Amentep

My confusion in this situation stems more from the fact that if we go with this definition, the entire gaming industry is built on pandering. So why exactly is it a bad thing now? Traditionally, pander has a negative context of providing gratification to base and/or undesirable desires. Porn panders to base sexual instinct, gossip columns pander to the need to spread malicious rumors, "if it bleed, it leads" journalism panders to a desire to see blood and guts, etc.

Yeah just read that. RIP.

Talking with your fellow posters about things that are "literally irrelevant" to you is relevant? So the takeaway is that you like talking about talking. Cue Inception/Xzibit memes. Sorry, I don't buy that the reason for you quoting me is simply that "you're reading the thread". Do you post nothings in all the threads you read? And, since you are a mod, you probably read a lot... What was the point you were trying to make, again? That you don't understand or care about some things other people talk about? And therefore... no one else should care either? Okay chief. But that's not quite how this whole internet thing works. To be honest, most of my posts are in WoT, so probably the vast majority of my posts could be considered nothings. And to be fair, I also have went years reading without posting anything. It was a slow 5-6 years. Anyhow, to summarize as I see it, you posted your opinion that Bio's apology was pandering, I posted mine that Bio's apology was irrelevant to me and that I didn't understand why it would be to anyone else and somehow or another you think my posting that opinion is some sort of claim that you shouldn't be able to hold your opinion. Which it isn't. If I'd thought you shouldn't hold that opinion I'd have written something like "I don't care about Bioware's apology and no one should". Which I didn't. So therefore I've made no value judgement on your opinion, nor have I suggested you should not have any opinion you wish to take. I just stated I don't understand it. Which is vastly different conceptually. I don't understand your opinion. I don't understand the use of 'pandering" unless you see the LGBTQ as having immoral or distasteful desires, needs or habits. Maybe you do. I do not. Perhaps that's the piece I'm missing. Does it matter? No again I make no value judgement on your opinion. I am trying to understand it. Trying to understand why a company apologizing to a group that you and I (presumably) are not members should matter to us. Its not going to change the game substantially; if you don't like that they included a LGBTQ character the apology and the change isn't going to remove that. So what does it matter? “For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.” ― Stephen Hawking

I'm playing ME:A and PoE right now. I should be offended at myself, obviously.

There's no such descriptor tho, there's just an abstract 'Constitution'. This whole line of argumentation is made fairly fruitless by the inclusion of such attributes as 'Intelligence', 'Charisma' or 'Resolve' - in other words, physical and mental attributes get mixed together and combined without much coherence to it anyway, might as well clear up the confusion to some extent and give them clear gameplay effects. By "descriptor" I mean the in-game text that explains the attribute. Had it said "enduring and coping with pain" I'd agree that the desciptors used to describe the attribute bridged mental and physical attributes. Since PoE was "inspired" by the BG/IWD D&D games, I think partially the issue stems from expectations. D&D classifies STR-DEX-CON and physical attributes and INT-WIS-CHA as mental ones. Part of the disconnect I feel is that CON and DEX still heavily imply physical qualities and INT-PER-RES imply mental ones. This throws MIGHT into its own category since its in-game description does state it covers both physical and non-physical things.

Uh-huh. Literally irrelevant, and yet somehow you couldn't resist the urge to interject. Talk about mystifying. Bioware apologizing is irrelevant to me. That people are posting on a thread that posting an apology is somehow pandering isn't irrelevant to me because I'm reading this thread. That I post isn't a sign that the apology is somehow relevant to me, its that this thread and talking with my fellow posters is. I agree. Most NPCs in RPGs info dump far too easily. That they do is irrelevant to me. If someone doesn't like it - all or in part - and the developer decides to change the dialogue odds are it'll continue to be irrelevant to me.

You could ask Hainly why she joined the initiative and she basically told you she wanted a fresh start as Hainly and to stop being Stephan. Then she said her name is made up from the first letters of her favorite cities. .........And that's bad because...? As I understand it, in the rush to make sure it was understood the character was trans, the dialogue has Hainly revealing things about themselves that would be atypical for a first time meeting a person discussion and by referencing her previous name in a way that was inauthentic. So the change will be to - again as I understand it - make the dialogue more natural and more authentic.

I don't see why I should care whether they apologize to one group, all groups or no groups. It is literally so irrelevant to my life as to be positively mystifying to me that anyone actually cares about it.

Were there people hurt by waxy faces, derpy eyes and 'melting off a couch' animations they should also apologize to? I remember talking with Hainly, I remember the dialogue and it didn't phase me. And you know what, now that they're changing it, when I see the dialogue again...it still won't phase me. If a simple change like this makes some group of fans happy, why would I care? It's not like I'm playing MASS EFFECT: HAINLY ABRAMS. Sometimes I'm positively mystified by the stuff that works gamers up.

Health and Endurance. Physically taxing activities. These are physical qualities. I'd argue that "enduring pain" is a physical quality as well; IMO the correct way to address it as a mental descriptor would be 'coping with pain'.

Constitution is a physical attribute? Per the in-game description yes - Constitution is a combination of the character's overall health and endurance. Although it is not used much in interactions, it is sometimes checked to withstand pain or endure a physically taxing ordeal. In combat, it affects maximum Health and Endurance and contributes to the Fortitude defense. Health and Endurance. Physically taxing. Might - Might represents a character's physical and spiritual strength, brute force as well as their ability to channel powerful magic. During interactions, it can be useful for intimidating displays and acts of brute force. In combat, it contributes to both Damage and Healing as well as the Fortitude defense. Might is both physical and spiritual, but there's no way to divide the two - if you are spiritually mighty you also have all the benefits of the physically mighty. Like you, I'm not bothered by the abstractions but the complaint/concern has been there since the stats were announced.

I took it to mean that if you see in D&D someone has an 18 STR is stronger than someone who has a 10 STR and that carries through to higher carry weight, greater damage, ability to use weapons that rely on STR attribute like a compound bow. The actual numerical values and percentages are never obvious (if I asked what benefit is there to a 17 con vs a 16 con in PoE, could you tell me without looking it up? I couldn't beyond "17 con will have more Fortitude and Endurance") Might being an abstracted quality can create confusion since it means a damage increase to physical, ranged, magical, mental and divine attacks, which seems to be pretty straightforward, Might isn't talking about a physical quality but 'soul power'... ...except then you have Dexterity and Constitution which clearly are physical attributes so the natural question becomes how strong is my 18 MIGHT wizard? And while it doesn't bother me much, I can understand where people find a disconnect with might (and it was there from the early days of PoE1 development).

I think its also fair to point out that PoE doesn't use the idea of physical strength like the BG games do - ie there's no weight limit, only an item number limit and anything goes in the deep stash. I know it was mentioned when PoE was in development, but "might" could possibly have been a poor descriptor, as it represented more of a general potency than it did physical power. Actually I'd argue the critical path doesn't avoid it, its just that there are usually multiple obstacles with multiple solutions that create an illusion that the critical path is not a typical quest. But it is, just odds are it'll be the most complex and multi-staged one. I think collection and combat quests are the most typical simply because they play towards two systems usually present in RPGs - some kind of inventory/equipment system and some kind of combat system. As the player will naturally interface with both throughout the course of the game. the natural inclination is to favor these systems in quest design either through focusing on one (kill the raiders, find the loyhargil) or some combo of both (like collecting herbs to make potions to increase potency in combat).

Well, the lore was what I was more referring to. I think in the case of race though, they gave everyone a deadline to enter by, but I think it'd have been hard to go to backers and say - "well godlikes are supposed to be rare, and if we allow you to use godlike as your race we'll go over 5% NPC backers being godlike...so you need to pick another race". Have to concur. It would have been nice to see the explanation in game, however, sometimes from an RP perspective things that are "taken for granted" shouldn't be lore dumped on you. That kind of info had no real impact on the game itself, so blatantly in your face explaining it isn't really "required". Let the player make some cognitive leaps on their own, it gets them more invested. I don't think a lore dump would have been necessary. Something like Ninjamestari's suggested dialogue line could have been enough. Although perhaps there could have also been more that could have been done without being a lore dump. A group that is resentful of godlikes because they're above the tragedy and because they're coming in and taking jobs. Some charlatan godlikes trying to work a con on some religious types. Some death godlikes who can't find work and have taken to frighting people out of their cash. Any of those kinds of things could have built on both the godlikes role in society and also why there were so many in the area without necessarily needing to lore dump things.

Your right. Not sure where I got 2013 from.

Wasn't there a pretty big gap between Morrowind and Oblivion? Anyways, ESO is still going strong and churning out new content, so clearly they are still invested in the property. Oblivion and Skryim had a 7 year gap (2006 to 2013); Skyrim and ES6 if it comes out in 2019 with have a 6 year gap. Daggerfall and Morrowind (1996 to 2002) also had a 6 year gap. Seems to me Daggerfall (2 years from Arena) and Oblivion (4 years from Morrowind) are the exceptions in the series. (Battlespire and Redguard I'm not counting as part of the main line).

Please discuss and debate each others arguments and not each other.

Sounds like you should've been on the dev team ^^ Thanks for the compliment, but I'd probably have overall made things worse. That's fascinating. Weren't the backer npcs currated though? I feel like they had certain archetypes that they were written as. The Godlike often seemed to be passer-throughs, with no real place to call a home aside from the frontiers and trade routes. They were curated to make sure they fit the lore. I don't think anyone curated backer NPCs regarding their race.

That rationalization could work if it was presented by the game and not a player on the forums. Makes it kinda sad, considering that all it would've taken to preserve the integrity of immersion was an NPC commenting on the number of Godlikes the offer for land had attracted, and a little speculation on how "I guess the whole legacy business doesn't concern them, seeing how they're not able to get kids in the first place". I don't disagree such an explanation should be in the game. That said, since an explanation came to me and the game didn't contradict it, I personally didn't have an issue with this aspect of the game. But totally understand that it was an issue for others.

Perhaps you should go back to school so you can learn to use terms like "high probability" in a proper context. A wizard with 18 might and 18 perception does better damage than wizard with 12/12. I really don't appreciate your dishonest arguments. No one every was arguing this but you. So i dont why you keep saying this stuff. If you go back, this line of inquiry started due to an assertion about Aloth being less-optimal as DPS vs control wizard based on stats made against an argument that he was as good a DPS as anyone else in the party, which is where the 12/12 & 18/18 example comes from. Ultimately I'm not sure arguing a normal distribution really gets anyone anywhere. If you follow the system, the statistics tells us that a 12 perception 12 might wizard will deal less damage than the one with 18 in both on average. The formulas will provide a range and if the RNG is truly random that range will provide a normal distribution which, when compared, will have the normal distribution shifted higher on the 18 character when compared to the 12 one. This again assumes the RNG is indeed random. The problem is I think that while the argument made was statistical ('Aloth is just as good at DPS'), I think the argument on hand wasn't about statistics, but about whether the character was "good" or not. Or to put it another way, I think the problem lies in an argument about whether being less optimized for a specific role is a value judgement about that character in that role. If Aloth's DPS is the same as my rogue's DPS, then my rogue - like Aloth - isn't built in a way that maximizes the characters for a DPS role. That to me doesn't mean the character is bad (unless your goal was to build a high DPS rogue). Given the make-up of the party, the difficulty setting, etc., the character may actually be quite serviceable and fulfill a role within the party. So that Aloth is less-optimal in a role doesn't mean that he couldn't have utility in that role relative to the party. Further there's the question of whether the ability to create less viable builds is inherently a problem within the system. I'd argue that its a natural consequence of trying to build characters to not have dump stats. If the effort is to devalue min-maxing, then the value is going to be either towards jack-of-all-trades where the skills show limited variance or building a character towards a specific goal in mind and applying the stats in ways that will least penalize that role.

I took it that the plethora of godlike in the first game (even though I think its a factor of the fan made npcs) was due to the offer of land and/or work that brought the PC to the area. Given that godlikes can't have children, the area experiencing an epidemic of hollowborn children wouldn't be an issue of concern for them, so there would be less reason for godlikes to not take the opportunity if they needed it. In turn that could lead to more godlikes in the area than would be normally seen.

Probably. And yet I can't feel that video games are mirroring modern movies - studios set tent poles years in advance and will rush out films to meet the tent pole date.

Have the CIA secretly publish a book through Amazon create space called "A Dummies Guide to Killing all Infidels"?

I can see what you're saying. Social commentary can often work as an underpinning to allegorical storytelling. I don't dislike SR4, but I didn't like it like I did SR2 and SR3. To the point I never tried any of the downloadable content for it. EDIT: I will say SR4 also disappointed me by changing the voice actors for the Boss.

I get that a lot of Bioware fans are fans of character stories. Within that context I think they feel cheated if their choice (in this case a gender choice) in character creation provides them with demonstrably less options to pursue character stories. I'm more of the feeling that they should work with the characters as they are created rather than conform to a specific numerical metric but perhaps the change is additive (adding options for Scott) rather than revisionist (changing existing options for Sara to also go for Scott if they weren't planned to be that way from the beginning). The lore also said that the weapons practically never run out of ammo and only the heat sinks need changing. Incidentally, they do have tech which allows for nearly unlimited use of guns via the overheating mechanic, which would actually make a lot of sense to use for teams in Andromeda galaxy - but ... Nah. I don't disagree with you that it'd have been easier to just use the ME1 mechanic. But I do think they give an in-game handwave....