Lephys

Plugging it? Oh noes! Does that mean the game has... a memory leak?! 6_u

What... is that from the Space Bowling forums or something? 6_u

To toss in my two cents, I feel like puzzles in a cRPG should take advantage of your character's limitations, rather than focusing on directly challenging the player's limitations.

I think he meant that part, perhaps.

"My" side has already provided lots of examples (not that that means there isn't room for more), and I'm gonna keep expecting the discussion to deviate from it's irrational circle. Sorry. Rationality is not conditional for me. And citing the absence of proof that romance is inherently flawed as an RPG component is hardly high philosophy. It's just simple observation. Also, I'm not sure anyone else lives in your universe, where the only quality-level other than "bad" is "perfect." 8P

"Guys... there's an obviously-secure metal hook anchored into the ceiling, up there. We'll just grapple that, and swing across. MAN we're geniuses!" *Secures rope to ceiling hook, begins swinging... hears audible "click"...* ^_^

*leans towards his contestant stick-mic* ... One dollar, Bob. *ultra-proud-of-himself grin/snicker* Oh, wait... that's not how this works. You know what? I'll take December 15th, for 300, Alex. Oh, that's not how this works, either. Well, I'll take the date, all the same.

I still don't understand why simply consolidating all these good points -- both for and against -- is so far out of the question. We get a bunch of good, reasonable posts about it, but it eventually always comes full circle back to "Okay so let's decide that it's just fully good or fully bad, as an entity." Romance shouldn't just be slapped into the game because it's inherently good, any more than it should be not-even-considered because it's inherently bad. Examples of how it's bad are useful in determining how to make it not-bad, not evidence that it should be purged from existence. And examples of how it can be good don't instantly mean "and therefore there's no reason not to put it in the game." Why can't everyone just accumulate cookies?

You're rather carelessly assuming that those railings aren't trapped as well, u_u...

You should have a "Total Credit Available" in the bottom right corner of your "Manage My Pledges" page. If that says your pledge amount, instead of "$0.00," then you haven't yet finalized your pledge into an actual order, and I'm pretty sure it's still flexible at that point. You could probably just do what neo6874 suggested.

See, that's because the romance was completely standalone. All it did was check your romance-o-meter, say "Nope, went below the threshold," and decide that she leaves you, no matter what. Not "Change her state, and have the situation check for states." Not "consider the situation." Nothing. Might as well just put in a random Ultimate Frisbee minigame in, or a YuGiYoh-esque card game, allowing you to challenge whomever you wish, whenever. "OOooh! A scary dragon that wishes us dead! Hang on, guys. Let me beat it in a card game duel, real quick. THEN we can fight it." Annnnd there ya go. Cards = dumb. But wait, if you could play cards when it was feasible to do so, and/or you could hustle someone to great narrative effect because of your character's cards skill you'd honed, etc., that would be fine.

I do enjoy a good sprinkling of random.

I would expect tens upon tens of monsters in the game, minimum.

Maybe. Maybe they'll show footage, the godlikes of which you've never seen. 6_u

Take care that the rest of your party doesn't get too... Drowsy. 6_u

It would seem so. Evidently, the survey answers from the backer portal do not (always, at least...) get passed straight along to the forum mods here. Worry not, though. If you post it, they will come... (We'll get you situated, ^_^)

Ahh, that I did. My bad. Yeah, months of delay would leave only about a month 'til Winter. Still, a lot of worry over a lot of "if"s, if you ask me. "If a meteor hits Obsidian HQ tomorrow, and the project can't be finished at all, I demand my money back even HARDER!"

I dunno if they'r quite that good. Possibly. Plus, the CPU doesn't come with an extra gig of dedicated GDDR, that I know of. Just sayin'...

By his definition, people who make pledges toward all those charity walks are promising to give their money for every mile someone walks, only IF the organization to which they're pledging actually cures the disease in question. Or, a knight who pledges his loyalty to a king is making a purchase. 8P If you'll excuse me, I've got to go pledge a dollar for a tiny bag of chips from the vending machine.

Forgot about the Program Files thing. Discovered that when I installed Arcanum, 8P

If the vast majority of my minutes weren't spent in video-free space, I'd gladly take oodles of them to watch everything in existence. Also, I'm aware of that comment, but I couldn't tell you exactly how much "occasionally" is, in any specific quantity of references throughout the game, nor can I say anything about the extent of the significance of those references. Perhaps I should've assured that it won't be, specifically, just a one-time thing. But, just a two-time thing would also fit with "occasionally," and that would still be pretty disappointing. My hopes are that it will be a decently consequence-producing character trait.

Well... that's the thing, I wouldn't really have "romance-centered" characters. I mean, unless it was some NPC or something. Even then, though, really... I'd much rather romance not be their sole interactive purpose in the game. Not even close. Romance is a pretty minor thing, in-and-of itself. It's an aspect of character choice/reaction, just like a lot of other stuff. How you handle things/play your character affects how NPCs react, and how they behave affects how you decide things, etc. And all of that, ideally, affects the situations and events surrounding your party. There are plenty of games that have all kinds of reactionary "You did such-and-such, so this character isn't very happy with you," etc. Heck, I think it'd even be great if it was possible, depending on what you did, for some potential companions to turn against you, and/or join some not-really-your-enemy-but-just-considers-you-to-be-interfering faction or something. Depending, partially, on what you do and how you handle things and just generally play your character. I don't think romance is any different. It's a specific relationship that can either develop, or not, between your character and another in the game world. So, yeah, if your game's design just focuses on it as a standalone "see if you can achieve wooing victory before the game ends" element, it's just a silly, optional thing. Whether or not it's optional at that point isn't even an issue, because before that comes "is this even pertinent to anything other than itself?" If it were treated like it should be treated, what content is romance and what content is non-romance (the stuff romance is "taking resources away from") would be almost indistinguishable from one another. It's like... playing a certain race or class. Maybe if you never play an Elven Wizard, you'll miss out on certain content. Reactions to elves/wizards in certain situations, race-affected lore checks, etc. (just examples, not necessarily confirmed, in-game things for PoE). But, that race and class aren't just arbitrarily "It's OKAY because they're optional! 8D!" things thrown into the game. The stuff you miss out on is just variation upon the existing story/narrative/world. It's not just standalone afterthought stuff. HAD you been an Elf or Wizard in situation X, you could've handled things a different way, but you weren't. Same with romance. If you kindle a relationship with another character, it should be amid the story and world goings-on. The existence of that relationship should present different consequences/factors to your playthrough than the absence of it would have. I don't really think that's any less viable than an alternative of the game being completely devoid of romantic relationships, conceptually. The problem with game romances is that they're in just because some people like romances, and not because they're worked into the game story in any way, shape, or fashion. They just kind of find some empty space. "Oh, hey, you go off to war, here, so wouldn't it be nice if you could kiss someone goodbye, instead of just parting ways? *INJECT*". As an aspect of character development/interaction, romance, in general, is no different from any other aspect of character development. Characters can like you, hate you, plot against you, keep secrets from you, share things with you, go out of their way to back you up, use you, respect you, etc. Why is romantic fondness so alien in all of that? What... it's inherently incapable of being used by writers in a relevant-to-the-story fashion? I don't buy it. Just because people haven't done something doesn't mean it's because no one can do it. So, I really don't think the existence of romance requires the reduction of interesting character development. As I've said before, for a game like PoE, I really think it could essentially function within the reputation/disposition system.

Heck, it's not even that much of a stretch from any real life instances of "this child was born with red hair, and that happens really rarely, so SURELY the god of the sun has blessed this child!". Just... the godlike features are a little more extensive, I suppose, than red hair. But, hey, they're only different because they're rare, right? If 80% of the populous had feathers growing out of their faces/heads, I don't think "the masses" would be filled with people all gasping at how strange that was. Human/normal or not, it would be familiar.

Depends. "Oh, but it's optional, so nothing else matters!" is flawed. "It's optional" isn't any more flawed than the reasoning behind any optional stuff in the game. The game shouldn't force you involve your PC in romance. I think that's a given.

That's true, but it seems like a pretty big waste of dialogue if it was just some flavor stuff. Especially if it's that way for all the different backgrounds. It would also kind of a crappy thing to do, in an RPG like this. "Oh hey, look, my background matters! Wait... awwwwww.... no it doesn't, -___-"