Endrosz

That's a good one, haha!

I don't think that direct references to real-world discussions will be accepted by the devs. Again, I will link the Betrayal at Krondor epitaphs so that you can get some ideas for immersive, appropriate memorial stone texts. Here's some more: Guild Wars 2.

No, it wasn't. Remember the new Tomb Raider? 4.5 millions units as initial sales was considered a failure. The same thing happened to Infinite: it sold a few million units, it probably wasn't a net loss as an investment, just nowhere near the numbers that were expected from the sales. And yes, Levine himself seems to be part of the problem.

When D3 came out, I played the demo, read the reviews, and wasn't really impressed. Only Patch 2's major overhaul made me consider buying it, which I did in early February this year. Played a HC Wizard for variety of skills/gameplay (always first priority for me), liked it. Was one-hitted by Azmodan's slow-but-deadly fireball on Normal at lvl 32 (never went below 50% otherwise, I felt safe), decided to wait for Patch 2 to land before playing again. 2nd attempt, earlier this week, stunlocked by Frost elite pack at lvl 14 (didn't have the templar yet to support me). WTF moment, but that's how you learn. Today, my 3rd attempt at a HC Wizard dinged 60, then proceeded to spank Diablo on Hard difficulty. This is my first Diablo kill ever in D3, actually... IMO he's much less troublesome than Azmodan. I pulled out every defensive ability and gear piece I had, 730k toughness plus 3 defensive active skills, never went below 80%. But, you know, better safe than sorry. I feel so good... Sa la la la

I don't really want to argue about this, whatever. But even if you're doing something radically new, it's worth to know and understand the classics. Last year, I visited a Paul Cézanne exhibition which showed his influences along with his own works. He's considered to be both a member of the French impressionists and the forerunner to modernism, cubism and expressionism. Yet he took a lot of clues from Renaissance art, especially sculpting. He was a genius painter through and through, but that doesn't mean he just came out of the blue with no knowledge of the classics. Just my 2 coppers.

Sent join request for the Obz clan. I only play HC, though. Please add me as friend if you play or intend to play HC! Endrosz#2178

Master of Orion 2 -- The only retro game I come back to. Even the IE games don't flare up my interest, this one does. Sid Meier's Pirates! -- Timeless classic, completely enjoyable even today without any graphic or gameplay upgrades via emulator. The linked version does have upgrades, but it's basically the same. M.U.L.E. -- From the woman who knew multiplayer will become huge before the term "multiplayer" was born. Fun for the whole family! Some writings from Dani Bunten, worth reading, especially "The Importance of Play". There are modern remakes of M.U.L.E. all around the web, here's an iOS one which comes from the current copyright holder (Android soon).

Oh, just one level shy of Epic Trolling! Go for it, MC!

Why would you think that? The reason for "only" 4 types of godlikes is probably the same answer that's already given: not enough resources to create more.

Eternity for me. At least, there is one game where I don't use some lame abbreviation like F:NV or ToEE.

Fenster means "window" in German. So, Fenstermakers, collectively, means those horrible, inhuman creatures who made the Windows operating system... KOS, I say.

Ouch, that was a low blow... I appreciate humor a lot, thanks for taking the time to spice up this update!

Time to create a new religion. The name is obvious. Now I just need to come up with some cosmology 'n stuff. Shouldn't be too hard, after all, if you can create good RPGs, you've already ascended to godhood, and with a solid god as a basis, creating a new monotheistic religion is a breeze. And since ye olde religions plagiarize from each other rather liberally, I shouldn't be much ashamed if I do that as well, so without further ado, here's Sawyerism's basic prayer: Our Designer on computers, Upleveled be your name. Your megadungeon come, your will be done in pen-and-paper, as it is on computers. Give us each day our daily fun, and forgive us our trolling, as we also have forgiven others'. And lead us not into degeneration, but deliver us from dumb. Amen. (Note: I'm a weird creature -- a devout Christian with a sense of humor. Before you start crying blasphemy etc.)

This related Leigh Alexander piece is interesting for reasons far beyond the news itself. Some serious musings about the The Nature of the Game(s Industry).

Wow, that came out of the blue: A Message From Ken Levine For me, gamplay-wise: System Shock 1 > System Shock 2 > BioShock ( > BS Infinite) (decline!) Bioshock was the show-stopper for me. I stopped playing it rather early, and haven't had the urge to reinstall it ever since. Compared to the freedom of the SS games, the entire thing was way too "heavy-handed" for my taste. I consider it a good game, with a fantastic setting, characters and voiceovers, visuals, just not for me. And when I read the previews about BS Infinite, I concluded that its gameplay was even more superficial than BS's. So, I'm very glad that he goes back to small-and-agile development, because the corner I.G. painted itself into wasn't a very fun one in my book. Whether it was a profitable one, he knows that. Here's hoping that his new creations will bring back the "free-roaming" and "crazy random stuff" qualities of the SS games. Or maybe he wants to do something very different?

Dear Bruce, please learn to use the 'quote' function properly. You can delete from the quoted message when you write your post, just select with mouse or shift+arrow keys, then press DEL. It's basic netiquette that you only quote as much as necessary. Otherwise you make a mess that is hard to follow. It's even worse when you do this in threads with images, like the armor design one. I could've written a PM, but it's aimed at other people too who needed this education. You're just the most common offender.

A story, it grows organically. First, you have a soul who has some... soul problem. It's got something to do with a Watcher, apparently. Second, you have a world. As most populated, Earth-like worlds, it has societies big and small. Some empires, some closed small enclaves, and some in between. Third, you have a region, where geographical and other conditions influence the development of societies. Fourth, you have a history for the region and the world. That history has a lot tension in it, just like every history ever created for a world worth reading about or playing in. Fifth, you have current events, trends, situations. ...and story grows from all of the above, and more. I'm sure that back in 2012, when the writers started developing this world and this game's story in particular, there wasn't any bullet point on their list which said: "Oh, and we will put in class issues because we're such hardcore liberals!". That Kickstarter pitch promised an IE-successor, they never made any promise to either include or exclude certain topics. This is what they ended up with. --- I don't care where they go with the story. It might tackle class issues, or ignore them. It might have romances, or not. It might have sexy sorceresses in skimpy outfits riding atop dragons, or not. All I care about is good writing, coherence, sensibility. Quality. Dear Monte Carlo, the writers of Eternity are not your bitches. Your whining about omitting certain topics works on the exact same level that promancers' lobby for romances: entitlement. How does it feel to be in their shoes, eh?

We've seen race issues handled in a reasonably detailed and nuanced fashion in the Witcher series. Some other social issues, including class-related, were also explored there. I would be gravely disappointed if Obsidian's narrative design and writing wouldn't reach the level of CDPR's. They can do it, of that I'm sure. That's all I have to say. And related to the topic's subject, a song from my childhood, East Block Hungary, played on the national holiday for the Glorious October Revolution and other occasions: Gotta give it to them, it's a very sweeping, majestic hymn.

Rowan Atkinson: We must be allowed to insult each other (of Mr Bean, BlackAdder fame)

^ That is a very good point, thanks for bringing it up. Yes, with a somewhat predefined protagonist, like Geralt of Rivia, writing sensible romances is much more easier. In other narrative mediums, the characters are defined one way or the other and you can safely build romances on their personality, history, and general situation they are in. In a game like Eternity, you don't have that luxury as a writer. Geralt, in addition to being good-looking, suave, and generally badass, is sterile (and this is a known fact to many in the world of Witcher), which makes sex with him safe, which makes an "adventure" with him even more appealing to women... I've discussed this with a friend of mine who, in addition a being a gamer, is also a womanizer, and he was quite envious of Geralt because of this. When at the start of Witcher 1, in Geralt's weakened state Triss shares a bed with him, that scene reinforces that she still cares about him (they have a looooong history) and thinks that he's valuable and not a lost case. It's "friendly sex", in a sense, a gift of self-esteem. Geralt doesn't really "take her", rather it's Triss who "elevates" him. It's a powerful moment, right at the start of the game, and without building up influence points to win her over. It has a detailed history behind it (which you'll get to know over the course of the games), it is embedded in the story, the motivation is there, the dialogue makes sense -- all the boxes checked for a sex scene that is wholly appropriate. So you can even do a fitting sex scene in the first hour of the game -- if you do it right....

Standard solution, works with every modern game (old games stop with an error message, usually): - Find "movies" folder, name is usually obvious - Rename movie files which you think are part of the startup package. After finding the right ones, you can delete them if you wish. - After you start the game, there will be a few seconds of blank while the game fruitlessly searches for those movie files, then gives up and shows you the main menu. You only need to do this once after installing, it's well worth the effort. (Note: Steam games are located by default in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\<Game Name>, though it's possible that they are elsewhere.)

Not-so-viral marketing?

Okay, so my last post was a bit more passive-agressive than I would like to admit, but Bruce laughed it off, thanks for that. I'm going to list a few things that make creating a good romance problematic. Turning romance into a system = next to impossible Sentences about a relationship from a (straight) man's perspective. She was in a bad mood today, and wouldn't tell me why. I gave up and sat down to play Pillars of Eternity, my go-to game in such situations. Maybe tomorrow she'll open up. We went for a walk in the mountains, we both enjoyed it a lot. But on the road back, she got all nostalgic about her childhood, and started complaining about that she "misses the fun". Should I take that as a warning that "our relationship is not very fun" for her? Or can I dismiss it as simply choking on nostalgia? She asked me a lot of question about one of my female co-workers. She's clearly very jelly of her, but I managed to avoid telling her so, because today's sex night. There are so many nuances to a relationship. Communication in a relationship is really complex, there are entire libraries of psychology books on the subject (my favorites are by a pastor, Gary Chapman: Five Love Languages) - Misunderstandings - Growing as a person via the partner's presence - Accepting the other's history and background, including, but not limited to, family and education - ... Yet all we get is "compliment, do a few things he/she likes -> bed -> happily ever after". Example 1: Gifting in DA:O I'm a bit late with mentioning this, but yes, the gift system in DA:O was an affront to people who love. It was as if you were buying yourself, uh, an "escort service". A paid lover status. I found it even more appalling that Morrigan, one of the cooler characters from the game, would go all "shiny!" like a stereotypical dumb blonde. Quote from the DA:O wiki: Really? The daughter of one of the ancient and undying powers of the world, also a powerhouse herself, goes squee over a silver chain? I would suppose she can conjure up such stuff with mere thoughts... This a very good example how easily "systemifying" a relationship can fail. I'm sure that the gifting idea looked good on paper to the designers, but it was doomed to fail. Even with gifting being one of the Five Love Languages I mentioned above. Example 2: Influence gain/loss versus important values So let's say that in a game, I do the following while my love-to-be companion watches, and get the following influence points: +1 Save kitten +2 Uncover assassination plot +2 Defeat brigands +1 Discover lost caravan +3 Help settle a quarrel between two rival families -7 Kill a child who was used as a pawn by a criminal mastermind At this point, the game tells me that my influence with her is plus 2. I'm okay, right? No. Any real woman with a real heart would hate me with a passion for killing the child, and wouldn't care about saving the kittens. The system fails, because it's just a system. My conviction is that if you want to do romances, you need a full narrative framework with almost absolute writing freedom like Telltale Games's episodic adventures. Anything that's based on numbers will end up cringeworthy. Example 3: Growing apart and breaking up Have you ever had a romance in a game where after a while, your partner starts to lose interest in you? And after a while he/she begins to look... away? He/she becomes disillusioned with you, realizes that how far you two actually are when it comes to values, and so and so on? These things are very real and happen all the time. In my real relationships I like to say "a relationship starts after the first break-up". What I mean is that reaching new levels of physical intimacy might be a high point (see the kiss with Annah), but it's definitely not the end. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of learning, a lot of apologizing, a lot of everything to make a relationship work in the long run, yet in every game I played, after you bedded someone, he/she was chained to you no matter what. Oh, if it were as simple as that! ... I could go on and on, but this is already far too long... Edit: A game with this budget, also the first of its kind, doesn't have what's needed to have proper romances. Romances that are worthy of Obsidian's name and seal of approval. I hope that Eternity will turn into a franchise, and the sequels, where things will be less hectic since the engine, systems and the production pipeline are already in place, will be able to feature romances that are relatable, not cringeworthy.

If people want to mod, they'll find a way. Never underestimate the power of the community. I've done extensive modding to a strategy game (Kohan: Ahriman's Gift) that didn't support modding. "Someone" created the game-specific resource extractor filter for a general-purpose res-ext tool (can't recall its name), and after that, I could do so many things that I didn't even get to creating a new PvE campaign, I just modded the AI scripts and tweaked game balance for years. That's not saying I'm against supporting modding -- I'm looking forward to start modding Eternity while it's still in beta. But if they say it's problematic to support this within the Unity engine, and would take up too much (human) resources to open up more, then I'll just take that at face value and be content that the modding community will find a way, eventually. For me, since I'm a systems guy mostly, adding new art has a low priority, and Sawyer already stated several times that the numerical data will be easily dumpable/modifiable. I can understand that would-be adventure module creators are disappointed, though.