Namutree

Hiro did take an interest in my post and has mentioned it more than once. Hiro now wants Lephy's opinion on the matter, but feels that he is dodging the question by over-analyzing the way Hiro phrased it.

That Solaufein mod for BG2 seems to have quite a following. How much of it is because of romance and how much is due to having a NPC fighter/mage is unknown, but it seems to get a lot of attention. It's the romance mainly. A fighter/mage npc isn't a big deal. Another reason it is so popular is that many people really loved the drow city, and adding Solaufein is a way of expanding that part of the game's influence.

ADorothy: Divinity isn't even RTwP,and doesn't play like the IE games. That's no successor at all.

I also thought that Jaheira's portrait in BG2 was a little... off. As she is my favorite character that really bothered me. I sometimes replaced it with a better version. As for the thread question; I would prefer the BG portrait system. Those painted portraits are just so pretty!

I don't understand this stance against romance mods by a lot of the promancers. You'll have promancers installing mods for anything else and yet when it comes to romance mods, the one thing (romances) they lobby developers years for, they shy away from them. And you'll often hear arguments that Obsidian aren't great writers of romances. Well if Bioware's romances are the standard that Obsidian should aspire to I'm sure there are good writers in the mod community who could be up to the level of Bioware. I think the anti-mod romances are due to the fact that many mod romances are incredibly juvenile and poorly suited to the game's writing style. The key to finding the good ones is to check the way the romance mod is advertised. Here is a tip for would be promancers: If the author puts a big emphasis on humor; it is almost certain to be bad. If the modder is bringing attention to the humor; he likely isn't taking the lore or writing seriously enough.

Good modders can tie the romance into the game. As for Obsidian doing a better job at writing the romance; that depends on quality of the mod. Some mod romances in BG2 were better than the Bioware romances; others were much worse. If adding dialog into poe isn't too hard; I might add one.

Romance wasn't that meaningful in BG2. Not that I didn't enjoy some of them. Romance is not Obsidian's strength, and as I and others have stated; Obsidian has better things to do. We can add romances in later through mods, so there is no need for Obsidian to make them. Areas and mechanics however, will be VERY difficult to mod into the game. This is why we should make the romances and Obsidian should make the core game. Only Obsidian can make the sundae; anyone can add the cherry on top. For me the biggest strength of Obsidian is writing. I really do not care much about mechanics. Especially if its not turn based but I do care about the writing and while people could add romance via mods I would have loved to see Obsidian doing it because of the higher quality. As for Baldurs Gate: It has been a long time since I played it but as far as I remember there was a sense pf progression through the story which is not what happens in let us say DA and ME at all. It is just some kind of minigame nothing else. Obsidian is good at writing worlds and plots, but not romance. They've tried it and the results were... underwhelming. Bioware is better at it than Obsidian; at least when Bioware isn't being juvenile. You may not care about the mechanics, but you'll still need to deal with them. If the mechanics are bad; the game will be bad. Mods can handle the romance angle, but not areas and core mechanics. Even if we got Obsidian to do the romances; they wouldn't be that great. The last thing a developer should do is abandon their strengths in favor of their weaknesses. Especially when many people don't even want romances in the game at all, even if they were cost free. Mods allow players who like romance to get what they want in the game, but don't piss off the anti-mancers; who are quite numerous within Obsidian's fanbase. Obsidian should be Obsidian; not Bioware jr.

Romance wasn't that meaningful in BG2. Not that I didn't enjoy some of them. Romance is not Obsidian's strength, and as I and others have stated; Obsidian has better things to do. We can add romances in later through mods, so there is no need for Obsidian to make them. Areas and mechanics however, will be VERY difficult to mod into the game. This is why we should make the romances and Obsidian should make the core game. Only Obsidian can make the sundae; anyone can add the cherry on top.

Sounds like mob focused characters will be more important on path of the damned mode.

A Quicklook? Heck yes!!!

Roam Ants. Nomadic humanoid ant-people. If you drop something across their caravan line, they all freak out and don't know where to go. That's what I would mod in. 6_u Nomadic humaniod ant-people would be cool.

This is wildly premature fanfiction/add my OC (do not steal,) in my eyes. Mods are kinda like adding fan-fiction into the game. It is premature, but there's no harm in throwing around a few ideas. If anything I suggests contradicts the lore; it can be adjusted. Doesn't have much to do with OC's; these would be new enemies and a source of new quests.

Ape people is definitely a weak splice. That's why I suggest monkey people. Monkeys aren't apes.

I know something else I hope gets added: A new enemy/npc type. On a different thread I've been throwing around a race idea about monkey people. I'll put on this more appropriate thread now; expect a long post: Race name: Not sure, open to suggestions. How they look-Fur comes in a few more colors: black, brown, white, and grey are pretty normal. My inspiration is Sun Wukong and the book, "Journey to West". As for their society, they are often exorcists and nomadic monks; sometimes druids. Usually a priest with maybe a few monk guards would visit small communities and help the locals with monster problems or establish temporary schools to teach their philosophy to anyone interested. They survive on the charity of those they aid or teach; at least that is how they typically are. Different religious sects have different teachings of course, but they are far from organized religions. Each sect usually has a sacred tablet with only about a pages worth of information describing the basics of that sects philosophy; only a few ever see the tablet and most of its ideals are handed down orally. I'm not gonna go into the details of the different sects; otherwise this post would go on forever! There would also be of a renegade warrior sect that want to engage in fights with unwary travelers to test and expand their martial abilities. They would not attack the player as a group if they outnumber you. So if you had a team of three and there were six of these enemies; only three would attack you. The other three would just meditate and only attack if you attack them. Fighting them and interacting with them and their culture would be awesome. Not to mention they might be realistic to mod into the game since they don't have a home area. They are nomadic and can simply be thrown into existing maps. The main issue would be adding the character models, and thus playing as them would be FAR too much work to be plausible. As enemies and npcs it might be doable, or maybe I'm just bananas. I might even try to add these guys in myself. Only time will tell.

Who suggested ape people? I suggested monkey people. I also never said they would be tribal. My idea of them was that they are exorcists and nomadic monks; sometimes druids. Usually a priest with maybe a few monk guards would visit small communities and help the locals with monster problems or establish temporary schools to teach their philosophy to anyone interested. They survive on the charity of those they aid or teach; at least that is how they typically are. Most you would fight would be of a renegade warrior sect that want to engage in fights with unwary travelers to test and expand their martial abilities. They would not attack the player as a group if they outnumber you. So if you had a team of three and there were six of these enemies; only three would attack you. The other three would just meditate and only attack if you attack them. Playing as that race or fighting the would be awesome.

You wont. Because then you'd also see a siht storm of "black people portrayed as stupid monkeys", vendors would decide to do the right thing and not carry the game. It wouldn't matter at all if the game would also have black people portrayed as black people with superior intellect and angel like presence. Because that's how things work, take one thing out of context and go crazy. Neat pic though. ----- BTW. I'm perfectly OK and happy to see orcs and goblins and such in a fantasy game. You immediately know what's what and what to do. It's mostly when the game tries to be overly clever and start making up cultural differences and oppression and reasonings and stuff, when things go south and fail. They wont fit well into a super realistic scenario where everyone has mixed motivations and all. More fun games, where orcs are orcs, skeletons are skeletons and bandits have black hoods and live in a bandit camp. I don't have much faith in media, but I think they could at least understand a reference to journey to the west. I should also note that fur comes in a few colors. Black, white, brown, orange, and grey. Heck, we've already seen monkey people in a few video games. I doubt many would accuse Starfox of making black people stupid monkeys. As for orcs; there's nothing wrong with using them in fantasy often. Ever hear people complain about how often humans are in fantasy; they are more common than orcs.

This is a pretty dang good reason for romances to remain mod territory.

Kinda reminds me of the first rule of fight club: Guy A: 1st rule of fight club; you don't talk about fight club. Guy B: You mentioned the first rule of fight club; thus you talked about fight club. You hypocrite!

No. There are only a few features that simply cannot be done well in a fantasy RPG. Romance is one of them. Unfortunately its this type of intransigence that is unhelpful to this discussion. You cannot say Romance cannot ever be done well in a RPG because of your own view of past implementations of Romance. Its biased and subjective Rather say something like " I am not happy with any implementation of Romance in the past" You can see the difference? I just want to say that this comment seems like something Lephys would write. I don't mean that to be a compliment or an insult. I'm just saying. I am also pretty confident of Stun's response to this. It'll probably go like this: "Name me one example of a romance in a fantasy rpg that wasn't seriously flawed; you can't. If it could be done well; it would already have been. Even if it could be done well; Obsidian wouldn't be the group to figure it out." Am I right Stun? Is that close to your opinion? Yeah you probably right, lets see his response Stun seems to follow a very consistent logic that I don't always agree with, but at least he knows what he doesn't want and why he doesn't want it. I respect that; too many gamers don't know what they want. Stun seems to have thought out his, "development philosophy" if you will. Although, I may be wrong about all of this. If I am; he may make me look like a complete fool very soon with his response.

No. There are only a few features that simply cannot be done well in a fantasy RPG. Romance is one of them. Unfortunately its this type of intransigence that is unhelpful to this discussion. You cannot say Romance cannot ever be done well in a RPG because of your own view of past implementations of Romance. Its biased and subjective Rather say something like " I am not happy with any implementation of Romance in the past" You can see the difference? I just want to say that this comment seems like something Lephys would write. I don't mean that to be a compliment or an insult. I'm just saying. I am also pretty confident of Stun's response to this. It'll probably go like this: "Name me one example of a romance in a fantasy rpg that wasn't seriously flawed; you can't. If it could be done well; it would already have been. Even if it could be done well; Obsidian wouldn't be the group to figure it out." Am I right Stun? Is that close to your opinion?

We already know that poe is now feature locked, but once the game is released some new stuff will be added via mod. We also know that new areas will be very difficult to add. Npcs, quests, dialog, and new weapons and armor shouldn't be too hard though. I'll give an example of something I want added; a kitchen fork weapon. Oh, and a wooden paddle weapon; it should be called "Sasaki's bane", and a samurai class! So, anything in particular that you wonderful people think should be added to poe via mods? It's fine if you want something but don't know if it's in the game or not. I'll assume you want that mod IF Obsidian doesn't provide that feature or whatever. Please follow this rule: 1- Don't mention romance; there is already a romance thread.

Fan fiction, and Mods!

Hiro, I'll try to answer your question. The reason why developers anthropomorphise and sexualise non-human npcs is to try and create the illusion that the npcs are real. People have sexual aspects to them, so when they sexualise npcs; they can seem more human. That makes role-playing more convincing for some people. There are also strong emotions that can easily be brought out through sexuality. Those feelings can make a player feel connected to a world. To put it bluntly; adding sexuality to a npc is an easy way to manipulate a player's emotions and create a connection to the game world.

If you had just said this from the beginning your argument with Hiro probably would have been shorter.

I've been thinking about this for a while now and I want to announce a change in opinion! I used to think that Obsidian made the right call in not including romance, but thought they should include it in the sequels. Now I think Obsidian made the right call in not including romance, and think they shouldn't add them the sequels. Here is why: 1- Modders will do this anyway, and Obsidian would best spend their time building new areas and core mechanics. Those features would better suit Obsidian's skills, and are hard to mod in according to Josh. 2- Good romances are hard to make, and bad ones really hurt the game. See Primejunta's earlier ME2 example for reference. I would hate to see poe2 tarnished by poorly implemented romances, and by avoiding romances Obsidian avoids this risk. 3- Adding in romances at the expense of other content would make poe2/poe3 too much like a bioware game; we have plenty of those and there will be plenty more to come. Obsidian should be Obsidian; not Bioware jr. I still like the romance model I established here and on other threads, but will leave them to modders.