Gromnir

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html is a good read. *shrug* in any event, cursed by god is little different than chosen. is just a different kinda special. regardless, every crpg made since internet has been 'round has seen some number o' people reject the notion o' special protagonist. heck, various developers (including obsidian) has claimed to makes non-special protagonists. am doubting you ever get what you want. there is industry-wide recognized expectations of the Average Gamer, and that includes wish fulfillment. oh, and we as gonna just complete ignore anything you said once you started talking alignment... 'cause alignment is stoopid. HA! Good Fun!

Disagree. If all paths result in the same reward, then the best path becomes the fastest path. really? fastest is best? ... clearly we has been playing these games all wrong. HA! Good Fun!

is some likely unnecessary overlap with barbarians... 'less you add stoopid stuff like spells and pets. first rangers were American colonials who were combining english and native american styles o' warfare. now, keeps in mind that Gromnir is understandably resistant to using the "barbarian" term for indians (our cousins tell us that "indian" is pc again,) but it is pretty much spot-on as far as general gaming labels is concerned. so, rangers = folks who use barbarian warfare skills. hmmm. ideally we would have rangers resemble hawkeye, uncas and chingachgook more than drizz'le, but how does one distinguish from barbarian class? give guns? am thinking guns is too small a difference in and of themselves. ... is just one reason we loathe class bloat. HA! Good Fun!

am not sure what a fraction is in the present context, but it sounds like something we would enjoy. got our vote for more influential fractions in pe. am calling dibs on 10/6... big lewis carroll fan. HA! Good Fun!

the 3.0 ranger were a steamy pile, but monte cook variant, 3.5, and pathfinder versions were all quite satisfactory. in point o' fact, we were most likely to be playing a ranger with some rogue levels thrown into the mix... when we weren't playing clerics. got a particular fondness for priest characters, but a butt-kicking combatant with ridiculous skill points = win. HA! Good Fun!

funny more than cool. http://www.spike.com/video-clips/gytf2i/land-shark HA! Good Fun!

btw, you can try this for fun if you is ridiculous bored. takes a 3rd level bg1 fighter with all 8 stats and put him in all best gear and give best items. now create an 8th level bg1 fighter (max level with totsc installed) with statistically standard rolls and all mundane gear. unless you is purposefully trying to get the level 3 fighter killed, he will win every single time in a mano y mano battle. 'course, these kinda things not happen in ie games, which is why creating such scenarios is pointless. that being said, gear is overwhelmingly determinate in the ie games. do not use ie games as a goal. HA! Good Fun!

A 1st level character with all that gear will still get his ass kicked by a higher level character without that kind of gear, though. an eventuality that would be unlikely to occur organically in any ie game, so is hardly worthy of notice. the thing is, your relative efficacy in the ie games had far more to do with gear than abilities. once 3.0 were released, things changed for d&d games... a bit. character builds actually became meaningful with the release of 3.0 version of d&d, but gear were still having overwhelming impact. regardless, ie games is Not what we is wanting to use as some kinda developer goal for gear impact. "So your counter example is a character with uniform stats of 8, with one that managed to get every best piece of gear in the game? And by the way, that equipment's true functionality is heavily affected by character specific stats like THAC0, # of attacks, hp's, saving throws, etc that are heavily character derived." *chuckle* not need the best loot in game... which, btw, virtual everybody ended up with anyway. point is that the lowly halfling with craptacular stats is gonna be pretty much as effective as the heroic builds... 'cause in the ie games, your base stats didn't really matter. it were gear that mattered. HA! Good Fun!

... ie games did a good job? take a halfling with all stats being 8. in bg2, give him red dragon armour,helm of constitution, hammer o' t-bolts... whatever else. see, by mid levels, starting stats in ad&d and d&d becomes almost negligible... character actual abilities not matter. is all 'bout gear. so, while we agree with initial premise that the clothes should not make the man, the ie games were hardly the example we would be wanting to use. HA! Good Fun!

werewolves and vampires is not our favorite monsters... even before anne rice ruined vampires. god or God curses some schmuck by turning him into a monster that then runs amok midst said god's faithful? wth? HA! Good Fun!

The way I see it, that is only valid if one looks at a walkthrough or is playing the game for the nth time. There should be no external indicator that says "This options give more rewards!" for every choice in the game. The point is you don't know what choice is more rewarding, just like the character you're roleplaying doesn't. You can use logic to try and figure it out, but you usually won't have absolute certainty without external information. If all paths give the same reward, doesn't that make it even harder to roleplay? Should a mage casting invisibility on the party, then walking past all of the enemies, grant as much objective reward in terms of skill to the party compared to if the whole party employs strategies together and fights their way through? Edit for clarification; this wasn't rhetoric, I don't know the answers. should different styles of play grant same experience rewards? and that ain't rhetorical? ... answer: yes. doesn't take much power o' observation for the average gamer to be recognizing that killing stuff in Game X gets you more exp than does sneaking and opening locks. likewise, a gamer that is seeing that he don't get any benefit from killing every goblin and snark he comes across in Game Y will begin to avoid such ridiculous behaviour in favor of saving ammo and healing potions. knowing that there ain't a best build means people actually play what seems kewl rather than what seems most efficacious. different people will have many different notions o' kewl 'cause that is subjective. most powerful build is largely objective... only a handful o' most powerful builds. furthermore. gamers will attempt to game the game... they will look for an advantage. is natural. point of a game is to win, right? 'course, these games is designed to be beatable. impulse to try and win is unnecessary and often leads to counter-intuitive frustration. successful building a world-beater character means game is easier than it otherwise would be, and a game that is too easy is boring. HA! Good Fun!

am kinda sad that josh hasn't responded direct-- he has in the past. in point o' fact, josh has had some scathing replies to folks arguing for action based xp awards (e.g. killing an orc or unlocking a chest) as opposed to quest-based xp awards. maybe he is getting more diplomatic as he ages. regardless, after 20+ pages o' debate we has yet to see an alternative to quest xp that is 1) as simple/straightforward to implement and 2) provides equally balanced xp rewards regardless of gameplay style. some o' you not care 'bout balance, but obsidian has made it clear in the quoted material included at the start of this thread that that they does care. so, come up with a more elegant xp model that results in equal balance. HA! Good Fun!

after ps:t, the black isle folks were always quick to reassure potential customers that game X wouldn't have as much dialogue as ps:t. much dialogue not necessarily = better game. black isle developers learned their lesson. heck, even Shakespeare didn't brutalize his audience with long dialogue blocks strung one after the other-- soliloquies were rare. but we were talking 'bout reactivity and not... prolixity. HA! Good Fun!

dear lord, anything but that. HA! Good Fun!

... nope, we ain't going to do it. HA! Good Fun!

Well, that was one type of elf which is usually called a gnome or halfling nowadays. But there were different types as well. The Tolkien elves took more inspriration from the Ljósálfar, the light elves from Norse mythology, or the Tuatha De Danann of celtic mythology. I definitely prefer this type. We already have gnomes (or Orlans?!). No need for gnomes V2. being a "fundamentally religious and Catholic work," those elves from tolkien's lotr take as much inspiration from angels as from norse light-elves. that being said, folklore elves, previous to tolkien, does have pretty broad range o' types... some malevolent and others benign. regardless, they all belong in shoe-boxes with buttons for eyes. HA! Good Fun!

elves should be of a size that they could fit in a shoe box... doll-sized. it will be our personal goal to put every elf we meet into an appropriate shoe-box... stuff them faeries with sawdust and sew buttons over their eye-sockets. HA! Good Fun!

2 most common complaints we ever seen on message boards: 1) game were too easy, and 2) game were too difficult. sadly, developers needs be concerned with overly easy powergame. why? developers lose when a significant % o' purchasers complain that a game were too easy. doesn't matter that reason for ease were nincompoop's powergame impulse. should it matter if player were at fault for making game too easy? sure, but that won't change fact that the player walks away from the game dissatisfied if they breeze through game. insane, no? is in developer's best interest to be paternalistic regarding powergame. HA! Good Fun!

couple points: 1) ps:t were the first infinity game black isle developed in-house, and the optimal powergame build were not combat-focused makes a character with big wisdom were the clear Win in ps:t... which were probable a mistake. folks who made a fighter with big strength missed out on much of the game content. is a shame. 2) quest xp, in theory, does not shift paradigm, but makes it irrelevant if you only get xp for completion o' quests, and developer not give an xp advantage to a particular style o' play, then powergame becomes somewhat irrelevant. is no Best build if is no superior reward for play style. 'course, with a crpg that does so much behind-the-screen and in-your-face number crunching, there will always be ways to finesse the system and get better results with a particular build. also, there will be builds that is more powerful in the sense that they makes successful completion o' encounters easier for player. nevertheless, quest xp should/would eliminate the major motivation for powergaming. HA! Good Fun!

is not a single quest in the classic sense, but fully exploring ravel puzzlewell encounters in ps:t were the bestest quest we can recall. whatever quest we might deem our second-place choice would not be meters or miles distant, but parsecs removed. yeah, meeting ravel and subsequent dialogues were a quest as you needed to get blood from her daughter and jump through various hoops to bring about encounter with ravel, but the meeting with ravel not encompass the full extent o' your discovery o' ravel. were more than a score o' seemingly unrelated events in game that built ravel direct or indirect. of particular note were the ei-vene, mebbeth and marta encounters... and meeting mebbeth for a final time following plane hoping were our single favorite crpg encounter... evar. chrisA developed ravel with care and patience, taking the entirety o' the game to fully explore. player were not forced to unravel the puzzle. player could ignore or skip npc dialogues or sensory stones and miss much of ravel. the fact that Gromnir needed to actively look for ravel material, and were never sure if we got it all, made quest that much more fulfilling. ravel were a unique crpg character. have never seen a game character developed as was ravel. attempting to fully realize were our favorite quest. HA! Good Fun!

... nihilism is misunderstood and misrepresented... particularly by those who supposedly embrace. nietzsche would be saddened. btw, bleak cabal is the planescape faction that embraces nihilism. HA! Good Fun!

But the Olympus Pantheon was so much fun! fun, but not for a game. we gots a particular curiosity 'bout lakota mythology and folklore. we likes pose edda. we has read ovid and homer with fondness. we thinks the silmarillion sucks, but the genuine world mythologies almost invariably creates in us a sense o' wonder. the thing is, homer never gave priests o' apollo a healing or divination bonus while allowing followers o' athena to get a special disarm opportunity when using spear and shield... or somesuch. games is different. HA! Good Fun!

... numerous meddlesome gods is a horrible idea. first of all, meddlesome gods who grant powhaz ruins Faith as a meaningful theme or element. also, a plethora o' gods just compounds our annoyance, particularly if deity choice for priests and/or paladins has gameplay impact. suddenly gots a legion o' folks worshiping Hilrad, the god of squirrels stuck down by speeding wagons, 'cause Hilrad's granted powers is most efficacious. meddlesome gods is an unfortunate addition to game, but as such gods will be included, we would likes if choice o' deity had negligible advantages. *sigh* of course, we recognize that people want groovy abilities to attach to their deity choices, so at the very least, keep the deity choices few as to be able to better balance. did we mention that numerous meddlesome gods is a horrible idea? HA! Good Fun!

am actually feeling some sympathy for chrisA 'cause playing arcanum "sounds pretty boring." tim cain is at obsidian, so am doubting we would get unvarnished reactions from chrisA regarding arcanum, but am suspecting that watching chrisA suffer would be marginally more entertaining than playing. HA! Good Fun!

In other words your point is....what exactly? That it's ok to chop the plot and leave large gaps in logic and that it doesn't need to be reasonable as long as they use words that people are familiar with because they evoke emotion? Sounds kind of like what BioWare did(specifically with Mass Effect 3 more than other games).....yeah, let's just go for the emotional responses, we don't need dialogue and a cohesive plot so let's just chop the ending...yeah, that sounds like a good idea. That always works out so well..... wow. beat on that strawman a bit more if it makes you feel better... makes you look a bit silly though... more silly than you star wars argument were. use of "soul" and emotionally heavy language necessarily leads to plot holes and unreasonableness? HA! wanna try again? HA! Good Fun!