Heijoushin

Hello everyone. Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Sheep I believe. May you all have much good fortune and enjoying playing PoE this year. I almost forgot about it actually (luckily a friend messaged me at midnight). I guess the whole Chinese world is celebrating right about now, but for the rest of us, its just another Wednesday.

This is rather pointless since this is not real life. We have actual Gods interacting with the world, it seems to me we have viable moral authorities. So let me turn the question back around: who are we to consider ourselves above the Gods? I don't think they are viable moral authorities though. In fantasy games, even Gods are morally subjective and "flawed". Your statement sounds like you're thinking in terms of modern religion. Think more like Greek myths and legends kind of gods. You know, Zeus having sex with everything in sight and all that... And since one God has already "died" in this fantasy world (the Godhammar Bomb incident), humans are more than capable of challenging them! As others have said, the vast majority of people consider themselves to be "good" and are only interpreted as evil by other people who don't agree with their actions. So if you want an "evil" companion, what you really want is someone with a moral compass/culture eccentric enough to justify what we would consider "bad actions".

I think you're being a little critical mate. I'd rather they work on the actual game than design new box art.

Do I sense a little negativity at the idea of creating one's own party? I suppose it's the IWD lovers vs. the BG lovers divide. I find it very satisfying to create a whole party. Something about the creativity of it I think. Sure, I'll use the standard companions on the first playthrough to check their storylines, but after that... I think making your own party will add loads of replay value.

This sort of thing never really had much impact on gameplay in the past. I remember being disappointed in NWN2 because you get this long list of interesting dieties to choose from, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't a single line of dialogue in the game that mentioned it. If it actually impacts storyline, then I'll give it some deeper thought. Until then... Magran, God of Fire & War seems nice. Mainly because if you play a wizard in D&D RPGs, you tend to spend a lot of your time throwing fireballs around. EDIT: BTW Who or what is the "Knight of the Crucible"?

Hmmmm... you know, it's a nice idea, but it doesn't quite fit PoE. That hook doesn't really work. You only have a limited amount of party member slots and most people want to try as many classes as possible (even in IWD, where you have 6 slots, I sometimes felt like I didn't have space for all the characters I wanted) Asking a player to make two of the same doesn't seem right. Also, what about little encounters? It seems overly dramatic and time-consuming to summon demons to deal with some beetles. Finally, I'm sure all these demons would have a big impact on the lore. I would totally play a separate game with this concept though. A game where you are a summoner and you have a vast libary where you can research various demons and rituals etc.

Interesting question. I've tried to avoid looking too deeply into the companions backgrounds to avoid spoiling the story, but I'm also interested in how they will handle this. I hope you'll be able to recruit good and evil types. But you need good writing to pull that off (or you get childish "stealing is wrong!" arguments between your lawful good paladin and evil rogue). I suppose you can just use the adventures hall to create a new wizard but then you'll miss out on the sub-quests, right?

Hmmm... I don't recall using that feature much in IWD. In general, I find taverns in RPGs a little like sex in RPGs. Two fun things in real life, but in a game, they're pointless & a waste of gold. If you want players to frequent taverns, I think you need to make use there are a lot of interesting NPCs hanging out there regularly.

I think elitism exist within plenty of artistic endeavors; art itself its elitist, but there is the matter of taste and widening it. There are people who are tired of the mainstream and want something with more depth, so they go back and look over to games that had a lot more to offer than graphics. Or they do so because you don't need to be an academic to have an academic interest on some things. That's fair enough. I've slogged through some old games. Sometimes it paid off, other times I was just too distracted by the graphics. But that's an individual's prerogative. Not something I think we need to do as a community (by making some kind of "must-play list of masterpieces" and expecting people to play them)

Tomorrow's valentine's day. I picked up a card for the missus and I'm going to get some flowers later. I'm not really a romantic, but by jove, I go through the motions on special holidays!

I don't think it's necessary for you to go back and play all the old games to validate your "gamer card". I personally think Final Fantasy 7 is the best RPG ever made (hardly a unique choice) But if a kid today played it, I don't think he'd be able to get over Cloud's square hands. Games just age a lot more rapidly than movies and other forms of media. And I'm not interested in the hits of my parents generation, why should young kids be interested in the hits of mine? Now, if you're an actual game design student and there's something to learn, that's a different story. But for the rest of us? No, I don't really think it is important. At best, its an interesting topic than someone can tell you about. Like the "Extra Credits" series on game design on youtube. That's fascinating...

I could get behind that. Each master passes on his style to a few gifted students... still, in time, you'd think a few bigger schools would form. Or are we going with the "There can only be two... a master and an apprentice..." thing:)

Hello old chaps. I was just looking through the wiki and I noticed that while the paladins get orders and the priests get dieties, there doesn't seem to be any information on monk orders. Do they... not get any? I would be nice if they did... If you want to be a philosophical monk with a long grey beard, then you need a philosophy to follow!

Haha, another POE2 discussion before the 1st one is even out. I don't think the carrying over of the stronghold is a serious issue. Besides the method CottonWolf mentioned above, POE2 could center around completely different characters. It may only take place in the same world. I think I would prefer that. After POE1 and a few expansion sets, surely they will have got all the storyline they can out of the current protagonist?

I would also love to see some new Ultima magic that's not an MMORPG... But personally, I'm more interested in the other Ultima kickstarter: Shroud of the Avatar.

Wow. Kind of feels like jumping the gun but... I guess the industry moves pretty fast these days...

Let's talk about morality in games. A friend of mine posted on facebook the other day that she was trying to play renegade in Mass Effect, but couldn't do it because she was too "soft-hearted". I sympathize with this, but I think it’s not because of the softness of anyone’s heart, but simply because games with a "Good-Evil" morality system tend to be written like "Lawful Good - Rude Douchebag". Unless you’re fooling around or have consciously decided to make all the evil choices, most people don’t select the douchebag dialogue options (I think?) So, alternatives! The Shin Megami Tensei games (which I love) often have a “Law - Neutral - Chaos” alignment system. Law represents religion, or “The system”, whereas Chaos represents freedom or “Survival of the fittest”. Or they have characters with other ideals about how the world should be run. I think this is a lot more interesting than vanilla “good vs evil”. Morally ambiguous situations: Do you remember the gypsy from the Ultima series? To determine your class at the beginning of the game, she asks you some philosophical questions. What I loved about these questions is that there was never a clear “right” answer. For example: “You slayed a dragon but a poor knight, who is trying to feed his children, claimed the reward. Do you turn him in?” Games need more situations like this. Ideas? Remarks?

If so, I hope they warn you. Like "People say that a ghost appears here at midnight!" etc. I don't like to think that I'm missing valuable quests just because I happened to be walking around during the "day".

It seems that I'm swimming against the tide here but... I don't think we really need scripts. I never used them in IWD and I hate games that "play themselves" (*cough* FF13, I'm looking at you *cough*). I mean, great if they can include them, but I don't think its the end of the world if they can't.

Now I kind of wanna make a game in which the main plot conflict is "why is everyone suddenly not dying anymore?", and it turns out it's because someone decided everyone should live forever and got resurrection magic working. But, people keep aging, and having more children, and resources get scarce, so it turns into this dystopian world anyway. There's an amazing fantasy book with just that storyline. Its called The End Specialist. I highly recommend it! Interesting discussion. I will withhold my comments until I've played the game though.

I agree, there should be a penalty. As others have said, if there is no penalty, it becomes more profitable to let your characters get knocked out. That takes value from the healer classes. But the penalty must just be a light one. If the penalty is something permanent, people will just reload. It's hard to say what the penalty should be... but it doesn't have to be a combat mechanic. You could have a character that later comments on it in a conversation. Such a small thing wouln't effect gameplay but I think it would "shame" players into keeping their characters alive;) I would keep my people alive if I knew an NPC was going to comment on it later.

I'm male but always play females. I guess that if I'm going to be watching an avatar for hours at a time, I'd like a pretty avatar. That makes the romance a little awkward of course, but IMHO, romance in video games is usually not very interesting, so it's not a big deal.

Today when I woke up and looked outside, the world was completely white. It's snowing heavily in Tokyo today. Here's a line from Rurouni Kenshin: 「春は夜桜　夏には星　秋に満月　冬には雪　それで十分酒は美味い」 Translation: In spring, we watch the Cherry Blossoms at night In summer, the stars In autumn, the full moon and in winter, the snow. That alone is enough to make your sake delicious. Not that I'm a big weather person. But it's a good reminder to appreciate the little things in life.

Thanks, the interview was very interesting to read! On the last page, he talks about a kind of psychological dungeon where you explore your companions minds... but then says it was cut! What a pity, that sounded fascinating...

As the poll says, I'm curious about what race you like to play and I'm specifically wondering if anyone ever bothers rolling a halfing or gnome. If I'm playing IWD, where you can make a party of six, then I try to include a variety of races for fun and balance. But when I only have a single character, I'm usually pretty boring, and go human. And I can't see myself every playing a dimunative race. Maybe because I'm short in real life and don't want to carry it over into my gaming(笑)