Lephys

It wouldn't really have to be that weak compared to spells. You'd just have to make sure there was a significant enough trade-off. If you run around dual-wielding blasty wands and just fire elemental energy at people all day like a magic berzerker, your nice, precise, involved spell-casting should suffer. Well, in the scheme of things. It doesn't obviously decrease. It just never increases as much as it would if you focused on that. Overly simplistic example: You hit level 2. You can either add 10 damage or a new elemental type to your wand blasting, or you can learn 2 new tier-1 spells. Let's assume you started with... I dunno, 3 spells. Well, you can either get new ones and be more versatile with spells, or you can become a wand BAMF. But you can't do both. You could feasibly have wands get pretty awesome, IF you spent enough of your hard-earned progression points on making them so, rather than on making your spell repertoire and effectiveness awesome. You could also have any degree of hybrid, obviously. But, you don't have to assume that the Wizard must get tons and tons of spells, and therefore you can't make wands too good. I think something simple would be to require a focus or something (maybe a grimoire, I dunno... whatever they feel like going with) to be equipped in one hand (in the event that dual-wanding is available) to be more effective with spells. Then, if you decided to dual-wand, again, you're trading-off the spell-boost for the benefits of both wands. And vice versa if you want the focus and the spell boost.

Heaven forbid someone suggest anything but precedent. *gasp* Funny how you deny stereotyping all in favor of romance, then immediately compare Pshaw directly to other pro-romance posters way back. That's my favorite part.

If you want timing to be rewarded, then why do you want limited windows for the player to put that timing to work? In a turn-based game, you get the pause between turns to figure out your meaningful calculations. When you're ready, the next turn executes. Not the next 12 turns. Just the one. Why would it be bad for a real-time game not to let you pause whenever you wanted? If you pause 15 times while someone's casting a spell, who cares? What strategic advantage does that give you? Being able to pause doesn't mean you can mulligan choices. You'd still only be able to change the queued up actions AFTER the current action. So, what reason is there to require someone to control 6 characters, real-time, with more than 1 decision at a time? If you were really in combat, making tactical decisions, and you were about to fire a crossbow bolt at an orc that had your friend pinned down, so as to save your friend, but some other orc threw an axe at your friend and killed him before you actually took the shot, would you not re-assess and look for a different shot with the change in circumstances? Since the player cannot make such a choice as quickly as each character's virtual brain could, why not allow a pause? No one's favoring rewind that I know of. Just pause. If you were a Mage instead, and started casting a protective shield on that friend, then stopped casting when the other orc throwing-axed him to death, then you're still out that cast-time. And you made the point about different characters actions happening at different times, unlike the global round timer in a turn-based game, so is that not all the more reason to allow timing to count by allowing you to take advantage of all the time you can?

I get what you were saying, but... it does make sense. I mean, I just pointed out how. Whether you decide to let dual-wielding affect attack speed or spell targeting, it's a mechanic that can be easily applied in either situation. Sure, it's a whole new implementation to try to figure out the functional specifics of, but it works. It's exactly the same principle as the difference between dual-wielding shortswords and wielding a short sword and a shield. The shield does something different than the other shortsword. Maybe it inherently increases your AC, and your block chance, but you generally get access to skills (like shield bash) and such that you only have access to with that configuration. In that respect, mechanically, dual-wielding is no different from wielding a different weapon type (like an axe versus a bow). There's no reason spells and their accompanying "weapons" couldn't work the same way. Mechanically, you could 2-hand a grimoire and gain different bonuses to focus, cast-speed, spell limits, etc than if you had a grimoire in one hand and a dagger in the other. Not to mention the gain/loss of the dagger's attack, respectively. It's perfectly feasible as a possibility is all.

Well, maybe simpler spells could be dual-wielded, and more complex ones could not. It's not as if we're restricted by how magic actually works in the real world or anything. That isn't to say they should simply make the magic lore thus that everything is dual-wieldable, no matter what the consequences to the lore quality. But, everything doesn't HAVE to be "perform this fancy ritual from this book, then this happens." But, at the most basic game design level, I think some form of dual-wielding with spells (as opposed to having more combat effectiveness with a weapon or with a shield in your hand) adds a nice layer to the combat magic. Just the same as dual-wielding with weapons does the same for martial combat. You can get benefits and different feats and skills, usually, with 2 weapons as opposed to simply getting a bigger, better weapon. Maybe it's something as simple as splitting the focus of a spell, so that you launch two half-power fireballs (to go with a generic wizard spell example) at two different targets, rather than only ever one regular fireball at one target. Same numbers (so dual-wielding isn't "better" than its counterpart), but more strategic options. But maybe you can only do that if you're dual-wielding grimoires, as was suggested. Purely for example. *shrug*

Actually, it does, because it's literally the same thing but with the entire playthrough, rather than individual encounters/areas/foes. Whether you change the actual level number, or you change the values of the attributes encompassed within level increments, you're scaling for the sake of challenge, and you're using levels and the changes in attribute/skill/pool values that levels organize in order to do so. So, it's quite pertinent. Difficulty settings are already in place to scale the entire batch of gameplay, whatever it is (doesn't even have to be an RPG... RPGs just tend to use the level system.) Therefore, you'd expect to have the difficulty as a basis for the relative challenge of everything from there on out. Rats are obviously easier than Earth Elementals, but they're both derived from the same difficulty setting. Which is exactly why I was stating that advancement (both in gear and stats/abilities) should never be used to make the game easier. An Earth Elemental should never be as easy as a rat. Otherwise, the developers could have simply put in rats. You only have so many alternatives to this. Swap to a different enemy (even if the story would've been better with the same enemy type there) that's tougher whenever Earth Elementals become too easy (which is essentially level-scaling in disguise), limit the player's advancement such that all optional content in a given area can remain at a static level, or make a purely linear game (so you always know what level the player's going to be at each encounter.) You are correct. The fault was in my wording. I simply meant that whether or not you have mutually exclusive content is beside the point in the relationship to which I was referring. I apologize for the confusion. How is it nonsense? It's nonsense because this would mean there's a minimum level? The fact that DA:O did it is completely circumstantial. I didn't refer to the way in which DA:O did it or the details of DA:O in any way, shape, or fashion. You're saying that scaling down is stupid (I agree... LITERALLY the purpose of easier difficulty modes, again), but that somehow means that only scaling up is nonsense? You've merely stated that it's nonsense, and that DA:O did it, and that it's feces. You have not provided any evidence and/or reasoning. But the only two options aren't: A) A fixed amount of exp in the game, and the challenge of the game is scaled to the attainment of ALL of it. B) Unlimited XP in the game, and everything's always scaled to the player's level. There's a whole range in between those two implementations. Which is what is being heavily suggested, that you're so opposed to. You're basically arguing for the exact same thing as we are. You want there to be a challenge, even if you do everything. Only difference? You're suggesting that the people who don't do everything in the game should get penalized, OR that you should be required to do everything in the game (I should say "everything that is possible to be done within one playthrough" to accomodate the mutually-exclusive branch-options thing). There's a range between speed run and did-everything, too. There are reasons for implementing content that is supportive of but not integral to the main story of the game, just as there are reasons to allow for any-order side quest batches. Under such circumstances, you cannot scale the challenges appropriately from the get-go without herding the player onto a linear path. If you make the side quests lvls 4,5,6,7, and 8, respectively, then the vast majority of people are going to do them in the order of their levels. Thus, you're encouraging linear gameplay. And if you do them OUT of order, to try to give yourself more of a challenge, then you're going to do the 6 and 7 one first, thereby making the 4 and 5 ones basically challengeless (which is exactly what you're saying shouldn't occur... things failing to present a challenge at all.) Also, there's a huge difference between making sure intentionally-challenging things don't become too easy, and making sure they never ever become any easier at all. The same goes for "too challenging." There's a difference between making sure the people who skip EVERYTHING are pretty much screwed, and making sure the people who skip ANYTHING are pretty much screwed.

If a skill isn't going to be that interesting on its own, then why even implement it in the first place? I think we could do without the Melon-Balling skill, rather than Obsidian spending their resources and efforts trying to make sure it "at least" enhances combat. If you could somehow incorporate mellon-balling into the game such that the skill became interesting (like if it was a cooking game instead of P:E, for example), then the skill would be completely viable. No skill "isn't interesting at all" to an absolute degree. It depends on the contextual details of the game design. RPGs aren't very interesting, to some people. That isn't a valid reason for not-making them, or for just making sure they support some other genre of game. I'm actually just pointing out things that I don't understand about your initial post. I don't see how blatantly admitting that I fail to comprehend your point is "trying my hardest" to pretend like there's a flaw in your reasoning. Besides, I'm not trying to suggest you're one of those mortals who's capable of flaws or anything. You could be a demi-god for all I know. Which is why I'm simply pointing out what I do understand (regardless of whether or not it's wrong) as I believe it pertains to the things I do not understand, so that you might, should you so choose, help unite my current understanding with your point. If you don't care about such things, then I suppose the validity of your point will remain misunderstood. If you somehow get points for that, then... I guess I'm glad I could help.

I'm fairly certain that Skyrim didn't invent the notion of dual-wielding magic, a notion of which I am highly in favor, u_u.

Your ignorance of huge portions of his posts is quite obvious. And, this isn't a personal attack, but merely a constructive observation: If you're not going to read someone's actual post in a discussion, then you're simply rolling the dice on whether or not your response is actually applicable to the discussion (the discussion being comprised solely of everyone's collective posts in a given thread). Seriously, whatever merits can be found in all of your posts as a whole, you just argued about 4 times in a row how bad down-scaling to the player's level would be, when Junta specifically emphasized about 4 times in a row that he did not advocate such a mechanic. I don't see how that's constructive in the least. If someone says "you're right" on some point, and you turn around and say "Wow, you are STILL wrong!", what are we even supposed to think? Touching on some of the main points of level-scaling: 1) Difficulty settings are there specifically to scale the entire playthrough. If you want things to be easier, you pick an easier difficulty. Getting a level 20 party with vorpal blades isn't intended to make everything easy, it's intended to allow you to take on more difficult challenges by dragging them from impossible down toward relatively challenging. Want things to be easy? Easy difficulty would bring that "relatively challenging" down to a "barely challenging." 2) You either have to have a linear game (in the sense that you HAVE to do all the stuff in the game, and not necessarily in the sense that there aren't different paths to take through all of said content), or have a game that offers non-mandatory options. If failing to complete all (or 90%) of the side/contextual quests and content prevents you from being able to complete the mandatory parts of the game, then you've basically eliminated the "non-mandatory" bit. It's absolutely correct that no degree of scaling implementation would be needed in this situation, but it still doesn't address the "what if you want more optional stuff for various other game design purposes?" dilemma. Without some form of scaling, that remains un-addressed in such an event. 3) Scaling can be done using innumerable factors to a variety of degrees, and it doesn't need to come into play until AFTER you've surpassed an enemy's level. For example, if the average player is going to reach a boss at (player) level 7, and the boss is designed to be level 9 for that purpose, then the player who RUSHES to the boss is obviously going to have a tough time of things. Regardless of the level numbers, maybe it's POSSIBLE to beat the boss at such at level 5, just reallllly realllly hard. If that player wants to beat the boss at that level, but doesn't want to suffer such a penalty, then they can exploit the difficulty settings, once again. If they want to play on Normal or Hard and do a speed run, then they have to deal with the path they've chosen. However, if a player does ALL possible optional content (exploration, additional little detailed side quests, gotten all the best equipment via crafting, etc.) that we're assuming you don't want to require ALL players to do just to be capable of overcoming story milestones, let's say that player is level 12 when he reaches the boss. Well, maybe the boss gets scaled up to level 10 or 11 (not necessarily 12) to prevent him from doing 30 damage and having 500 hit points against your party that all has 25 AC and 300 hit points a piece and deals 100 damage a piece. Obviously there are plenty of factors incorporated into a level, which is why the way you scale, and how much, depends on the specifics of these factors. Relying on character progression to achieve "easiness" is a slap in the face to the difficulty system. Instead of selecting "easy," you're imposing your own chorish way of achieving the same goal, and, at the same time, you're taking all the challenge out of the game for those who want to explore everything and complete all the side content but still want a challenge. How is the main villain/threat in the game a legitimate threat if he can be EASILY vanquished by a mithril blade +10? He might as well be a heavy appliance. "Oh my gosh, how will we ever lift this?! It's going to take over the world! Wait... I'll go gather up lots of ore, and we'll forge... A DOLLY! Wow... now vanquishing that evil, doomsday appliance is just as easy as flipping a light switch! 8D! Thanks, dolly!" Regardless of what anyone wants or likes more or less in games, you have to look at gameplay mechanics objectively. There are observable problems that scaling was created to address. And just because it CAN be done terribly and it does have cons to watch out for doesn't mean it's inherently bad. Unless you can provide evidence that it's inherently bad, besides citing very specific implementations of set values within a field of highly variable factors, there's no reason to believe it is. Too much heat burns down houses. That doesn't mean temperature is bad. The point of this thread is to discuss what specific implementations ARE bad, what makes them bad, and how we can use that knowledge to figure out how to do it not-bad.

You can't win this battle, Merlkir. Dream is the only one fighting this battle, and therefore always has the high score. This would be a cool thing, so long as they have the resources to achieve it once all the higher-priority stuff is done, regardless of what game it most closely resembles, or how difficult it is to make it prettier than sin (obviously if it couldn't be done without being ugly as sin, they wouldn't do it.) Of course, how dare anyone discuss something that has the possibility of not being viable. Dangit... I keep accidentally going to the prophecy forum instead of the discussion forum! Cursed memory... u_u

This makes me think of how Batman inadvertently "creates" all his own villains, haha. It could be pretty cool. I like controlled usages of the "I tried to good, but evil ended up coming of it because of factors unknown to me and now must deal with this new evil" thing, and vice versa. I dunno about doomsday-level ramifications. It's not that it couldn't be done, but, I would think "doomsday" is pretty much the highest threat-level you can have, so, it would kind of defeat the imperative nature of the main story's threat (assuming consequences of something that isn't directly part of the main quest-line), whatever it may be, methinks.

I get the enjoyment of clearing all the black on your own. I like to do that, too, in games in such games. I wasn't meaning to say from a position of laziness that you should simply be able to clear the map faster via cliffs. Some form of sight-range extension (whether it's active and only works at higher altitudes or what) would be pretty cool, though, in various applications. Perhaps in certain parts of the story, you see what's happening down in a valley ahead of you before you make your way to the burning, besieged camp. It's just something that really is only pertinent to the manner in which altitudes and diagonal distances are visually represented in isometric games. In a 3D game, you'd just stand at the edge of the cliff, and you can either see that far or you can't.

It's not about developing a realistic fighting style specifically for a warg or a dragon. It's about moving believably. It's right on up there with not having freakishly disproportionate hands, like everyone in Dragon Age: Origins. It's the same reason you call movies out on terrible acting and crappy fight choreography (deliberately thwacking at each other's swords for a while, then completely-slow-enough-for-a-sloth-to-have-parried-it STAB! Death...) Small sprites or models or not, having my party take 1.3 steps for every 3 meters of ground they glide across while they all swing every weapon like a toddler who's just discovered a Nerf bat doesn't do much for my belief that this is a tense situation in which my master swordsman is utilizing the entirety of his lifelong skill to thwart his foes. I'm not asking for anyone's elbow skin to wrinkle realistically, or for the exact mathematical physics values to be calculated for everything they do, and for windspeed to affect their swings. I just don't want monks running around all Rock'em Sock'em Robots on people when they're supposed to be performing intricate martial maneuvers. I don't care if you give them 3 different standard attack animations from 3 entirely different martial arts forms, and they're not even kicking at just the right angle, and they didn't lock their wrist... But, if it's supposed to take a lot of skill, at least pick some movement that conveys that. I just want it to be realistic in the sense that it is believable as A reality, not our reality. If possible. Obviously there's a resource limitation, but we don't know exactly where that end mark is. If you go around saying "Meh, we really don't need to worry about this much at all, 'cause we may not have time for it," you end up with a pretty mediocre game. But, really, all I'm advocating is a pretty basic level of believable motion in the animations.

Something can't be neither accurate nor inaccurate. And I was referring to its application in the realm of RPG design. Using combat as a basis for all balancing efforts would probably work just fine in a Fighting game, or a multiplayer shooter, since those games are literally made out of combat. They harvest it from mines with pickaxes, then refine it into a game. Perhaps. I think it also would've made a lot more since if it hadn't been a ludicrously inefficient method of saying "when balancing anything in the game, it's probably best not to screw up combat, and also combat happens a lot." If you weren't just stating the obvious (there was no contextual talk of screwing up combat), and you weren't stating some foundationary notion that formed the framework of "All you need to worry about while balancing," then I seriously, truly don't comprehend what your intention was. I would accuse you of purposefully conveying things in a convoluted manner so that you can come back with snappy retorts to people's responses, but that would be pure speculation. An excellent example of the fact that combat is capable of being screwed up in game design. However, I was actually asking for an example of the balancing relationship to which you were referring that I don't seem to be comprehending. Also, it's good that you're so jovial. Laughter burns a lot of calories, you know. It's good for you. Just ask Patch Adams. I've actually made quite the typo here. I meant "incapable of misunderstanding." Sorry for any confusion that might have caused. Since it's a public forum, I don't comprehend what this means. Am I to go "home," on my browser? Would that be symbolic of running home, perhaps? o_O. Running IS good cardio, though, u_u. Better than laughing, even.

Excellent idea! Except, with an offer like $10,000, you could probably buy Interplay and shut this whole thing down, and they'd feel like they screwed you over.

This thread is getting really confusing, because "pet" is a commonly-used term now for "summoned/tamed creature companion that factors into your class's skill set somehow," much like a Wizard's familiar or a Ranger's... menagerie. So... are we talking about feed-em-and-buy-em-chewtoys pets? Or are we talkin' just-a-tag-for-extremely-common-RPG-mechanics pets? Because if you take the latter completely out (however you implement it and whatever you call it), you end up with a pretty unnecessary design restriction.

I don't remember them saying anything about saving other than "You will be able to save anywhere in Project Eternity." And the only problem I see with your opinion on limited camping is that it suggests the constant, inherent NEED to camp all the time. The player typically does not have access to shops and town NPCs very often, and yet, no one says "Dangit... they're not going to let us sell things and turn in quests unless we're in CERTAIN PLACES?! Welp... looks like now I'm gonna HAVE to trek somewhere every single time I get done with battle and loot bodies, or open up a locked chest." No, we typically are fine with making the best use of our inventory space and finishing an area/quest/dungeon before heading back to town to sell everything and turn in our quests and procure new ones, etc. I'm really not trying to be snide. I just honestly think you're looking at it wrong, with the "Now I'm required to go somewhere!" when there'll probably plenty of reasons in the game to travel to the next camp location. Sure, you might need to go back to town occasionally before you get out of an explorable area (just as you might get low on health before you make it all the way forward to the next camp spot), but that's what balance is for. I'm just not seeing how it's so terrible that it's even possible you might have to move backwards to camp because you will eventually need to camp at some point. Nothing can make that any more frustrating than any other similar interval-limitation in any RPG ever, except bad balancing. I highly, highly doubt the game will more than very-rarely beat you up when you need to do something.

It is quite do-able, but most of the stuff you could grab in Oblivion/Fallout3/New Vegas was pretty pointless in its existence. Sure, you can pick up all the little tin cans and food items (although things like that were a lot LESS useless in NV) and baseballs, but that stuff only provided 2 real purposes: 1) It provided an aesthetic/interactive sense of immersion in the world, because there was realistic (to the game world) stuff around that was actually (virtually) tangible. 2) It allowed you to make 2 bottle caps at a time off of each item. Basically, a reallllly boring, painful alternative to any other form of making money in the game (i.e. slaughtering patrols of super mutants and selling their actual, useful, valuable equipment to weapons dealers, or just-plain finding currency instead of an aesthetically-pleasing middle man.) It's the same concept as the "Junk/Trash" tab in many an RPG inventory. You find "A broken sword hilt" or "some marbles" or "gnoll toenail clippings," and literally the only purpose for them in the entire game is to be sold for some minimal amount of money. The only difference is that those are often merely items in a list, and not things you can actually see and interact with like in Fallout3/NV/Oblivion. I think, at the very least, such things can be better handled by having each item have a use (no matter how minor) that provides its value (instead of having everyone in the universe buy it for 2 gold when you need 17,000 for a new plate helm). Or maybe certain things are salvable and work into the crafting system. But, if something ONLY has a money-value, and it's ridiculously petty, then it serves no real purpose in the game that isn't served in a severely better manner by all other means of money acquisition in the game. Actually, Josh Sawyer disagrees specifically with unnecessarily restrictive classes, as opposed to the existence of classes in the first place. If you had literally no limitations on which character could do what, you basically get Skyrim's character development system (that was literally the basis of their design. "NO RESTRICTIONS AT ALL! 8D") Which brings us to... "Point B" was that "no limitations" leads to Skryim, followed by the actual question of whether or not you advocated that system. I'm unable to locate its stupidity. In the event that you don't want the system Skyrim used (not the specifics of their whole game design, JUST their "whatever skills and abilities we've put into the game, you can literally get all of them" approach), you want classes (or, at least A class). You either want everything on all characters, or you only want some things on all characters. Doesn't matter if you restrict each class by a single, solitary ability/skill. That's still a class system, logistically. I don't recall making any mention of situations for Obsidian to fail, or taking or adding systems to Skyrim. I merely pointed to Skyrim as a reference for the system they used to handle classes. I also don't recall claiming that the definition of class meant that they DIDN'T limit. Limitations are good. They are a fundamental part of games. If we play a multiplayer shooter, I can't come into your room and knock you unconscious with a heavy, dense object, then say "YAY! I WON!" No, I must beat you within the limitations of the game and its rules and mechanics. The use of classes purely organizes and distinguishes the various limitation sets you come up with in the event that you don't implement a purely limitless system. It's the same thing as deciding all the characters shouldn't be immortal, then saying "Okay, then how hard should it be to kill them?" and coming up with hitpoints, and your damage system, etc.

^ True story, . You got a more personal interaction with them. You can see see a lot more personality and tone in facial expressions and mannerisms, not to mention the audio from voice-acting. I don't know that it'll ever be reasonably easy to do that with all the NPCs in the game (I know that's not what you're suggesting... it would just be amazing), but we can hope for, perhaps, a fun-size version, at least. Like the Fallout games.

That makes me think... a lot of times, the problem is that you have a static sight radius, but you're still uncovering the map as if it's all perfectly flat, 2D terrain. So, when you get to those areas of sloping cliffs and such, sometimes there's a big chunk of blackness where the cliff is 2-dimensionally represented. So, you end up (if you want to make sure you got everything on the map) skirting it in an attempt to figure out how to uncover the rest of that black, but to no avail. On edges where this might be cause by a cliff rising up away from you (the top of which is off the accessible map area), you could simply have the non-accessable part be revealed when your sight radius gets close enough to it, just to let the player know that's definitely the edge. But, when you're up on higher parts, what if your sight range was extended farther onto lower-altitude areas? If you're at the top of a cliff, maybe you can see everything that's at the base (the black goes away, but there's still fog of war... you can't make out details, only general terrain and structures.) This high-ground advantage could also, naturally, be applicable to combat tactics. But, it would at least get rid of those times when you reach the edge of a cliff, only to wonder what's at the bottom, shrug, and say "I dunno... I can only see like 10 feet out from the cliff, and apparently I can't see the base, even though we're only 30 feet up, and it's a clear day... Oh well. Let's trek around and see if we can't figure out what's down there." I know it's come up in other threads, but I think scouting should definitely be more viable at longer range, instead of having to dance a line between combat aggro and horizontal sight radius. This could be worked into a class bonus for Rangers, even. Okay, I'm seriously stopping with the idea-arcs. (I swear I was just trying to mention the altitude-affected-blackness bit!)

So, if people don't want their characters to die, their willpower, alone, causes hitpoints/limited health to vanish from the game? That's weird... I always thought it was based on game mechanics that were hard-coded. Hmm... Ohhhh, I seee. You're saying that the mechanics really don't allow it. But then you're arguing the complete assumption that "No one wants to be forced to appear strong" just because they chose a certain class, even though the basis of appearance in question here was the specific strength value, and not the class. I wouldn't say that's "the" solution. I mean, if that's a valid way to deal with it, then you could just as easily not use anything in the game that didn't appeal to your overly tuned sense of implausibility. The Wagon of Plausibility is obviously going to ride along on a Suspension of Disbelief, and it's going to hit a few potholes and take a few jolts along the way. But, you either want it to hold together the whole ride through, or you don't care whether or not it completely falls apart. Why WOULDN'T you want things to make sense? Hell, even the breaking of realistic limitations for the sake of gaining a significant benefit in a fantasy environment is still adherent to sense. Not "It's a fantasy world... just don't even worry about trying to be coherent or make any sense at all. Really big strong guys aren't actually any stronger than ants. Ants can dual-wield trees. But big-strong guys can also dual-wield trees." When everyone's spectacular, no one is spectacular. Not if you live in a world in which the caves are filled with bandits/goblins/orcs/trollocs/trolls/dragons/magic/legends. It's a fantasy RPG cave, not a wine cellar.

I don't see why being able to summon a horde (within reason... not like 1,000 skeletons) would be out of the question. Sure, they'd be weaker minions, individually, but sometimes that might be what you want against several foes with nothing but single-target attack capability (or VERY little area/multi-target attacks). If you send your horde of skeletons against a dragon, and it tail swipes them all back into oblivion without breaking a sweat, then that's your bad. Doesn't mean they're pointless against things that aren't dragons. I also fully support the possibility of summoning something quite powerful (or somethings quite powerful) basically putting your caster in a sort of channel-stasis. Then, you could be allowed to control the amazingly-strong entity in your caster's stead, but you'd have to worry about keeping foes away from your caster. With Wizards, this could even be some sort of Familiar transformation. And, if your caster got in trouble, you could essentially "cancel" the summoning link at any time, regaining control of your caster character while your summoned entity fades from the plane (or your familiar reverts to normal, in the Wizard example.) Just something like that. There's interestingness to be had in there somewhere,

A), I don't see any reasoning here other than "classes are CLEARLY, OBVIOUSLY, BLATANTLY terrible and crappy and are just a safe choice to make money," which is none. It's just a statement with no presented basis. B), Do you want Skyrim, in which you can literally max out every single character-progression option in the game, on 6 different party members? And, if not, what's so terrible about simply labeling and organizing the various spectrums of choices available to the player?

It's good to know that the non-developing medieval world of P:E, with primitive firearms, will contain extensive international highway systems paved with extremely smooth asphalt, as well as railway systems. You know what? Wizard familiar: Battle Mule. Problem solved. *dusts off hands* u_u

Hehe, I hear ya, man. I think people just tend to underestimate the amount of graphical details that are noticeable even with smaller character avatars. Especially when it comes to animation. That's one of the easiest ways to make even an 8-bit sprite more believable. No one's asking for dynamic leather wrinkling on armor, or noticeable facial hair real-time growth, haha. But, like I said, the more you can make even a tiny, barely-detailed person-resembling blob of pixels move realistically, the more the player instantly accepts it as a person. Just like the more polygons and normal-mapping you shove into an up-close 3rd-person character model, the more noticeable it is when it DOESN'T move 100% flawlessly.