Lephys

Does it get stricken by lightning if it beheads other functionless critters?

Sure. Also, basically, your previous point of "romance is bad because you can easily recreate it" was actually just "I don't like romance, but others do." There's either something objective to be said about the implementation of such things into video game design, or it's all pure subjectivity. In which case, I'm not sure what discussion there is to be had about it, except "I like this!" versus "Oh, I don't."

Not quite. A) it doesn't get harder. It simply doesn't get any easier. The same is already true in games that give XP purely for combat victory, on top of any other XP rewards, because the person who fights everything gets more XP sooner and levels up earlier, so is better prepared for upcoming combat encounters. And B), it depends on how encounters are presented. If there are plenty of avoidable ones, then it's automatically easier for the combat-avoiding person because they don't have to spend as much time trying to presever/replenish combat resources, and overcoming so many encounters. So, yeah, the inherently tougher encounters would be, in one way, more difficult due to the bestiary knowledge bonus you lack, but there's still a difficulty ceiling. If you had to have that advantage just to beat the encounter, it would be poorly designed. And if you couldn't avoid any (or very, very few) encounters throughout the entire game.

I dunno... I mean, the creature IS eternal, so... Now I wanna name mine "Admiral Akbar."

You're not comparing them on even terms. What you're doing with romance is equivalent to saying that we can easily recreate war in real life, because we can go outside and approach any random person and shoot them. That, and you don't really recreate actual war in video games. And we don't play video games just to do things that we'd like to recreate in real life, so that just doesn't really cover the evaluation of something like romance (or any other game component, for that matter). That, and sure, we can go approach a random girl in real life, but you can also help random people in real life, stop bad people from doing bad things in real life, resolve situations in real life, etc. What we can't do is control a party of people in a medieval fantasy setting, and direct and influence their choices and the state of things as a well-written narrative plays out. Romance is no different from any other inter-character interaction. You could slap combat into a game and make it have nothing to do with the story or other components of the game, just like you could with romance. OR, you could make romance fit with choice-and-consequence gameplay. Does your main character develop a romantic relationship with this other character, as opposed to some other type of relationship? Then different things happen. Maybe they make different choices, maybe your character makes different choices. Maybe some foe finds out and targets that character instead of someone else to get to you. Maybe the character with whom your character is involved holds some position of nobility/responsibility, and runs into conflicts of interest that affect things on a large scale. Some people might just want romance-for-its-own-sake tossed into the game like sprinkles on a cupcake, but I'd rather have it be an ingredient in the batter of that cupcake, just like I would with pretty much ANY other game design component.

Fallen leafs are totally foliage. 8P But I get what you're saying,

I'm sincerely asking this, but do you mean "I tried a RES & DEX Fighter and didn't like him, and I tried a PER & DEX Wizard and didn't like him?", or do you mean that you actually took a Fighter, maxed out 2 stats, played for a bit, recorded hard data on various different things, then repeated that process with any other stat-maxing build you could think of for a Fighter, then compared the results at the end? Because that's what I'm talking about. If I can ever get some free time NOT-at-work, I might give that a shot. And I'm also not talking about changing the build and trying to do the same thing, like just changing a Wizard build and trying to nuke with every single build. I'm more concerned with the capabilities of the class as a whole that may be boosted by any given stat. Just for what it's worth... I'm not claiming you've done these things that I'm simply noting don't really produce productive data.

All you just pointed out was that, in real life, Intelligence generally provides you a benefit that other stats do not. I'm not sure how that even addresses an imbalance. That, and where in RPG stat comparison is "how much money does this earn you?" a major factor?

What if instead of granting you additional Deflection, it lowered your enemy's Deflection upon hits (basically a temporary debuff)? Just a thought, since that's not quite actually armor-piercing, but is still related to the powerful strikes of the two-handed style. Of course, it might end up being too similar to just a boost to Accuracy. *shrug* Or this! 8D

... I see what you did there.

True, but nothing's forcing the design of the game to only have one dragon in the game, and/or not allow fighting against lesser draconic creatures to apply to the same creature bonus. Well, again... if you get a bonus against goblins, then you end up encountering some Goblin King or Goblin Shaman with some hardcore bodyguards, etc, you still have a bonus against them. It does depend on encounter design throughout the whole game, but it's still just something to consider. Under the right circumstances, it could work very well. That, and I really would want the bonuses you gain to be quite interesting. Like "Knockdowns against this creature type last +3 seconds," or "critical hits against this creature type stun it," etc. Kind of pertaining to actual lore knowledge of "ohhh, I can do THIS to this enemy!", instead of "I learned this enemy's weakness, so now even when I GRAZE it -- which is supposed to represent a crappy hit -- I somehow deal bonus damage! Because I learned how to strike a very specific spot on this creature, but kinda miss and deliver a glancing blow, but still somehow utilize that weakness!" Plus, I just think situational effects are much more interesting than passive damage bonuses and the like. That's actually a pretty good idea.

Yeah, outside the budget/scope, I fully understand. I tend to try to think of things that would simply be great, then work my way down to what fits the game production's capability. So, at the very least, it should probably just be "gated," like you say. That way, you have the significant choice of how high to raise that skill, with the results being which things you notice/discover and which ones you don't. Instead of the insignificant choice of "Do I shave about an hour off my total playthrough time by not-clicking 'search' in every room, or do I take an extremely minor amount of extra time and just get all the free hidden stuff in the whole game?"

I like bundling the weapons together, too, so long as there are narrower specializations available. If you adhere too hard to groupings, you run into the situation where your game doesn't really allow a given player's character to wield, say, a warscythe and throwing knives. "Oh, that warscythe belongs to a different group than throwing knives." Doesn't mean get rid of all groupings, but, you don't want to neglect invidivualization with the weapon aspect of character customization, either. An RPG isn't about being like lots of other people. It's about being like you.

Probably the best default option is to have a very minimal interface atop the game world action on screen, until you toggle all the tactical info via a button or something (and/or during pause). That way, when you need to know something, it's only a touch away, but when you don't, it doesn't clutter up your view of the action. But, of course, if someone wants to never see that stuff, or always see that stuff, or anything in-between, by all means, I say provide the option. If you already have code in the game to allow for a state in which something isn't shown, and a state in which something IS shown, then there's almost no point in not-making it a toggle-able option.

This the most productive thing you can say to Hiro once he's released his Bankai, known only as "LOL!"

Hmm... maybe we had a TWO-eighty-six? I can't remember now. We got a new computer when I was about 7. The first one's still sitting at my parents' house somewhere, though. Probly still works, too. I actually had to turn Turbo off on a few games, because it just made them run too fast. That was my reaction to Prince of Persia, also. "My goodness! SUCH REALISTIC SWORDFIGHTING!" Haha.

We just haven't provided enough noteworthy modes to rate, I suppose.

In all fairness, look at how many bugs are mechanic related. Like problems with saving, or problems with thing A happening after thing B has happened, etc. If you fix a save problem, for instance, you don't have to scour the game for all other instances of save-able places that could have problems, because the problem was with the function itself, and not the situation. That being said, yeah, there are probably a lot of bug-prone things throughout the whole game. But, we can't really say just yet whether or not they'll internally squash a lot of those. It's pretty much pure speculation at this point.

Sure they are. You just don't get to choose how many points to put into which attributes in real life, is all.

What if you had a combat UI, and a non-combat UI, like in Fallout? I mean, the UI changes for dialogues, so it's not that crazy to change it for combat (hide some things, broaden the log area, etc... minor things).

Has anyone tried doing a direct comparison run of the same class with many drastically different attribute builds?

You should probably staple a few touchpads and trackballs, too, just to really drive home the point. 6_u

Well, you don't have to use it for everything. Think of it like lockpicking. There might be some cool loot in a chest in here, or behind a door, but if you don't have good enough lockpicking, you can't get to it. You don't NEED that loot. It's optional stuff. In a boiled down sense, that's what searching would be. It wouldn't be used to find EVERYTHING, as in "I searched this corpse, but missed the 5 rubies in his pocket, because I'm bad at searching." Or, to be more specific, I guess it would potentially do 2 things: 1) Require searching versus not-searching to be an actual tradeoff, and not just "Oh, do I want to wait 10 seconds and get more stuff, or don't I?" Because, if it's ONLY going to detect hidden things based on a skill rating or Perception rating or whathaveyou, then it might as well just be instant, passive, and extend to whatever the screen will show. 2) Detect hidden things in a sort of "you can only find this because you're better at finding hidden things than someone else." For the second one, I think you could make it a little more interactive/puzzley. Just a little. Like, the Difficulty Rating for finding this hidden door switch is way beyond you, unless you have your character discover a clue or two. THEN, you search that area, and you can find it. It would almost function more like a miniquest, and be a lot more discovery-like, instead of just "walk around clicking *search* and get free stuff." *shrug*

What if... instead of giving you XP, it just gave you an advantage toward future wolves? Thus, people whose playstyle does not involve seeking out combat will have tougher fights when they DO run into more wolves, while people whose playstyle does involve fighting everything they can will be rewarded with a relevant benefit. I still think more combat-related stuff should fall under the purview of objectives/accomplishments/narratively-pertinent-noteworthy-things-that-award-XP (insert whatever term you wish), BUT, I dunno... thoughts?

Yeah, does nothing but that... and ISSUES FORTH BEAKY, BEAKY JUSTICE TO THE UNRIGHTEOUS!