Lephys

Erm... I don't understand. You just emphasized the crap out of dialogue being the key factor, here. And then you pointed out that the only difference between a housecarl and a spouse is that one speaks a different line, indicating love? You're right... how ever are we to know there's love involved? And the fallacy is perpetuated. This is what passes as romance by the definition of romance, from your own very lips. That doesn't tell us anything. Even just having a 73-hour-long dialogue between two characters, in which your only option to continue the dialogue is "OMG I LOVE U A BUNCH!" over and over again would technically constitute "a romance." What's important is that that would be a terrible romance. And, for what it's worth, I guarantee that even the vast majority of the collective promancer hivemind that you and only you seem to know about (shhhh! It's a secret conspiracy!) would not be satisfied with that. So, whether or not it "passes for romance" in their minds is irrelevant, since it passes for crappy romance. There are two things that matter in the design of something like this: 1) What is my aim in this design? I'm the creative developer of this, and thus, if it's completely contradicting my own design desires, then why am I making it at all? 2) Will enough people find this enjoyable, in whatever way, to justify all the time and resources I'm putting into this game? Will it make enough money to be a viable project, etc.? So, the whole reason we're here, talking about romance, is to explore ideas regarding the vague topic of romance, and how they might be useful in the design of a video game that wishes to utilize them in some unspecified capacity. Obviously, individual people are going to specify different capacities, shapes, sizes, etc. of romance. Cross out "romance" and put in anything else, then have a brainstorming session with people about it. Combat. Character customization. You're going to have people saying "I think THIS would be really great!". If it wouldn't work, then you say why. If something is acceptable content for someone else, but not to you, that's the whole purpose of collaborative discussion -- to find out what might work for both of you, if anything. Does that not compute?

This thread isn't really to request or expect romance in the finished PoE. It's more just a discussion of romance in video games (more specifically, RPGs) in general, and how that can potentially affect the possibility of romance-related content in any future iterations of Eternity (expansion, sequel, etc.). In other words if the resources ever are available, what would be some of the best ways to do it? How can we improve on what other games have done? How are romances typically done wrong, and why? Etc. Unfortunately, any thread like this cyclically devolves into (and back out of, for brief periods) petty "victories" and "defeats," because a discussion is totally a war.

That image file name is "PoE-Sky-Dragon.jpg," though... so it makes you wonder. If that's a sky dragon, it probably should possess the ability to fly, if ANY dragons do.

Technically, it can mean good AND bad things, together. But, it can't really mean only bad things. So, in binary terms, yes, it can't mean an absence of good things. It can only mean a presence of them,

The proper would be "neither far nor close," just in case you really wanted to know. "Nor" takes the place of "or" to carry on the whole "not" idea that "neither" starts. "neither... or..." pretty much means the same thing, but it's not "proper," I guess 'cause the words don't have matching "n"s in that case? *shrug* No worries on that, though.

Hehe. The Flail of Ages! If you're between 9-13, it grants +72 Fire Damage. If you're between 14-18, it grants +50% attack speed. If you're between 19-24, it grants an active-use 10-second invulnerability. If you're between...

Well, yeah. I meant in the midst of combat. The player party has some options to actually re-capacitate people with 0 Endurace. I'm pretty sure they do, at least. They used to, in an older design. Dunno if that got scrapped or not.

Some of them are pretty neat, when well-authored. Like... beat the game with only one character the whole time. But, yeah, most of them seem pretty silly in a lot of games. They're just sort of milestones. They might as well say "play the game for an hour. Play the game for 3 hours," etc. Of course, I understand that they're often used by statistical data gathering to help developers determine how many players actually play their game all the way through, or, to what point players play in their games. Which... *shrug*... I'd just as much has those be silent. They're doing 2 things, at that point, when they really only need to do one. But then, I guess they also show your friends and such how far you've gotten in games. Still, "Earn 1,000 gold!" and "Buy a horse!" seem silly, since they don't even describe set points in the game.

^ Spiffy, . I don't have any, that I know of, that can be launched like that. But, really, other than "Oh noes, if Steam were to shut down, or to spontaneously decide they want to piss off everyone on the planet by revoking my license to use the games I've bought and installed through them, then my game licenses would suddenly be useless!", I really haven't experienced any restriction from Steam. Don't get me wrong. That's a legitimate concern, at some point in time. But, For what it's worth, I've gotten some games through GOG, and the only advantages I've experienced are: 1) "I can always, forever install these games wherever I want, whenever I want, after I've initially purchased and downloaded them" 2) "I can install and play these games on multiple computers simultaneously without having to worry with a Steam account at all."

I apologize, as I did not mean to suggest that it was your argument. I was carelessly unspecific with my wording. And I see what you're saying. But, the point is, you think something, until you know it. If you don't know it, there's never a reason to conclude anything. My whole point is that, there are two possibilities here: 1) That Obsidian spent some of their own money in this project, beyond the Kickstarter funding. 2) That Obsidian did not spend any of their own money in this project. If we know neither, then they're both equally questionable. One isn't any more conclusive than the other, so there's exactly equal "necessity" for proof on both sides. Any parties involved can wager a guess, if they'd like, but, as the saying goes, "Your guess is as good as mine." The "No, YOU are the one who has to prove otherwise" argument is not sound. If I THINK someone committed a crime, but have no proof they did so, it's not on just me to prove they did it, OR just them to prove they didn't. If either side cannot prove anything, then they should just be set free. The two are mutually exclusive, so as long as both are possible, neither is conclusive. So, it isn't that "Hah, I believe they spent some of their own money, and that's a better conclusion than that they didn't." It's that both are arbitrary conclusions until actually proven.

So, hang on... if you could boink your Skyrim spouse, it'd be romance? Why isn't a brothel romance? What are the criteria for romance? You keep telling us what isn't romance. What is it, then? Don't get me wrong. I'd say the Skyrim marriages aren't very romantic at all. But, I'm not sure you could discount classifying that game content as "romance." What else is it? They aren't political marriages. You're not getting married for any other reason, really, other than "Hey, we're allowing you, the player, to pick one of these fine folk to decide your character wants to marry, for whatever reason." I mean, are the Fable marriages romantic, because you get to hug, kiss, and boink your wife? They even get a like-o-meter. Does a like-o-meter make it a romance, maybe?

I'm not really sure how enemies' Health/Endurance stuff will work. I don't know if foes have the same "I'll 'revive' you because you're unconscious in the midst of battle" abilities or anything, or if they'll essentially just have one type of Health instead of 2, and at 0 they're simply dead. *shrug* Perhaps someone else can help us out on that. I will say that, regardless, unless Disintegrate actually does more than just down someone, it's a bit silly for it to be named "disintegrate."

Definitions generally are broad. That's why specificity was invented. "I'm thinking of an animal. I'm thinking of a four-legged animal. I'm thinking of a four-legged animal that barks. I'm thinking of a Golden Retriever." It's not wrong to describe a Golden Retriever as an animal. It's just vague. Just like "romance." Which has kinda been one of the largest issues in any discussion of RPG romances, ever. Person A says the word "romance," and person B says "that's dumb, because (insert one, very specific example of a video game romance here)", then attributes everything from that one example back up the ladder to the over-arching word "romance." And before I get a ludicrous response... I'm simply stating that this has occurred many a time, and is problematic to discussion. I'm not about to get into "who specifically said that and when, and how many times?", because I'm not trying to make some kind of "And therefore, if you've ever said anything against romance, that's been your exact fallacy, MUAHAHAHAHA!" argument.

... I'm not sure that's accurate. You're supposed to take damage to both Health AND Endurance simultaneously. When you run out of Endurance, you're "downed"/incapacitated. When you run out of Health, you're maimed or dead, depending on settings. You just have at least 3 times (and up to 8 times, I think, depending on class) as much Health as you have Endurance. So, even if you have, say, 100 Endurance, and someone smashes the crap out of you for 100 damage, you'd still have at least 200 Health left, but you'd be unconscious/incapacitated. You could get back up and take that same hit in two more combat encounters before being either maimed or dead. Your Health pool doesn't remain untouched until your Endurance hits 0.

Ahh, the old "Neither one of us knows something, but only one of us needs to prove it, and it's not me" argument. That one's never ridiculous. Also, how is something a "logical conclusion" based on no proof? They're prepared to "eat" the extra shipping costs of shipping the game discs later than the other physical goods. Do you think they accounted for that in the Kickstarter pledges, and are somehow breaking perfectly even?

Not to be hostile, but I believe you misunderstood me, for I never said otherwise. I specifically stated that needing to purchase and download the game were identical requirements of both Steam and GOG (you cannot make an offline purchase, and you cannot download a game whilst offline). And patch. That's the only other thing that's the same between the two services. I mentioned, in particular, that once downloaded, the GOG installer is yours to do with as you please, and that this is not the case with Steam. I'm fairly certain I have. Admittedly, there might be a handful of games I haven't tried it with. But I've definitely launched the vast majority of them with no connection to any network whatsoever. Also, though, I will say that, even when offline, if I try to launch a Steam game, the Steam Login dialogue window pops up, and I have to type my credentials in. At which point it basically tells me it couldn't connect, and asks if I'd like to retry or "Run in offline mode." But, my roommate said that was strange when I told him about it, and that his just lets him launch things in offline mode without ever having to arbitrarily perform a login attempt first. So, I'd imagine there are some settings to be tweaked for the person that wishes to most-conveniently run games in offline mode regularly. I've heard people say that you can launch games without even running the steam client at all, but I've never done that. It's always at least a background process that launches. Doesn't have to connect to anything, though, for me. It just basically acts as a software manager. Kind of like if you open an MP3 on your PC, and it launches iTunes, or Windows Media Player or something. *shrug*. I can see people not wanting that. I mean, "good" or "bad," GOG games just launch by themselves, just like the original game did. So, fewer resources are used by your PC, I guess, even if it's only like a handful of MB of RAM and .05% processor time (just guessing at the values... I've never seen Steam using many system resources on my machine at all, and I've looked a few times.) Again, I'd never tell people to love Steam and hate GOG or anything. GOG is great. But, I just really think Steam gets a worse rep than it should because of a lot of misconceptions. That whole demon-summoning thing? You should probably contact tech support, so that they can finish the rit... I mean, help you out with that. >

Alright, here we go: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/romance?s=t http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/romantic Obviously the definition is very broad. Some of the original definitions have more to do with simple fantasy/adventure/chivalry/fancifulness than love/affection. So, now, we can just take each person's post/point individually, and ask them what kind of romance they think would be of value in a video game narrative. If it wouldn't, cool. If you think it's weird -- their particular desire/example -- cool. This is the stuff of discussion. Not foul-calling on weird semantics technicalities that need to be reviewed by the refs for 15 minutes. And with that breadth of meaning in-mind, I very much think that it's about time games stopped worrying about "a romance" between your character and another character, and instead simply included fanciful/romantic yearnings and motives for the characters throughout the narrative, where appropriate. I get people desiring "romances" -- very rigid relationships built mostly in isolation from the rest of the goings-on of the game -- but I dare say that pretending that's the only way (or even the best way) of doing things in RPGs in general is like saying the only way to cook a meal is to make a Cup-O-Noodles.

I wasn't really trying to attack NWN. It was just the first example that popped into my head of a very crude 3D game of this type. I don't think it was horrible or anything, but I don't think the graphics hit it took was worth a conveniently rotatable camera. The actual gameplay wasn't really drastically supported by the world being 3D instead of 2D. Imagine how amazing those games would be if the next step they took was the way PoE is set up, and just kept going like that, instead of going full-3D. That's all I'm saying. It's not that there's 0 benefit from the 3D. There's just little.

I don't think it was possible to pledge for a physical, boxed copy of the game without getting at least 1 digital copy with it. So, if you're giving away your digital key, that's understandable. But, if not, there shouldn't be any worry about having to wait for the disc.

Not necessarily. You can make the money the player obtains more-or-less proportionate to the amount of stuff there is to spend money on (functional stuff). Maybe you have to spend lots of money on the stronghold to get the best crafters and wares into your market. You don't NEED the extra money, because you don't NEED the best stuff in the game. But, that doesn't mean it's pointless stuff, or you just tossing money at something to have something. Maybe you're going to play on Path of the Damned, and that need for the best equipment increases a bit. That sort of thing. If you do all the money-getting stuff in the game, but don't spend it all on the things-to-buy stuff in the game, that's not you having "too much money." You have too much money if you buy all the functional stuff in the game and still have thousands upon thousands of gold lying around. It's not really that it should necessarily be "difficult" to acquire plenty of gold. It should just be proportionate to the amount of "work" the player has to do. Overly simple example is that killing an optional dragon should probably give you more money (the stuff the dragon's guarding... not the dragon's bank account) than killing an optional band of highwaymen. If you don't kill either, you have to wait until that next crit-path source of income before you can buy some new armor for your peoples, or stock up on extra potions or something. If you kill the highwaymen, you can do some of it earlier. If you manage to kill the dragon, you can go ahead and buy new armor for everyone. Not saying you can get it down to a perfect 1:1, where you end up with 0 gold at the end of the game. Nor is that necessary. But, as I said before, gold you simply don't-spend is not gold that needs to be "sunk."

I dunno, but it'd actually be interesting if the minimum engagement range expanded as well, thus leaving a circle around the pike-wielder in which he couldn't actually engage/attack you. Thus, if he was attacking you from a 2nd-rank position, and you moved out of the pike's engagement area, he could hit you. But, if you run in toward him, he's a bit screwed and must switch weapons. Not sure how that would work, specifically with these mechanics, though, since just "leaving the engagement area" constitutes an engagement attack (unless the attacker is Interrupted, as per the proposed Interrupt changes that are coming our way in the next build/final release).

^ Yeah. That's the problem with timed cooldowns. Unless you simulate the actual passage of time, something always gets lost in translation. The "30 minutes" of actual, real-life time is meant to represent the simple idea that the caster is weary from performing that spell/ability, and will be for some time. But, in the game, the 30 minutes of traveling time in between encounters in the woods isn't really represented. So, you end up with this actually-way-longer-than-it-was-expected to be cooldown timer, relatively speaking. Plus, some players could just stare at the ground for 30 minutes, then get to cast their spell again come the next encounter, and there's absolutely no penalty for that, because time doesn't affect the characters as it would in a real world. The entirety of the passage of time isn't simulated, but the cooldown is roughly based on all the factors involved in the passage of time. That's pretty much why the "per-day" thing was invented. A "day" is a more manageable segment of playtime, and it actually relates to the goings-on of the game world (although, much less so in cRPGs than in pen-and-paper games, for which the per-day mechanic was invented.) But... the most accurate or... "fair" representation would be to use some sort of stamina system. Maybe you cast fireball, and it's not that you CAN'T cast it again before 30 minute are up. But maybe it takes 30 minutes (just for example; sticking to the same example as above for a cooldown), for your stamina to be completely refreshed. So, if you cast again before that, you suffer some kind of negative effect. The potency of that effect would be proportionate to the amount of stamina you were missing. Anywho, even if it doesn't make perfect, measurable sense, the per-encounter limitation is a reasonable one. There's a certain value to the number of times you can do any given thing in the same fight. Thus, regardless of whether you fight another group of enemies two hours from this one, or 2 minutes from this one, you are still sufficiently limited in how "often" you can use certain abilities, in relation to how often it would be useful to use them. It'd be nice to cast infinite 9th level spells in every combat encounter you find yourself in, but you can't, because of the limitation. However, you aren't without a spell for 25 more minutes just because you happen to find another group of enemies before then. *shrug*

I see. Then I guess, in your own eyes, everyone in this thread is just as correct as you are. Good to know.

It's okay Gromnir. You're only suggesting that it seems as though Josh shouldn't write any romances. So, you wouldn't really be wrong if it turns out he's a romance master. Of course, around here it seems to be customary to pretend like I can't deduce that, and insist that you change your word usage until it's perfectly correct and can't be taken the wrong way in the slightest, u_u... Wow... so women are the only ones that can constitute romance?!!!!!! O_O?!!!!!! I joke, . Just wanted to get that exaggerated joke response in before a real one showed up.

Yeah, there are definitely things I would change/improve in DA:I's design, but, overall, it's actually a very enjoyable game. I haven't beaten it yet, so I can't comment on the conclusion of the narrative or anything like that. But, I enjoyed ME3 despite its disappointing ending. I know, I know, it's one big story, and you're supposed to care a whole bunch about the ending. But, I dunno... I really just enjoyed playing ME3 the whole time, so it didn't bother me that such a small portion of it, quantity-wise, was disappointing, even if it was the conclusion. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 was the same way. The ending is pretty terrible. The main characters might as well have just high-fived, freeze-framed, and had credits roll after you beat the last boss. But, the game was still very fun to play through, and the rest of the story wasn't bad.