Lephys

^ I think the general expressed concern, forgottenlor, was for the general ability to get through the game solo without all that specific "metagame" knowledge. If you can find a way to get through the game with just one character, on Hard, in an hour, then awesome. If you just intuitively do that on your first playthrough without having to figure out a specific way? That's obviously indicative of an issue with the amount of challenge presented to a party of 6. For some reason, people defensively replied that, no, people who are really good at video games and figure out how to play through them with just one person should not be burned at the steak.

*Namutree gains +15 reputation with the PunForge faction.*

I still think it'd be really awesome if you actually had distance/cover affect the information your vision granted. Like, if you have infravision, maybe you can see "there's obviously something that generates body heat over there, and it's humanoid, and approximately X tall, and kinda shaped thusly, but I couldn't tell you exactly what it is without getting closer." etc. If it was dark, and things were near the edge of your vision range, with regular vision, you could still see the enemies, and make out their general movement, etc., but they'd basically appear as general shadow-y shapes. Obviously you could go really detailed with that, or just have 3 stages of vision instead of 2 (visibile vs. invisible), at the very least. Either way, the general idea seems like it'd make things interesting. You could use spyglasses or scout-type abilities (or animal companions/familiars) in-combat! 8D

The worst is when you get a "quality map of the world," and it's made of crease-able paper and ships folded about 16 times to fit in the box. 8P They could at least roll those things up and put 'em in a little cardboard tube or something, ya know? Or just... make 'em out of cloth, and charge the extra 3 bucks.

Ahh, I couldn't recall. It's been a while. And yes, those are excellent criticisms of the game and its design. I'm afraid I still disagree with that last bit, though. It isn't an example of what "happens when you try." It's an example of a game with bad singleplayer AI that gets completely outshone (and out-functioned) by having the input of an additional player. I'm also not trying to put it on a pedestal. Apologies if that seemed to be the case. It was merely an example I thought up of a game that was essentially (design-wise) the exact same game in both singleplayer and multiplayer, with the only difference being that a second person controls one of the characters present, as opposed to either an AI (however primitive) or the first player (via pausing/orders-issuing, again, however primitive). Secret of Mana could be the single worst game ever made, and it would still be a perfectly adequate example of my point. It seems to me that the majority of multiplayer resentment today is, much like the majority of resentment when hearing the words "DLC," directed more at the potency of bad instances in their minds, rather than the actual function of the thing itself. Nothing says DLC has to be overpriced (or priced, at all, for that matter) and joke-worthy, and nothing says that multiplayer has to in any way encroach upon the quality of a game's singleplayer experience. Maybe it's literal? You can only pickpocket people standing in pairs? *shrug*

I hope they run faster than bullets, then. Rage-fueled bullets. Plus, if you boost the crap out of your Barbarians' throwing capabilities/aim, you've got 12 extra projectiles with which to strike your foes, even if you run out of ammo. 8D!

So, would you say it's really... picking up steam? 6_u *hearty chuckle*

Just as long as it's that and not the Fallout THREE system, in which you could raise your attribute like 10 times, easily, at the cost of 10 perks. 8P

Yeah, it seems like they get a few things confused and/or lost in translation (like abilities requiring "mana or endurance" -- the only thing I can think of is that they were referring to the class specific resources, like Wounds [monks] or Focus [ciphers]), but, this is a MUCH better article than most of the English ones I read. The English ones almost treat everything like it's all "retro" or something. "Hey, you can control a party again, from the sky! Remember that from 15 years ago?! 8D! There'll be classes and stuff, and spells!"

Or we could all just post so many "Oh no, not again!"s that, without any actual romance discussion, this thread goes on for 17 pages, and people being ironically asking "why is this thread still going?!",

No worries. I wasn't trying to jump on you or anything. Just letting you know that, for what it's worth, this has been dredged and re-dredged about 300 times by a lot of people here. So, just... prepare thineself.

The closest thing, methinks, is Resolve. And yeah, that, along with other factors. It'd be good for stats to play a role, but not be binary "you stop the fight and everything's dandy/you fail to stop the fight and all hell breaks loose" checks. Based on what they've said about their dialogue system, though, it seems that stat/skill checks tend to supply you with a greater range of tools, rather than just gating magic solutions to things. In other words, the check is to see if you're able to try significantly more, potentially-useful things than to just see if you succeed or fail.

At least their virtual carbon footprint is drastically reduced. Dialogue pollution is the leading cause of death amongst unimportant, nameless NPCs. u_u

Much appreciated, but the developers have directly confirmed this well prior to now.

I won't say it definitely wasn't (because I don't know), but this evidence alone does not prove that the whole focus of the game was on multiplayer, specifically, at the cost of focusing on singleplayer. You got to use multiple people regardless, right? The only difference was whether or not your extra peep was controlled by your friend, or an AI. Correct? AND, if I recall, it essentially was RTwP, since you could pause to issue item/ability commands. So, human control is more efficient without longer time/pausing than AI control? I don't think that necessarily means the game was specifically focused on multiplayer. It's pretty tough to make a game that plays the same with both AI and human control. Multiplayer wasn't any different -- it's not like you didn't just press A a bunch of times to take down bosses. You just did it a bit more efficiently, again, because of human-ness instead of SNES AI. Show me an action RPG on the SNES that didn't essentially amount to a bunch of dodging and attack spams, and that wouldn't have become more interesting if a friend of yours could pick up the other controller and join you (if you so chose).

I'm not really backing a horse at all (I get what you mean, though, ). I just feel like EQ:Next at least has the potential to be significantly different, even if it doesn't go as far as it should. I'm hopeful about Destiny, too, but it also looks dangerously like the skeleton of Halo (and/or Borderlands) with a bunch of pleasant MMO features sewn in like a quilt. If they don't put enough actual tactical options into it, it'll just end up being fun and all, but very similar to your run-of-the-mill "find the most efficient sequence of abilities for a given class, then just roll with that" MMO. The problem with MMOs is that they've taken role-playing games and turned them into role-filling games. It's just a big, static sandbox world full of optional challenges, with a bunch of rewards and loot-gambling thrown in, complete with a character build test studio. Nothing about them feels like your character has any reason to be doing anything at all, other than for progression's sake, which is only done for different-types-of-progression's sake. It's an infinite loop. All existing ones, yes. And probably many more to come. I'm sure there's a prophecy r something, foretelling the one that will rise up to defeat all the others and actually be good.

Well that's just silly. All the voices would just be wooshy air.

Surely it will depend largely upon whether or not the rest of the party is wicked or innocent.

I'm pretty sure that, by that, he means "not supposed to beat." It's not really that complex. If you were supposed to beat everything the second you laid eyes upon it, then that would be the opposite of how it actually is. "Not supposed to" is not the same thing as "supposed to not," which is what you're arguing against. You're suggesting that he's saying taking stuff on "early" (relatively) is wrong, and waiting 'til later is right, when he's merely suggesting that neither is right or wrong.

It'd be kinda cool if you could actually decide to step in and stop it (or, try to, I should say), or just let one of them kill the other. If that were possible, I mean. Not "any squabble between two party members results in a death unless you stop it, with your omnipotence." 8P

MMORPGs aren't bad. The stagnation of their design is. I have mild hopes for Everquest Next. Mild, I say.

Exactly, Hiro. Precisely. The devs are obviously wrong. It's impossible that they've confirmed that, and I absolutely refuse to acknowledge that any one build will be any better, at all, than any other build, in any way, shape, or fashion. I've totally been saying that exact thing this entire time, which is why you can find all of these words in all of my previous posts in this thread. How ever did you guess? I was trying to be as cryptic as possible, as always, so I seemingly just pointed out the complexity of what makes a build "the best," when really all I was trying to say was simply the above, the whole time. Sometimes I want to say "hi," but I instead say something like "dolphin." I don't know what's wrong with me... -___-

Well, 2 + 2 does equal 4, and that can't be refuted, even though you're trying to say otherwise. See, I can do it, too. As always, it was a pleasure having a perfectly reasonable discussion with you. ^_^

Nope. I'm simply questioning the simplicity of "best build," in absolutely no context whatsoever. And I personally feel that the efforts toward build-option viability in the game's design matters a good deal, and that a plethora of builds are all going to be quite different and enjoyable, yet offer remarkably similar levels of "best"ness. That's all. That's all I questioned from the get-go, because I feel it's a worthwhile question to consider. Instead of just thinking "Meh, a couple of builds will somehow allow you to just annihilate the crap out of everything with a sweep of your hand, and people are just going to post those online, and then that'll be that." Obviously you don't feel it's worthwhile, which is totally your prerogative. You said your part. I said mine. Yay for discussion! Sharing is caring.

Well, if you felt that definitely having the best build was more important than just not having a crappy build, you'd probably figure it out for yourself. If you felt it was a waste of time, you'd probably just take their word for it. I don't know what "on paper" has to do with anything, since, unless you read through extensive notes of theirs, and essentially test those builds out with your own brain (even if you don't actually playtest them in the game to determine such things), then you're basically just taking people's word for it. Either way, you didn't even address the fact that "best" is kind of a dependent term. The "best" build for a Ranger might be hardcore damage-dealing, OR more of a support role, depending on the rest of your party's makeup, how you're playing, what equipment you use, etc. That's like asking what the best tool in the toolbox is. Is it the hammer, or the pliers? Kinda depends on what you're trying to accomplish, and what the circumstances are. It's not really as simple as "Lolz! This is the best build. See, it's at 100 goodness, and the next best build is only at 97 goodness!" It's not like you just measure them with a best-ometer, and one has a higher reading. Also, why are you attributing my name to logic? I think it was around before I was born. I suppose I could be an immortal being who created logic and is simply suffering from amnesia. *shrug*