Gromnir

1) "Wow... there are a lot of angry pricks on this forum, that's for sure. Particularly those that think passive aggression and silly insults are a substitute for a constructive discussion." am suspecting you didn't notice the overt hypocrisy. 2) suggestion: if you don't know what passive-aggressive means, don't use it. 3) you may not have agreed with Gromnir observations, but we were being constructive until you abandoned reasoned discourse. *shrug* 4) we disagree. more important, the poe developers disagree... they disagree now and they disagreed months and years ago when constructive debate o' romance mighta' been useful rather than +20 days removed from release. HA! Good Fun!

you disagree that romances short o' a masterpiece should be absent? with whom are you disagreeing? Gromnir made no such suggestion. we has not seen anybody else make such an argument. the observation that it is our opinion that bioware AND obsidian romances is rushed and immature were precisely our point. you used empty "immersion" language as if immersion had some kinda meaning beyond the four-corners of your post. it doesn't. we explained how romances break Gromnir's immersion, precisely 'cause immersion is subjective and personal. *zoom* right over your head. as for Gromnir being royalty... well, we is a US citizen, and our Constitution precludes titles and royalty. 'course we is technical a dual citizen o' a "domestic dependent nation" and the USA, so it is actual a more complicated question than one might s'pose. if it makes you feel better, you are free to refer to Gromnir as "your lordship," though we will not require such obeisance. HA! Good Fun!

1) obsidian never called poe a "spiritual successor" to the ie games... whatever the hell that means. 2) immersion is meaningless w/o explanation am not certain which were the first game blogger or so-called journalist who used the "spiritual successor" nonsense, but we wish that the shambling corpse would do us all a favor and give up the ghost. fill its mouth with salt. chop off its head. stab it through the heart with a wooden stake while a legion o' exorcists recite our fathers and hail marys until their throats blister. whatever... whatever it takes to finally put that unfortunate undead thing to rest is gonna get our support. as for the immersion... well, immersion is extreme personal. for instance. we find all past obsidian or biowarian romances to be rushed and immature. this should not be a surprise as the romances, since bg2, has been relegated to a kinda optional and tangential mini-game status-- the romances do not and cannot fundamental affect the main story. therefore, you got a relative small number o' complete tangential romance encounters to create a romance story arc. is no wonder that to Gromnir all such romances feel rushed and half-baked. to us, immersion (HA!) suffers if we explore the romances. the romances is kept relative meaningless to the critical path story, which inevitably results in a disconnect for Gromnir. how can something so significant be tangential? also, the brevity o' the romance arcs inevitably makes such fodder feel immature as we is expected to embrace the notion that the person we just met, and perhaps fought in a life and death struggle as part o' our intro, has become our mostest significant other 'cause we had six dialogue encounters that included an awkward reveal o' whatever emotional baggage our prospective paramour has been carrying around for the past decades or centuries. such romances is childish and silly to us... and if you insist on using the hated immersion language, then romances invariably break such immersion. is ironic, but as long a romances is optional and tangential, we do not mind their presence in a game because we have the choice to avoid them. being tangential is the insurmountable obstacle we see for such romances, so yeah, we get the conflict. that being said, according to the obsidian developers, romances require considerable effort and if the developers choose to use that effort to enhance the portions o' the game we is actually gonna explore, we call that a win for Gromnir. regardless, more than a well-written crpg romance, we want an end to the spiritual successor language, and appeals to immersion without explanation/illustration. HA! Good Fun!

the raison d'être o' all storytellers is to get folks to care and to feel. engage the audience is their job-- it is their only job. yes, the obstacles for the crpg writer is different than those faced by the novelist or poet, but am gonna needs otherwise disagree with you. if the poe writers can't get us to care or feel deep about their characters, then they has already failed, regardless o' inclusion or exclusion o' romances. HA! Good Fun! I disagree, especially for a dungeon crawl game. The story is there to keep people engaged in killing more stuff, not for cares and feels. I'll go watch My Little Pony if I want that. [seriously, that isn't a dig, if I want warm fuzzies, I go watch MLP.] And given obsidian's track record (of published games), trying to write characters that are even vaguely interesting is a challenge for them, let alone one (or more) worth caring about. PoE will be successful if stabbing fools in the face and taking their stuff is fun, and if the story keeps players engaged enough to keep doing that. Getting people to care about their characters only matters if there is an urgent need for bad fanfics or new wanking material. Either way, I'd be obliged if anyone who wants that keeps it to themselves. no doubt obsidian writers such as chris avellone is overjoyed to hear that their efforts is little more than filler to make combats more palatable and that their evocative storytelling lags behind my little pony. unfortunate for you, we thinks you got things reversed. clearly obsidian/black isle has made considerable efforts to create memorable and compelling characters; am not even gonna bother highlighting characters from the obsidian catalog as there is no point in arguing something so obvious. furthermore, am recalling that depth o' character were mentioned more than once in the poe kickstarter pitch. is possible you backed the wrong game. regardless, we think that you is necessarily gonna be disappointed if you is expecting that the writers o' poe would retroactive "keeps it to themselves" insofar as developing characters worthy of significant emotional response. make audience care and feel is the goal, not an obstacle. HA! Good Fun! ps we see you ain't a backer.... which is good. poe is unlikely to be your cup o' tea, though you may be able to suppress your gag reflex enough find some enjoyment in the combats.

the raison d'être o' all storytellers is to get folks to care and to feel. engage the audience is their job-- it is their only job. yes, the obstacles for the crpg writer is different than those faced by the novelist or poet, but am gonna needs otherwise disagree with you. if the poe writers can't get us to care or feel deep about their characters, then they has already failed, regardless o' inclusion or exclusion o' romances. HA! Good Fun!

congratulations... or condolences? from your post, am not certain which is the more appropriate response. regardless, we hope you enjoy/endure another 19 years of soul-killing compromise and/or implacable resistance. HA! Good Fun!

we loathe bioware romances (give it a sec, we is going someplace with this) and we thinks that the biowarians pandering to the lgbt community to give'em equal treatment with the romances is a ridiculous waste of resources that could be better spent on, well, anything else. even so, we got no animosity for the the lgbt community with one exception: we will never forgive gay men who has attempted to hijack sunday brunch. when did brunch become a meal for gay men? yes, we like show tunes and we is a single man in our 40s, but nothing seems to incorrectly set off the gaydar of every lgbt we know as does a suggestion to go out to brunch. we should need not have to offer an "alternative" explanation for why we like brunch. we do not enjoy sitting around with a bottomless mimosa, gossiping about __________ 's hair or ____________ 's makeup. heck, without input from a gay friend, we can't tell the difference 'tween a suit from dolce & gabanna or the men's wearhouse. even so, we like brunch. you promancers want us to budge on romance in games? fine. give us back our brunch. thus ends the nonsense rant o' the day for Gromnir. HA! Good Fun!

Um they said there would be no romances in 2012. If you have been following this game why is this just becoming an issue now, three years later? We have already had this discussion many many time. But I am keeping an open mind about it. I have no idea what 'no romances' really means and how exactly it will work. And BG had no romance-able NPCs. Like I have said to everybody who has decided no romances means everything is going to be terrible, wait a bit and see what people say about it and give it a chance. And having just a few hetero choices would be a huge finger to the LGBT community and it would be far better to just have none rather than have Obsidian be known as the homophobic developer. ... is too many ways we can make tasteless jokes about the LGBT community and whether or not they would be offended or appreciative of a "huge finger." am gonna back away... slowly. HA! Good Fun! ps 'cause somebody made reference to chrisA notions regarding romance options, we will include one o' the more detailed responses we has seen him give recently on the subject in a print interview. question: You've stated in the past that you don't like romances in games—at least to the extent that they've been done in games thus far. Were you to implement a romance subplot in Project Eternity, what would it involve? response: 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.

perhaps you are trying to play poe with your left-brain? try covering your right eye while playing poe. HA! Good Fun!

for folks with only a right-brain, we suspect it is an endorsement. visceral and brief is positives for your friend, yes? HA! Good Fun!

magic is problematic if you have spell progression similar to the ie games. by the end of poe, our spell casters will have access to up-to six levels o' spells. each spell caster class will have access to many spells. many is always difficult from a balance pov. it is likely that most spells our druid or mage or cipher have access to will be useful, but there is gonna be some spells that is over-powered and more than a few spells that is situationally over-kill. you want dozens or hundreds o' spells to choose from? well then, you is gonna make casters powerful, 'cause the more complex you make a system, the more opportunities you create for potential breakage. not only is the individual spells potential broken, but their synergy with other spells and abilities from other classes creates opportunities for exploitation. our rogue will focus on a single weapon and will have a limited number o' abilities and talents that make us better with that weapon. compare the total number o' abilities a rogue will have access to by level 11 or 12 compared to the spell catalog o' a similar level'd druid or wizard. HA! Good Fun!

now you know how Gromnir feels when confronted by your "simple questions" for which you want an affirmative (or negative) response. was renoir better than pollock, yes or no? ... wait, what? HA! Good Fun!

perhaps some folks don't see the question as simple. perhaps there is aspects o' dragon age: origins combat that folks found appealing, but others they disliked... greatly. the question is framed wrong if you genuine want a simple answer from Gromnir. "1 Is PoE combat better than Dragon Age Origins combat?" is no simple answer for Gromnir. change "1 Do you like PoE combat more than Dragon Age: Origins combat?" now that is a simple question and we can give a simple (meaningless) answer too. do you like chocolate ice cream more than vanilla ice cream? do you care if leferd or Gromnir prefers chocolate or vanilla? why? *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

poe combat on difficulty o' hard or more is hobbesian: "Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." HA! Good Fun! ps is a big mistake to imply that bg1 and bg2 combat were the same.

regarding conan, we suggest that d&d 3.5 or even pathfinder is a far better game system for achieving a plausible conan than poe. with d20 multiclassing and far more robust skill and feats (talents) systems, we can get a d&d or pathfinder character that looks much more like our idealized conan than anything we can current do in poe. we personal avoid d&d/pathfinder prestige classes, but such stuff does allow further customization to be achieving a conan-like character. 'course, we expect the poe mechanics to have greater depth in subsequent iterations, so perhaps poe is able to eventual match the kinda flexibility o' pathfinder or d&d 3.5, but for the moment... HA! Good Fun! ps the eponymous conan rpg from mongoose is also d20 and has/had a few decent conan builds... though we believe they lost their license to conan at some point. regardless, at its heart, mongoose were using a d20 rules system.

yeah, people keep getting hung-up on names-- we observed this problem in another thread. we watched josh do one o' his gameplays o' the beta, and more than once he observed that for his party build he really shoulda' given his stealthy character, his scout character, a higher mechanics skill. is a couple times we saw him disarm traps via the old non political correct pnp PMD method. so, we is still likely gonna want a stealthy character who can disarm traps-- whether we make such a party member with a rogue or a cipher is hardly noteworthy. *shrug* in iwd2 we frequent had no rogue or a character with a single level o' rogue. there is also any number o' crpgs that is complete classless and have no rogue character. stun mentioned a few crpgs that also not rely on rogue or thiefy inclusion for sucess. for folks new to crpgs, wasteland 2 is an example o' a classless system with no rogue class. so, regarding the genesis poster's observation, poe is not representing any kinda sea-change for crpgs ... and as we noted in another thread, the developers o' poe, inexplicably, still has inherent skill bonuses tied to classes. wth? HA! Good Fun!

... uh, sure. is not as if folks who played bg literal spent hours re-rolling to get UBER attribute scores or other such nonsense. and there were many folks who played diviner mages... you know, for role-play reasons. how many folks played a dual-class bg character? dual-class were kinda the ultimate min-max nonsense possible in d&d... other than maybe old ad&d bard. etc. HA! Good Fun!

am recognizing that poe is not a game on rails, but if the beta is any indication, currently one must needs max a skill with an inherent bonus from either class and/or background to have a chance at successful overcoming the more/most difficult skill checks one encounters in areas where the combat challenges is level appropriate. for example, the bb rogue were needing to either max stealth OR mechanics to reasonable overcome the chosen check on all beta release maps. we could have our bb rogue choose to be stealthy or good at picking locks and disarming traps, but there were no perfect calculus that allowed us to be successful at both skills. we do understand that there will be skill boosting items in the game, so perhaps such gear will make a 2-skill character viable, but at the moment, Gromnir does feel at least partial limited by our class selection in regards to determining our skill choices. by providing numerous classes, the developers is necessarily limiting the combat role o' each class. fine. we get that offering us unique classes require some definition o' role that limits player customization. we don't expect that our priest should be able to tank as good as a fighter, or that the fighter should deal damage on par with a rogue. each class gots a combat role and the more unique (appealing?) the developers make each class, the more they must needs define the role. more definition = less customization. ... defined combat role need not be a limit on skills. one aspect that coulda'/shoulda' been left more open to player choice and customization is our limited ability to choose backgrounds and skills. why limit customization more than absolute necessary? limit combat roles makes perfect sense when creating a multitude o' unique classes, but we see no rationale for imposing a similar limit on skill choice. developers shoulda' removed skill bonus from classes and made backgrounds more significant cause that woulda' increased player customization o' their character... which is a good thing in a crpg, no? HA! Good Fun! ps we recognize that the options to improve this aspect o' the game will be limited as the background choices have impact on dialogues, and those dialogues will not be altered at this late date to accommodate major changes. am suspecting we is stuck with the backgrounds we has already seen and the only changes possible is adjusting the bonuses those backgrounds provide. even so, regardless o' the 11th hour nature o' this issue, we would prefer if the class inherent skill bonuses were reduced to 0 and the backgrounds were retooled to be more diverse and significant.

our preference would be to complete void the skill bonuses for class choice and to expand the importance and breadth o' background selections. HA! Good Fun!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/02/27/389589676/leonard-nimoys-advice-to-a-biracial-girl-in-1968 for those of you looking to order a "monkee sweat shift" for a mere $5... postage-paid. oh, and there is some kinda letter from mr. nimoy to a troubled girl. HA! Good Fun!

disagree. the problem for some folks is not so much that there is no paladin concept, but rather that the poe paladin concept is too different from the d&d/ie game paladin concept. for folks who play pathfinder, the poe paladin has more in common with the pathfinder cavalier than it does with keldorn from bg2. the pathfinder cavalier has a clear concept: a martial character whose "true power comes from the conviction of his ideals." the cavalier gets extra teamwork feats and can buff his party members who is within range o' his banner. the pathfinder cavalier joins an order and the order chosen may have less than honorable ideals. etc. pathfinder cavalier is having a clear concept, and it kinda sounds familiar, no? unfortunately, the paladin label appears to be the insurmountable obstacle for folks rather than the class concept. for example, because o' the paladin name, folks demanded a silly 'smite' ability to make the poe play more like a d&d paladin. so, developers tacked on a smite ability to poe paladin in spite o' the fact that such a thing is a bit incongruous. instead o' embracing the poe paladin concept, some folks is trying to makes the poe paladin play more like a d&d paladin. is funny and sad, but many o' the complaints we has seen for poe paladins, rogues, fighters and barbarians would disappear if those classes did not share a name with a d&d class. HA! Good Fun!

one can only hope that this is one of those goldilocks scenarios, yes? at first, the animal companions were too tough, particularly the bear. 'course then the animal companions became not only too weak, but they transmitted their weakness to the ranger. perhaps with the release, the developers will make it so that rangers and animal companions is "just right." HA! Good Fun!

speaking of live bands, we got to see when bruce hornsby and bela fleck were touring together... that is victor wooten on bass. is rare you get to see so many virtuoso musicians on stage at one time in small venue settings... other than in blues (and jazz *sigh*) bars in new orleans and chicago. HA! Good Fun!

the MTV age were... peculiar. we suspect that folks who listened to the hooters in college bars in philly had a hard time recognizing what they saw in videos. peter, paul and mary does background vocals on the linked song. am not a huge hooters fan, but we saw 'em (a couple times) and we were impressed with 'em as a live band after largely having discounted them based on mtv videos and radio play. HA! Good Fun!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/24/most-popular-store-state_n_6736916.html?cps=gravity_2377_-8184544915665230297 am not certain what to make o' the aforementioned article. somehow we cannot help but feel a little sympathy/pity for nevada, but mostly we wonder why anybody would bother to do the research necessary to write the article we linked... then, of course, we wondered why we read the article and bothered to link it. while banal and surreal strike us as antagonistic concepts, somehow we feel as if both apply in the present context. ... http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/02/26/nearly-frozen-waves-captured-on-camera-by-nantucket-photographer/ woulda' liked to have seen video with decent sound. HA! Good Fun!