Gromnir

*eye roll* you serious do not understand strawman. there is no intent attribute. did you attribute a weak argument to sawyer which he did not make? yes. did you then use that false attribution to diminish sawyer's position? yes. " It doesn't matter whether the misrepresentation or distortion is accidental and due to misunderstanding the argument or is intentional and aimed at making it easier to refute. Either way, one commits the straw man fallacy." -- from the skeptic's dictionary am getting tired explaining. there would almost never be a strawman fallacy if we eliminated any and all mistakes. you thought that is what sawyer said? doesn't matter. if you heard somewhere in an interview you cannot recall? don't matter. if you assumed, based on a stretch goal you cannot actual point to at the moment that... HA! at least if you could point to something sawyer said and then claim that your misinterpretation were reasonable, we could see nullification o' strawman. is one o' the failures o' logic that two people can read the same thing and come to different conclusions as to meaning. is often a reason why accusations o' strawman is misplaced on these boards. person 1 says "X." person 2 reads "X" and understands it to mean "Y." yell "strawman" every time somebody misreads or misunderstands that which is subject to multiple meanings is a ridiculous use o' strawman. even when is technical accurate strawman, is still often a silly criticism given the fluidity o' language. you didn't misinterpret. oh, and change the syllogism. change so that you are mere identifying gk observation about josh hate of romances, then use gk observation to conclude that, "I think that in this case, it's really just another representation of his irrational hangups that have marred the game." well guess what, you has simple taken one logic fallacy and replaced it with another. is still a loss. oh well, by inches we will get you to learn the fallacy you so love to spam (incorrect.) the rest is meaningless. honest. your personal message board impressions is a feel arguement, but even if you ridiculous bootstrap such silliness into legitimacy, there ain't no way you is gonna convince anybody that your message board experience is qualitatively better than sawyer's much less o' the combined impressions o' the obsidian collective which sawyer is having access to. you sure as hell can't prove some kinda luckman superiority o' board experience impressions. so, the obsidian developers made a choice for strongholds based on hard data or impressions from their years o' experience. in either case, is no reason to see your experience as superior. alternatives? again, you are being irrational. is precisely 'cause you are using irrational arguments and irrational thinking that Gromnir cannot prove to you where is the flaws in your reasoning. you don't have data or game tester observations. you got impressions from board experience. You is the one that needs prove. you gotta somehow prove to the obsidians that your gut-feels based on all your invaluable board experience is better than their feel. so, get cracking on that. is hopeless, but am curious to see you struggle... more. and keep working on strawman. you will reach enlightenment. almost by accident you is gonna need be right eventually. HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* the battle were made a joke 'cause o' slicken, not interrupt. hell, even sensuki backed off that point when we noted the slicken use. and again, we already observed the limited efficacy o' interrupt. we noted how even current, the interrupt can be effective when targeting slow attacks such as ogres and firearms users. use slicken so that you can go solo on an ogre? "now, against a single ogre, we could generate something close to a functional stunlock. similarly, against a gun-haver opponent, we would see genuine results from interrupt. however, against most casters, or any opponent with even average attack rates, interrupt were offering little in the way of results. a high crit character against a foe with a slow attack rate will see results. is... limited." you use video that illustrates our point (s). (edit: the 1:10 mark you find compelling further illustrates our point about using multiple party members on a single foe to generate functional interrupt.) this is a reading comprehension issue we s'pose. HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* is funny. you actual is gonna try and throw gk under the bus? gk simple observed that a particular action by josh were weird 'cause o' what he thought were josh hate o' romance. you, on the other hand, did actual strawman. we need review? "Yet I've yet to see that many oppose strongholds as a concept at it's most fundamental level, and to even compare it to romances is just hyperbole, especially considering that Sawyer hates romances himself. I think that in this case, it's really just another representation of his irrational hangups that have marred the game." you did not attribute your misconception to gk at the time or thereafter. furthermore, you used the mistake as evidence that josh has irrational hangups that marred the game. that is classic strawman. oh, and there were no confusion by gk of sawyer and avellone as the quote we posted from avellone were clear new to him. is possible that he got his preconception from other sources who were confusing sawyer and avellone, but the one avellone quote we can find that is anti-romance were clear not what motivated gk's personal error. regardless, is a cowardly way to escape error. and your error does not diminish the strawman. even if you wanted to go all spineless and blame gk, it would still be your strawman. your second and third points... well point 2 ain't a point, and point 3 is so typical irrational, your feel is not feel 'cause they is based on experience? "No, what we've got is experience on these boards, Gromnir." that was your response to our criticism that you were using feel. obsidian feel is based on... what? less than your impressions gleaned from board experience? they got a multitude o' developers who has worked on games that included strongholds. they have more experience. IF your feel is not feel, than neither is theirs. if experience monitoring boards is not feel, then why would obsidian choose your experience over theirs? on the other hand, if your board impressions is nothing more than feel, then why on earth would your feel be superior to the collective impressions o' cain, sawyer, urquhart and other? any rational attempt to look at this has your arguments being shredded. *shakes head sadly* as we noted earlier, is nothing wrong with using other than rational. the problem is when folks who ain't rational is believing that they is. thanks for illustrating... again. HA! Good Fun!

for years we disliked woody harrelson. for us, most movies were made worse by his contributions. however, with no country for old men, zombieland and true detective, am admitting that seeing harrelson amongst the cast o' a given project is a selling point. weird. that being said, we could not force our self to finish watching the first hunger games movie. elizabeth banks and stanley tucci were kinda fun, and we at least got hints that there were more to banks' character than existed on the surface. as for the rest... even donald sutherland seemed to be phoning in his performance. watch a movie with a fan, or in a theatre with many fans, changes the dynamic. relative hairless apes is, by nature, social creatures. is painful for us to admit, but we can be swept along by the euphoria o' our fellow primates. heck, any sports fan will observe just how different it is to watch a football game (even english football) in a packed stadium as 'posed to watching solitary on tv in one's own home. parents watching movies with enthusiastic children has gotta be similar impactful, no? takes a rough sorta soul not to take pleasure in the happiness o' their own child. watching a netflix copy o' hunger games, we had only our own unvarnished pov with which to account. after not being able to finish hunger games viewing, we read the graveyard book by gaiman, just to convince self that all hope for the future o' YA literature were not lost. HA! Good Fun!

after your most recent strawman faux pas, one wonders why you would continue embarrassing yourself with the strawnir nonsense. am still looking for that josh post where he says he hates romances. in any even, Gromnir didn't make a feel argument. we were rational, which is difficult for you. we noted that even if obsidian had no hard evidence to explain their belief that strongholds is disliked by many, that still leaves 'em with their own feel impressions which appear to conflict with yours. so, as between embracing your feel and the collective feel o' the developers, why would the obsidians choose your feel argument over their own impressions? am not sure how we can make this stuff any more simple for you. HA! Good Fun!

it were a myth that one could create functional stun-lock with the bad math interrupt scheme. again, we tested. so did others. sensuki showed a nice video claiming to show stunlock, but what he actual had were a monk attacking ogres and elder bears who were disabled by pre-release slicken. there were other such examples o' stunlock, but it called for having multiple skeletons or you entire party attacking one foe, which were not a particular viable tactic for most combats. even the bad math o' a 20 perception player going against a 10 resolve foe would result in less than 70% success rate o' interrupt, which 'course required you to at least hit first. as gk notes, the duration o' interrupt is short, often too short to be meaningful against foes with quick casts or attacks. the only time interrupt were actual useful were when the math were broken. it weren't actual overpowered at that time, but folks saw all the successful interrupts in their combat log and believed that it were op. the fact is that even in the short-lived bad math time, interrupt were having limited efficacy in actual combat. stun-lock o' slow attacking opponents were possible IF you had a high perception character or IF you used many characters or summons to attack a single foe. when it were broken were the only time interrupt were useful. HA! Good Fun!

the optimistic op-ed pieces regarding iran were even more plentiful in 2009. how did that work out? in any event, we would love to be as positive as rostere, but history , particular the history o' the region, tells us that simple cave and give iran what they want is dangerous. iran has been working on breakout options for developing nuclear weapons for some time. this deal advances iran's breakout options while reducing capacity o' the west to use meaningful non-military options to alter iran behaviors. heck, the west don't even have viable inspection options to guarantee that oran is holding up their end o' the deal. israel, saudi arabia, egypt and other middle-eastern nations is less friendly to the US now than they has been in decades. numerous middle-eastern nations hate this deal for a variety o' reasons, so it don't appear to be buying stability to a volatile part o' the world and it sure ain't buying back the goodwill we has lost with our allies. nevertheless, in spite o' the fact that secular AND non-secular leaders o' iran were calling for "death to america" as early as this year, at least some folks on the streets o' tehran is more pro US than at any time since, well, 2009. trying to see genuine positives other than naive hope. am actual in favor o' negotiating with iran, and the west had to give'em something. unfortunately, the west simple rolled over and caved to iranian demands. is shocking that iran would be happy 'bout that? didn't even notice. lordy still with the outright lies. Gromnir posted quotes from imf and harvard economists who stated that russia's economy could collapse as early as 6-12 months if nothing changed, and we posted as a rebuttal to your ridiculous assertion that russia's enormous currency reserves (which has been significantly depleted and continues to dwindle) made western sanctions a laughable proposition. sanctions hurt. even kurdin admits the hurt. forthcoming glut o' iranian oil will make the hurt even more noticeable. sheesh missing forest for trees in yet another thread. HA! Good Fun!

btw, the expansion offers an ideal situation for measuring the value o' stronghold improvements, yes? after all, the developers have very limited resources with which to work. so, the hard questions regarding which features and content is most vital becomes glaring. in the expansion, rest bonuses from the stronghold are being improved, significantly. we expect other minor number changes. but the stronghold is what it is. take the stronghold as it is today, and make hard choices regarding what to improve. is exactly the problem obsidian were facing once they ran into implementation issues in the core game, but the expansion makes the tough choices stark and raw, yes? what should the developers sacrifice insofar as new content in the expansion to fix an optional feature that a noteworthy number o' folks seeming dislike altogether? yeah, when/if a sequel is made, we expect that serious changes is gonna occur... which is exact what josh has already said. the back to the drawing board ideas is gonna be much useful at that point. the obsidians has now done candlekeep in a couple nwn games and they had a base/stronghold in kotor2. along with poe, the obsidian folks have a considerable amount o' experience with strongholds, and they is gonna have painful intimate familiarity with unity. but changes to the stronghold now? we want stronghold changes too, but what will we sacrifice, if anything? HA! Good Fun!

yeah, am admitting that when josh changed the math for interrupt in build 480 (?), we could not get an "interrupt build" to work for us. the bb rogue had perception that were better than anything Gromnir could get outta a custom built companion, so we would create situations wherein our bb rogue were one-on-one v. the skaen cultist caster/healers. now admittedly, at the time, the interrupting blows talent were broken and doing nothing, which we complained 'bout. however, with an extreme high perception, we were able to generate, if we were lucky, 40% interrupt rate, thanks mostly to high crit rate. the thing is, the interrupted caster were barely slowed. heal spells have a fast cast time, so the interrupt had an almost imperceptible impact on a caster. now, against a single ogre, we could generate something close to a functional stunlock. similarly, against a gun-haver opponent, we would see genuine results from interrupt. however, against most casters, or any opponent with even average attack rates, interrupt were offering little in the way of results. a high crit character against a foe with a slow attack rate will see results. is... limited. well, that's the problem, yes? why is interrupt disproportional ineffectual compared to the value of increased damage from might or the increased attack rate from dex? that being said, 2.0 changes the equation. assuming we still get interrupt from perception, we will also be getting accuracy enhancement. the extreme limited usefulness o' interrupt cannot/should not be considered in a vacuum. still, the interrupting blows talent needs an adjustment if it is going to offer value. HA! Good Fun!

am agreeing that interrupt is a combat factor that is easily ignored. we do not overmuch worry about buffing concentration to avoid interrupts, and we surely do not build a character around an interrupt concept. we get far more payoff from doing more damage via might or increased rate o' attack from dex than we get from focusing on interrupt to delay enemy attacks. however, intelligence is already a relative strong attribute. am understanding that some folks hate speaking o' balance, but the developers, at the very least, consider it important. therefore, we do not see adding an additional quality to intelligence as being in-line with design philosophies o' poe. switch concentration to con and add a second interrupt value to resolve? dunno. regardless, we do admit that interrupt is a seeming wasted quality. HA! Good Fun!

am not understanding. optional nature o' the stronghold is not an excuse for it being bad. the fact that it is optional is the reason why adding additional quests to the stronghold is a poor idea from obsidian pov. optional nature is also the reason why once it were determined that stronghold implementation were not working as envisioned, there were a finite pool o' additional resources from which to draw from to improve the stronghold. while a stronghold were a stretch goal, its implementation were problematic. how much resource allocation could be reasonable for an optional feature that some folks disliked and avoided? so again, pull out the red marker and cut. show developers what you would cut from existing poe to make the stronghold better. as for the companions, none is needed to complete the game, and in point o' fact, we know that some rather intriguing content for durance and grieving mother were cut. heck, for all we know, content were cut from durance and grieving mother so that the stronghold could be improved to its current state. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

The problem with the stronghold, besides the fact it was designed by a blind monkey and look like an abandoned factory on the outskirts of São Paulo, is that it serves no purpose besides bonuses to sleep. As the crafting system is not implemented, you can not use it as in Oblivion, to improve skills, build weapons and equipment. There are no are quests associated with it. The fact that you are the owner of a HUGE amount of land is completely ignored. In fact, the player controls the ONLY ACCESS to the right side of the map. However, nothing seems to happen. There is no living soul on its territory, no peasant, soldiers, roads, security ... nothing. Absolutely nothing. The fact that the player home have been placed next to the stronghold is simple and pure laziness of designers. Probably there was not much money available and someone just suggested putting the house there, since it was also a promise in the kickstarter campaign. And again, like crafting was not implemented, there's no point rebuilding brighthollow heart, lab or forge. There is a thread in TTON forum called "What can be improved from Pillars of Eternity" and there are many sincere and real criticism there. This guy here made some excellent points: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?p=150814#p150814 It would have been much more organic simply delete Caed Nua and put Raedric Hold as the stronghold. Just put the Endless Path under the Raedric Hold and everyone would have been happy. a few o' the suggestions, such as having additional quests linked to the stronghold, were already rejected with reasonable explanations. perhaps you do not agree, but the reasoning were sound enough. other suggestions is, well, to be fair, petty or already addressed. example: we can now sleep anywhere within bounds o' the stronghold. most significant, however, is the resource demands. is zero-sum. so, pull out the old red marker and tell us what you would wanna kill in poe to make these other stronghold suggestions possible. obsidian did not build a great stronghold. bad on them. nevertheless, a laundry list o' alternative features is not all that helpful insofar as fixing. No, what we've got is experience on these boards, Gromnir. What you've got is feel that Sawyer supposedly has sources we don't. Or not. HA! okie dokie. regardless o' what you think obsidian gots, all you have is feel. you got impressions based on the board feedback you has witnessed? great. is just feel. is emotional. is gut-level. so, even if all obsidian had were feel, why should they listen to your gut as 'posed to the combined Feel o' cain and feargus and sawyer and a host o' other obsidians who no doubt had input? wacky stuff. HA! Good Fun! (edit: apparent too much fun)

again, josh has sources we don't. actual player behavior data? at the very least he gots observations o' game testers to be using. you got feel. *sigh* wanna go off on a largely irrelevant tangent, again? be our guest. HA! Good Fun!

...you've degenerated into dissociative identity disorder? Getting genuinely worried for you here. If I knew who you were, I'd probably have called someone. That's not entirely accurate. Some options will not appear if CHA is too low, such as Viconia asking to join your party. Others include Shar-Teel only joining a male PC, getting a +1 dagger in Candlekeep with Charisma 18, outwitting the Aboleth in the Underdark with Int 17, and so on and so forth. BG1/2 really isn't the thing to make comparisons to for this, however, as PoE's stat-based dialogue options draw pretty clearly on Planescape: Torment. Given the way stats grew in PS:T, you can't exactly say they were a major source of replay value there, either. PS:T's only real narrative-dividing decision is "do you join the Xaositects?" But honestly, even that's pretty flimsy. Linear, story-based games of this type just don't have a lot of replay value, at least not in the traditional, "see all the content," sense. I think the big reason to replay PoE is the same as the big reason to replay PS:T - you want to read the story again. That's fine by me. Replay value is overrated. About PS:T, though, let's be fair, because while the stats grew, the checks also did. PS:T:s real issue in that department was that WIS and INT was so much better and so much better represented in the game that it blew everything else out of the water. And in terms of replay value, the choices was more what you did or how you did it, rather than what happened, and I think that was done extremely well. There's never been a game that's made me feel so utterly terrible and disgusted with myself more than PS:T. First, he never said he was describing monkeys. Second, the statement was that very few primates can swim. This is still true, even if some individual primates have been taught by other primates. I wonder if an infant chimpanzee or orangutang will swim if you dump it in the water. Honest question. My bet is no, though. *eye-roll* 1) he quoted our "monkey cage" post in his response. 2) am thinking gk is adult enough to get that we were joking with him, just as he were with us. how old do you need to get on this ride anyways? HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* funny. however, we will observe that you are describing apes and not monkeys. furthermore, http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-chimpanzees-orangutans-swim-dive-01319.html HA! Good Fun!

In fairness to Luckmann, that was me. I did that. I may have been remembering incorrectly, or just conflating TVTropes hearsay with reality. Not sure. your error doesn't let luck off the hook although the error both o' you perpetuated is common. am not certain how it got started, but it is not unusual for folks here and at codex and even on the older bio boards to accuse josh o' hating romances. is the internet being the internet? josh says he doesn't like how other games do romance and that becomes josh hates romance. our personal recollection is that josh pov were similar to Gromnir (a rarity) in this instance in that we both like romance, which is precisely why we is disappointed with typical crpg implementation. many obsidian developers has noted that romance takes more effort than folks appear to believe, and that writing crpg is a fair bit different than writing short stories and novels. to us, bioware-style crpg romances invariably feel rushed and immature as they is necessarily tangential and limited. complete a full romance story arc in a half-dozen or so dialogue encounters? even so, while you can find quotes from Gromnir that we hate crpg romance, you will be hard-pressed to find any such from josh, and even if you did, that would still not be same as saying, "Sawyer hates romances himself." http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65107-no-romances-confirmed/page-6?do=findComment&comment=1417049 is hard to see the hate. regardless, would be cowardly to blame on you. HA! Good Fun!

yeah, based on obsidian posts on the subject, we suspect that their plans for the stronghold were a bit more grandiose. the claim that implementation issues limited the stronghold development suggests to us that the obsidians blundered and then had to make hard choices as to how to actual implement the stronghold. regardless, we keep coming back to the zero-sum problem. most features can be improved if more resources is invested to make them better. however, this were an Optional feature and it is reasonable and rational to decide that optional features gets a different level o' consideration when resource allocation is being considered-- they get less. given the relative reduced priority o' an optional feature that many folks dislike, which resources shoulda' been stripped from other existing poe features/quests to improve the stronghold, and how? could the stronghold have been made more essential by making it a greater quest loci? sure, but again, it is optional and frequent disliked, so having additional quests tied to the stronghold is a questionable proposition. no doubt the developers were considering any number o' ways to improve the stronghold, and am betting that if feedback produced a suggestion that required little to no additional resource allocation to implement, the developers would be ecstatic to hear it. *shrug* we expected more from the stronghold. is all on obsidian that the stronghold were forgettable. however, am also recognizing that many/most suggestions for improvement o' the stronghold were not practical, reasonable or genuine helpful. HA! Good Fun!

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65107-no-romances-confirmed/?p=1417049 further clarification. HA! Good Fun!

But shouldn't there be a degree of parity? Sure, the people that really hate strongholds, really hate strongholds, and those that hate romances really hate romances, but at the same time, I'm not seeing how the two compare to eachother as issues. Romances are significantly polarizing and was excluded under the rationale that they are very hard to do well, and have a lot of people that dislike them for various reasons (mostly because they are hard to do well). Strongholds are not nearly as polarizing, and I've yet to be in a discussion where even someone opposing strongholds cannot find some common ground (like Fardragon, even if we don't necessarily agree; I would love to see what he doesn't want, if done well), are in the game (the most important difference), and I've yet to see a significant number of people throwing fits over it. They are also not terribly hard to do at least acceptably well (BGII, DA:O:A). And no matter what, like I said, the most important difference is that there's a Stronghold in PoE, but no Romances, if either is in the game, same as any other part of the game, it's inexcusable to come afterwards and brush off the issues with an existing facet of the game with the argument that some amount of people somewhere, doesn't like that existing facet, to some degree, as a concept. They simply don't compare as issues, and in the event that they did, if either or neither was in the game, they still should be treated as important facets of an overall whole (or be disregarded completely). again, the specific context in which romances were analogized to strongholds by sawyer were extreme limited. "You're downplaying the aversion that people have to strongholds, specifically. If there's a "I hate big dungeons" bloc of significant size, I'm unaware of them. Stronghold aversion seems more comparable to romance aversion." you disagree? fine, but again, your basis is feel and extending the comparison is unwarranted. HA! Good Fun!

is yet another example o' folks other than Gromnir identifying your error(s) and your refusal to recognize which side o' the monkey cage you is standing. HA! Good Fun!

our recollection (edit: confirmed after reviewing the SA posts) is that josh only brought up romance in context o' strongholds to indicate polarization. were a recognition that those folks who dislike strongholds and romances disliked those features to a significant degree. HA! Good Fun! ps am almost hesitant to mention this, but your strawman use were a bit obvious. show us where sawyer has stated that he hates romance. "We decided we couldn't do a good, robust romantic system. They're very sensititve. It's very easy to do romances badly," Sawyer says. "So we decided to take them off the table." -sawyer rational. "I think that in this case, it's really just another representation of his irrational hangups that have marred the game." doesn't seem fair to make such a suggestion, eh? perhaps you confused sawyer with avellone "Not a big fan of romances. I did four in Alpha Protocol because Chris Parker, our project director, demanded it because he thinks romance apparently is easy, or MAYBE it’s because he wanted to be an **** and give me tons of them to do because I LOVE them so much (although to be honest, I think he felt it was more in keeping with the spy genre to have so many romances, even if I did ask to downscope them). At least I got to do the “hatemance” version of most of them, which makes it a little more palatable. "Also, the only reason the romance bits in Mask of the Betrayer worked was because George Ziets helped me with them since he was able to describe what love is to me and explain how it works (I almost asked for a PowerPoint presentation). It seems like a messy, complicated process, not unlike a waterbirth. Don’t even get me started on the kissing aspects, which is revolting because people EAT with their mouths. Bleh. "So if I were to implement a romance subplot in Eternity - I wouldn’t. I’d examine interpersonal relationships from another angle and I wouldn’t confine it to love and romance. Maybe I’d explore it after a “loving” relationship crashed and burned, and one or both was killed in the aftermath enough for them to see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise. Or maybe I’d explore a veteran’s love affair with his craft of murder and allowing souls to be freed to travel beyond their bleeding shell, or a Cipher’s obsession with plucking the emotions of deep-rooted souls to try and see what makes people attracted to each other beyond their baser instincts and discovers love... specifically, his love of manipulating others. You could build an entire dungeon and quest where he devotes himself to replicating facsimiles of love, reducer a Higher Love to a baser thing and using NPCs he encounters as puppets for his experimentations, turning something supposedly beautiful into something filthy, mechanical, but surrounded by blank-eyed soul-twisted drones echoing all the hollow Disney-like platitudes and fairy tale existence where everyone lives happily ever after." oh and since this could be a learning moment, your fallacious attribution o' irrational romance hate to sawyer were not strawman because he never said such a thing. it became strawman when you then used hate that you cannot actual attribute to josh to then show how such irrational hangups were a detriment to poe development.

nexus is not run by bethesda, yes? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/about/about/? HA! Good Fun! ps keep in mind that Gromnir were serious when he said he knows next to nothing about the modding community. am genuine not knowing how much connection bethesda has with nexus. bethesda is a publisher, and obsidian is not, so there is differences, but am honest ignorant 'bout most such sites save as an end user who has never even considered paying for a fan-made mod.

the voluntary nature o' the donations is not as meaningful as you might believe. particularly as obsidian is a developer and not a publisher, we can see potential issues related to mod-makers soliciting funds on an obsidian board. is less an issue with poe, but even so, solicitation and donation is not mutual exclusive. HA! Good Fun!

is a silly criticism, perhaps, but while we moderate enjoyed the final batman film from nolan, thomas hardy's bane were a bit distracting for us. is not that bane were a bad character or terrible acted, but rather that every time thomas hardy spoke, we heard auric goldfinger. is similar to how we found christian slater's character from heathers channeling o' jack nicholson to be a bit excessive... but at least heathers were meant to be over-the-top. HA! Good Fun!

I think that's a fairly good characterization of the issue. The Stronghold should have been a sequence of quests or even just a cool staging ground for your adventures, rather than a mostly-uninteresting minigame. "Rational" is a problematic word, because it assumes that all reason is some perfect guidepost by which all people can come to identical conclusions. It isn't. Reason is a tool, a set of methods by which you enhance your aims, not an aim unto itself (except insofar as reason is also a passion). Saying "I want x things, and the situation is y, therefore I should do z," is rational, but "I want x things" is just a statement of fact, and has nothing to do with being rational or irrational. You can't reason your way into a correct set of desires, except insofar as secondary desires are reasonably subordinate to primary desires. Furthermore, using reason to enact those desires obviously requires that you have access to and full understanding of things as they stand. Josh is rational? Sure, whatever. But that doesn't mean that what he wants is right or correct, only that with sufficient correct information, he knows how to go about accomplishing what he wants. Of course, that cuts both ways. Just because Josh doesn't want the same thing as someone doesn't mean he's unreasonable, and some folks could do well to remember that. Unfortunately, being the lead dev on a video game in the present day essentially translates to being a public punching bag. While the rest of the team is busy getting work done, part of the lead dev's job is to take the blame for ... everything. Honestly, going by the level of vitriol that emerges sometimes, you'd think Josh was responsible for apartheid or something. So, yeah, people could afford to cut him some slack instead of piling on. Given the legal ambiguities of Kickstarter commitments, that may or may not be technically true. Certainly it was from a PR perspective, though, so that's neither here nor there. we weren't speaking o' the legal necessity so much as practical. obsidian made the stronghold a stretch goal. failing to follow through on providing a substantial game feature that were paid for by the fans would result in, we expect, considerable disappointment and anger. is there disappointment regarding how the stronghold were realized in poe? sure. nevertheless, how likely is it that all those positive reviews obsidian received from professional sources woulda' just ignored obsidian failure to meet the paid-for stronghold stretch goal? how many fan reviews woulda' mentioned? we got no idea o' the numbers, but we would be surprised if professional reviewers had failed to mention the absence o' obsidian fulfillment. you? in any event, we do not believe that being rational is the best way to handle fans. look at luckman as an example, or any o' a dozen or so ardent supporters o' per-kill xp. stronghold is another such example. for chrissakes, luckman is trying to analogize to romances to make his... point. in the past, josh were a bit more colorful when dealing with obdurate fans. youth. am kinda missing those days. truth to tell, Gromnir would purposeful rile josh up a bit 'cause when he got angry or frustrated, he would be more likely to provide genuine interesting information regarding developments... got a peek behind the curtain. and yes, am agreeing that josh syllogisms depend on the validity o' his premise(s). obsidian is hardly perfect. josh says a considerable number o' players dislike strongholds. am not certain where his feedback comes from or how accurate is such info. nevertheless, how does fans rebutt? feel arguments based on their impression o' board feedback? yes? no? obsidian info can be wrong, but am gonna suggest that when it comes to the mechanical workings o' poe and the behavior o' the mythical average gamer, obsidian has access to information that we, the average boardies, do not. hell, look at all the time sensuki spent on the beta... he claimed over 200 hour, yes? now look at josh post from SA as an example. you can follow any o' the sa links above if you wish to see all josh posts in the relevant thread. is a goodly number o' posts at and immediate after release o' poe wherein josh is calmly correcting sensuki's misconceptions and assumptions regarding poe development and mechanics. even so, josh can be wrong or ignorant. when he is ignorant, he typical admits. when he is wrong, he needs be convinced, but as he is rational, he is gonna be comfortable with more than "feel " arguments. rational is hardly perfect. is many esthetic issues that defy rational. furthermore, while attempting to find a balance between the frequent conflicting desires o' the fanbase is reasonable and rational, doing so likely leads to mediocrity. we has suggested in the past that if fans is extreme polarized on an issue, then giving a middle-ground solution results in everybody being moderate displeased. unfortunately, we don't have any kind o' numbers to back that up, yes? we feel that certain features is polarizing, but that is all we got. how we gonna convince josh he is wrong if his viewing o' game tester's actual play tells him different? am not suggesting that rationality is the perfect approach-- far from it. however, we do note that while josh is rational, far too many fans believe that they are rational. this leads to conflicts. HA! Good Fun!