, why can't the bandits improve enough to gain a level, maybe by the time you've gained 2? Again, it doesn't need to be "Every time you take a step, they take a step", 1:1 scaling. It's not about keeping them exactly on-par with you. But, if you can fight the bandits now, or in 4 weeks, why would they still just be sitting around, not doing anything whatsoever, in 4 weeks? It could even be worked into the story and such. Just, situations changing when you don't deal with them immediately, but every time you deal with 1 situation out of a handful presented to you at once, time passes, and the others change. You can never take them all on at once. *shrug* Well, I don't even really want to maximize opponents' levels. I mean, that'd be an interesting option, too. Like I've said on the topic before, Oblivion actually had a level-scaling slider. You could control the ratio. I think it went all the way up to like 2:1. So, if you were level 5, everything you fought was level 10. That's kinda similar, in terms of maximizing opponents' levels. But, yeah, that's not something I think we need in here. I don't even think much scaling is necessary at all, and, as I said, neither does Obsidian. They're intending to use the most minimal amount they need to, and only on the core story content, which makes sense. If you have to go confront some story boss guy at the Blargity Blarg Outpost, but you can do like 10 other quests that are completely optional, if you so choose, then it's almost impossible, like I said, to not either make the guy a static level that's too high (basically requiring you to do all 10 quests just to level enough to have him not be crazy difficult) or make the guy a static level that's too low (basically, he's already your level, and if you so choose to do all 10 side quests, you're not 5 levels above him). This is just a simplified example, keep in mind... BUT, the best thing to do would be to have both, right? So the people who say "But, what's the point in playing the game if you aren't going to do all those quests? That's just normal to me, and I expect an appropriate story encounter after doing all the quests" can be level 10 and fight their level 10 guy (same level for the sake of simplicity, for the example), and the people who say "Man, why do all that side stuff? It's just optional, anyway. I'm just here for the story, and I wanna progress that right now!" can be level 5 and can have their level 5 guy. The people who want to be level 5 and have their level 10 guy can put the game on Hard (Because why would they want a tough guy ONLY RIGHT THERE and nowhere else in the game?), and the people who want to be level 10 and have their level 5 guy to fight can put the game on Easy (because, again, why would they want JUST that one fight to be super easy, and all the other ones to be difficult?). So, everyone wins, really. Except for Valorian, apparently. Valorian believes you should have to get out a calculator and figure out exactly which order of quests will yield you the appropriate amount of XP to keep everything moderately challenging relative to your party level, without having it be a roller-coaster. That's totally up to the player, not the game. These bandits are level 50 and you're level 30? Welp, should've done other stuff first, obviously. This quest you didn't discover yet is now level 5, but you're level 20 by the time you discovered it? Welp, that's your bad. You should've known about all the content in the game, and printed out a detailed itinerary on how to get through it all, like making the most of a 4-night stay at Disneyworld with a bus group. The developers are in no way responsible for consistency. They just slap stuff into a game, and you figure it out from there, OR ELSE! o_O

Unless it's a signature trait of a particular character (or characters). But, yeah... otherwise, I'm kinda with ya on that.

I'll admit this actually disappoints me. Most fantasy settings focus more on humans than any other race already. I can play just about any game if all I cared about was stories involving human characters, kingdoms and cultures, with little fantasy races sprinkled around like garnish. What's the point of pouring so much creativity into fantasy races like elves and dwarves if we aren't going to actually see them, or we only see them in relation to how they interact with humans? I believe what was meant there was that, usually, the attitude seems to be "Well, Humans are just humans, so we can't really make them THAT cool or interesting, so let's just focus on Dwarves and Elves and 'exotic' races, since they're inherently so much cooler than humans!", and they want to make sure that Humans are actually made as interesting as they can be in this world full of non-human things from not-reality. Also, they may or may not have been touching on the meaning of "human interaction" as "that level of complex, real-world interaction that we, as humans, see in reality." Maybe they're trying to make sure all the races are as "human" and culturally interesting and diverse as actual humanity is, alongside their majestical fantasyness, rather than saying "Well, they don't really act much like an actual culture that we can in any way relate to, but at least they're really cool and have awesome magic and technology and architecture, ^_^" But, I'm pretty sure about the first part. Also, he said "I've been focused mainly...", so he could've just meant that he, personally, can't really provide the interviewer with too much detailed info on the other races, since he and/or the team has been mainly hashing out the humans thus far. *shrug* I just wouldn't get too bummed about those couple of lines, if I were you, until we know more specifics. 8P

I think the most effective way to combat piracy is to simply combat the "reason" to pirate. Look at it this way. Without you doing anything at all, there are people who are going to go out of their way to pirate stuff, and there are people who are going to buy it legit. Then, no matter how much you do, there are STILL going to be people who go out of their way (however far they need to) to pirate stuff, and there are still going to be people who actually buy the stuff legitimately. Basically, I think most people (out of the entire populous of potential consumers of your product) comprehend that, if you make NO money, you can't make any more products (to even pirate). Hell, I think even some PIRATES understand that. But, anywho... Imagine the developer/publisher is a single entity, and pirating is kicking that entity. The best solution? Be a kitten instead of an annoying kid throwing eggs at everyone. People who didn't even have any REASON to, initially, HATE the kid constantly heckling them and throwing eggs at them. But, even some people who normally love to go around kicking things would still think twice about kicking a kitten. Every time a publisher/developer (usually the publisher, mainly) says: "Here's a way we're going to combat piracy. If you're already planning on legitimately paying us money for our product because you just love it, this is going to make your life hell. If you're a pirate, this is going to make it harder, but not impossible, to pirate our game.", they become more like the annoying heckling kid throwing eggs at people. And every time they go "Look, we want to stop piracy, but we're not going to take it out on you non-pirates," they become more like the kitten. If people are going to pirate, either way, you might as well have a mob of loyal, legitimate buyers helping you combat that, than a mob of angry, disgruntled buyers who are considering piracy more and more by the minute because of how little you care about ensuring that they can just pay you and use your awesome product. It's kind of like saying "We know these bandits hang out in this forest, but we don't know where. So we're gonna burn down the forest, even though we can't be sure that's going to kill all of them." Another good idea would be to distribute free, "black market" versions of their games, under the guise of pirates, and have those pirates download horrible, horrible virii that wipe their hard drives. 8P

So, let me get this straight... ... You had 99 options but a lich ain't one?

You need help... Kickstarter funding is help (to the people in need of the funds.) Therefore, you need to fund more Kickstarter projects.

Ahh... but would it have been, had horses NEVER existed, and had mankind attempted domestication of deer or cattle or chocobos since the dawn of man? *Chinstroke of Pondrance +1*

*Sniff sniff*... I smell a loophole. Darn you, unintended literal translations!

^ Although technically, if you have various different coins/bills, you have currency, in various forms. You have a single currency, with multiple forms. i.e "forms of currency." The title's the only thing that says anything about "multiple currencies." 8P

First off, I don't understand what you mean by "someone might decide to add some difficulty to their gameplay." If anything, difficulty is subtracted, rather than added, when level-scaling is altogether removed. I might've missed something or read something wrong... *Shrug* The "problem" is that it's unnecessary. Or rather, the only problem is that it's a fix for a non-existent problem. The idea of an option for no level-scaling didn't infuriate me. I simply pointed out that it's not necessary, and when someone tried to argue that it was, in fact, necessary to fix a problem, I merely rebutted. In short, the difficulty option, along with even other challenge-affecting options that might be separate (friendly fire, togglable UI indicators and such, etc.) already cover all combat challenges throughout the entire game. If you're going to put in a "Have those several instances that were going to level scale in the game, NOT level-scale" option, then you might as well have level minimum options, and level maximum options. To put it another way, all level-scaling (in the implementation Obsidian is using) really does is lessen the relative rate of challenge difference as you progress past a given enemy's lowest encounterable level. So, if, on Normal difficulty, Boss #1 starts at level 5, and can go as high as level 6 (depending on your progression before facing him), and on Easy difficulty, he starts at level 3 and can go as high as level 4, why does anything else need to handle the increased relative difficulty of that boss? If it was going to be 1:1 scaling, then I could see a reason for an option. But, if you leveling up ALWAYS = that handful of core, level-scaled content being easier than it was before you leveled up, how nitpicky do we need to get? "Yeah, but I SHOULD'VE been allowed to be 3 levels above that boss before facing him than just 1 level above that boss before facing him, even though I'm perfectly fine with the fact that there's other content in the game that I can never even face when it ISN'T at-or-below my own level." So, yes. If you should be able to change the way in which challenge is decided with an option, then that might as well extend to everything in the game. "I don't ever want to face level 20 enemies, because 20 is the level cap, and I always want to be a higher level than my enemies." Boom. *Implements Enemy Encounter Level Cap option.* Maybe we should also put an option in for Nobody Dies mode, for the people who hate to see main characters die in a storyline. Because, how dare the game determine the scenarios we have to deal with in a perfectly reasonable fashion! u_u Note: The sarcasm is meant only to emphasize the point. It is not directed at anyone in a hostile fashion.

I don't know for certain (I'm not even sure it's been officiated yet), but I believe the grimoire will be exclusive to Wizards/mages. It's been sort of worked into their class mechanics. That isn't to say Priests might not also be able to utilize books in some form or fashion, but I do not think they will carry around a spell-listing book that allows them to cast the spells listed within it. It isn't my intention to argue semantics, but merely to make sure my answer is clear in the way that "grimoire" is being used by Obsidian here. That being said, based on the design intentions they've expressed, I'd say there will be equal opportunities for people who want to make a sort of "battle Priest" who "fights" more than he magifies, AND for those who want to make a more magic-centric Priest who magifies more than he "fights." You know, kind of the "my faith in my god has allowed me to become the general of her army" versus "my faith in my god has made me into an avatar and conduit of her more-than-earthly powers that function remarkably like magic." 8P

^ Yeah, I just made an overly elaborate, unnecessarily lengthy billiards analogy about almost the same thing in your "How Would You Make Dialogue Good?" thread, 8D It's what I do...

^ I appreciate your efforts, Ristora, but the argument ended weeks ago, 8P. And yes, it was a rather unnecessary argument. Your thoughts on the matter (and your chart) does make very good sense, but you might've missed the original point that sparked a misunderstanding, followed by an argument. So, for your potential curiosity, the original point was that, in a system such as P:E's dual health/stamina system, there is absolutely nothing gained from any amount of delay on the regeneration of stamina outside of combat. Basically, the only reason it only regenerates at a certain rate is because of the effects of that rate on combat. Outside of combat, there is nothing to be affected or detrimented by an increase in the rate of regen, even to the point of stamina instantly refilling. Basically, this goes for any form of delayed healing in any RPG with distinct combat encounters. If the opportunity to gradually heal your party by any amount and to prevent any re-entry into combat (or entry into a new combat encounter) always exists outside of combat, then there is nothing lost and only time gained by bypassing the duration of the healing effect (without changing the amount or availability of healing in any way). In other words, if a potion heals you for 50 health over the course of 10 seconds, then using that potion outside of combat might as well instantly heal you for 50 health. And, in P:E's case, if you have constant, passive stamina regen, then stamina might as well instantly jump back up to full outside of combat. The only purpose to gradual/time-sensitive healing effects is created by the fact that things can affect your health alongside the healing effect. In any situation where this is no longer true, the gradual healing duration/delay ceases to have a purpose. Methinks the tidbit that was missed was the whole "only under these circumstances" part. Plus, I think at one point, it was thought that I was suggesting that health might as well restore to FULL every time you're outside of combat, rather than only to whatever degree the healing effects already in-place (including those from items you use) would have normally restored it. *Shrug*

Just because a game shouldn't force you to defend, protect, and hug nature on a regular basis, sheerly because you're a Ranger, doesn't mean it should, therefore, force everyone to be hunters. I think the lesson here is that "Ranger," as a class title for an RPG, should not be broader than BOTH a wilderness defender AND a hunter. Hence all the explanations as to why "Ranger" makes so much sense for the class title, while "Hunter" wouldn't work as well, and the complete lack of arguments as to why "Defender Of All That Is Green" should be the class title in lieu of both "Ranger" and "Hunter."

Maybe it's more that the effects of your decisions (and the very presentation of those decisions) should be more split up between important (to whatever degree) individual NPCs than simply between big quest outcomes. I'm trying to think of how best to describe this, with only text. MAN if only we had telepathy... Ehhh... *ponders*... Well, let me being by saying that it would be nice if your more immediate, short-term effects on NPCs with whom you interact were recorded. And maybe they do different things because of this. Man, I really can't think of a good, clear example... Okay, alongside permanent switches, we'll call them (such as "Yay, because of what I said or did, you now believe my party are being set up instead of actually being evil murderous mercenaries -- 'murder-cenaries,' if you will" ), there could be lesser, "partial" or temporary switches. Kind of the pool-ball effect. Rather than shooting the queue ball (your party) straight into another ball to knock it into a pocket, you actually don't have any direct shots, and you knock a ball this way instead of that, to put it into a different position (for the purposes of this analogy, pretend you're just playing pool alone). Well, your dialogue choices would affect the weight of the ball you're trying to knock (affecting the distance it can go), and the direction in which you can knock it. So, maybe you can hit the 1 ball into the 3 ball (but can't sink it this time), OR the 1 ball into the 5 ball, OR you can just relocate it into a different position, so that it can later be knocked into the 7 ball or the 8 ball, or perhaps hit the 3 or 5 ball from a different position and knock them into a different pocket. Basically, the pool balls are NPCs, and the pockets are big, over-arching events/decisions/results in the world. In most games, you get a lot of "Do you hit this ball into THIS pocket, or THIS pocket?" choices, but that's about it. You can end up with 3 NPCs in one pocket, and 2 in another, or 1 in the first pocket, and 4 in the other, etc. But, the game doesn't really care all that much how you go about getting them to that pocket, in between pocket shots. Everything is typically taken care of in a single "shot" decision, or is a progression-based thing along a chosen path (the ball is heavy, so you have to shoot at it 5 times in the same direction, over the course of many hours of gameplay, but you eventually get it into the pocket). Which, again, that's all fine and dandy. I'd just like to see more "Oh, hey, remember that ball, earlier, that I couldn't get into a pocket, or even shoot TOWARD a pocket or any other ball? Well, I hit it in a certain direction, not knowing how far it would go and where it would stop, really, and NOW it turns out it's perfectly set up to hit this OTHER ball into a better position! Then, after I made THAT shot, it turns out that SECOND ball can hit one into a pocket! 8D!" Sometimes, you'll know exactly where your shot will take the ball, and it's just a matter of making a tricky shot, and other times you either won't know the weight of the ball, or you won't really know exactly which direction it can go when you hit it, and you won't know exactly where it's going to end up. The point being that I think affecting NPC A in a certain way, during a temporary meeting, should end up being a factor (or changing a factor) in the scenario in which NPC B comes into play. Maybe because of how you affected NPC A, he sent NPC B's squad on some mission, so when you run into NPC B in a tavern, they're all roughed up and fatigued, and in a completely different mood because of what they just underwent recently. However, if you had handled NPC A differently, maybe NPC B wouldn't have gone on that mission (or would have been told to approach the mission from a different angle, or given more resources, etc.), and you might still bump into them at the exact same tavern, sitting in the exact same place, except they're actually content and relaxed. In other words, you've indirectly affected NPC B, regardless of whether or not they even know it was or whether they react to you differently because of who you are, when you first meet them. They react to you differently because of other factors that were different because of your previous actions and dialogue choices with other people. You have affected the world, if only locally or on a small scale, and different factors are now at play in the current situation you find yourself in, allowing for different choices and angles and ball weights for your next shot attempt. 8P

It wouldn't, but it would force you to confront blatant the-opposite-of-realism/verisimilitude, which would partially defeat the purpose of insisting on destructible walls in the first place. Not to mention that if destructible walls were your only solution to coincidental door-blocking corpses, then you'd have to ALSO fix corpses around quest-related rooms/corridors. It's kind of like when games do that thing where they say "Check it out! You can totally burn away this debris to get through this debris-blocked area, because it's simple wooden debris!". But, then, there are only like 5 piles of that seemingly-special debris throughout the game, and there are even other places where you could've easily burned a pile of wooden crap with your incredibly fiery spells and abilities (or even simple torches, etc.), but you can't, because it would interfere with game mechanics and the like. I don't know what's less immersive: being unable to burn through any debris ever, or being able to burn through debris in only about 5% of the game. It would be, but then that would have to either have to be part of the level design, or you'd just have to sacrifice all the effects of level design (i.e. "Man, that maze sure was tricky. I had to blow up like 15 walls just to waltz straight through to the exit!"). And, again, the more you say "this maze is magically resistance to wall-esploding," the more blatantly external design decisions stick out within the game world like huge, sore thumbs. Also... as for corpses disappearing, it can be assumed that the vast majority of this is going to occur "offstage", so-to-speak. So, all you really need are little details here and there to convey that things are going on with the corpses whilst you're not standing there watching them for weeks in a row. Maybe if you come back to a cave a day later, you see few remains of the corpses of fallen creature-people you slew, and you come upon a wolf gnawing on a hand. Maybe he runs off with it (presumably back to his pack/lair) as you approach. So, even though you didn't WATCH all the corpses get eaten by wolves, you could easily deduce "Oh, 90% of the corpses are gone, and there are simply bloodstains and remnants of bone and tissue here and there, and I just saw a wolf run off with a body part in its mouth, so I'm GUESSING that wolves live nearby, smelled all these wonderful meals, and 'cleaned up' around here while I was gone." So, if you came back a week later, you wouldn't even see any remnants of corpses or evidence that they had been there at all. Maybe longer than a week, *shrug*. It really depends. If you're 1 mile outside the town, on a main trade road, then I would assume the town and/or people patrolling the road would discover these corpses quite quickly and, at the very least, relocate them, if not bury them. Maybe bandits got to them, picked 'em clean, then dumped them in a river, or the woods, to make sure no one tied anything to the bandits? Or, the town authorities had a wagon brought out, identified and reported the bodies, and buried them, or burned them if they were just goblins or bandits or something. The point being that, you don't really have to see a lot of evidence of any of this. A wolf here, a vulture there. Maybe OCCASIONALLY you come upon a wagon team, clearing corpses from a road. Etc.

*_____* I think your brain steel just struck my brain flint, because we've got a spark. What if those things were an aspect of the reputation system? A bunch of this has been touched on before in various threads (I'm not claiming to have an entirely novel idea, just a specific one that's maybe been danced around but not actually danced with?), but what if, between the combat AI and scripted events, enemies of larger groups (mainly in larger, organized combat encounters) would actually flee, decently often (unless you managed to stop them) in order to warn the rest of their... people. This would only work, really, with entire factions or groups. Or anyone that would have any interest in teamwork, even if only under dire circumstances. Like, maybe 2 bandit groups kind of leave each other alone and trade occasionally. So, you wipe one of them out, and a couple of bandits, eventually seeing that their loss is inevitable, get the remaining combatant bandits to cover their escape, and they go to the OTHER group of bandits, with which they have some contact already, to warn them of a "band of mercenaries" (which you are, as far as they know, or whatever they perceive you as... maybe you're clearly on orders from a king or important person? *shrug*) is taking down bandits. The effect would be as you described, as far as preparation goes. If your party make-up can be described a bit, and you've got very little magical capability, then maybe the other bandits make sure to hire on some extra magery. You know, "Bring in a specialist!", hehe. That would be really cool if factions/groups in the area contextually reacted like that. It could even be based on some pretty simple things. The game could keep track of battle telemetry, perhaps, and say "Oh, look, 90% of things are killed by physical, melee strikes." Then, just have that person who got away "feed that information to his friends," (even though really the game's just looking at that gathered data on your battle). But, seems that would work pretty well, especially if it weren't TOO extreme. I mean, I don't expect the next major bandit outpost to be just made ENTIRELY of Wizards, simply because some guy said you had a lot of heavy melee fighters. "Alright everyone, starting now, we're all training 24/7 in the arcane arts! I want you to be level 7 Wizards by sundown!" Hehe... But, it could totally be another aspect of the reputation system. Just in those situations you see in current RPGs and think "Wait... if you knew stuff about me, why didn't you do ANYTHING at all with that knowledge?". It would be nice to see people do at least a little with the extra knowledge they have, even if it's not the super-awesome ideal amount of "this is totally a real entire world" reactivity.