Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt.2

[jarpie]

I'm really interested on how you came up with the "week to write romance", especially if you want it to be substansial.

Here.

 

Where did you get that 10%? Almost all interactions have always been in RPGs just between the PC and the companion which is mostly just talking about their background or interaction dialogue which is mostly friendship or romance. There's always been very little of dialogue with the companions during quests since the main character handles the conversations on 90% of the time.

 

For romance being at least remotely substansial it would have to be 30-50% of the all dialogue between the main character and the said companion. For those who don't want the romance there would have to be friendship route which uses different dialogues and dialogue trees.

 

Or would you be happy with friendship dialogues just copy-pasted and just "darling" added in the end of them with maybe line or two added in the end of the romance?

 

No. Throwing more dialog into X doesn't automatically means throwing less dialogue into Y. Something else might be sacrificed instead. Like doing less loot. I personally don't care 'bout loot.

 

The loot is very small part of what writer does for the companion and that is usually the item descriptions, as for example if companion has his own family sword. The actual loot itself (such as statistics) is done by the game-/system designer who has to balance it with the encounters and other loot/equipment. Would you sacrifice companion's quest for romance?

 

Companions usually have their own sub-quests which have interaction between the PC and the companion, and there would have to be at least some of those dialogues for romance and non-romance, unless as I said before, people would be happy with just "darling" added in the end of the lines.

 

Because polls on this very forums show 75% of people are pro-romance. Here. So you are in fact a vocal minority as cliche as it sound nowadays. And don't say polls are not an indicator. They are the closest thing to an indicator that we have.

 

530 voters from 73986 backers is 0,72 percent so that's not indicative at all. Let's say that you go to the deep south to ask if they want Obama or Romney as president, what do you think will be the result?

 

Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal will take 5% at most. $4,163,208 - 5% = 3,955,047. So it's 4M basically. But, yeah, there are also phisical revards to make.

 

Wrong, Kickstarter takes 5% and Amazon takes another 5% so that's 10% there, and paypal takes 2,9% + 0,30 dollars per transaction, so let's calculate.

 

This might be complicated so try to keep up.

Kickstarter:

3,986,929 * 0,10 = 396 692,90

3,986,929 - 396 692,90 = 358 823 6,10

 

Paypal:

176,279 * 0,029 = 5112,09 so 176,279 - 5112,09 = 171,166.61

3 681 Paypal backers so 0,30 * 3681 = 1104,30 thus 171,166.61 - 1104,30 = 170 062,31

 

So we get now can calculate both together:

358 823 6,10 + 170 062,31 = 3 758 298,41

 

Since obliviously there are going to be failed pledges it will lower the final sum but it wouldn't surprise if it would be 10% of the pledges, depends on which pledges will fail payment.

 

I was a little off with my calculations made in the head but I was right about how much Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal takes but with failed pledge payments the final sum would be around 3,5 - 3,7 million.

 

http://www.kickstart...ter basics#Kick

 

"If a project is successfully funded, Kickstarter applies a 5% fee to the funds collected.

Additionally, payment processing fees work out roughly to 3-5%."

 

And here's about Paypal fees:

https://www.paypal.c...mpp/paypal-fees

 

A game about choice should have a choice for as much people as possible. We don't want it to be lenear. We want it to be an epic advanture as personal as humanly possible. No romances = not perfect for me. When we are talking about a party based RPG that is. Still may be great and awesome, but not perfect, no.

For the record, so far there are some great and awesome RPGs for me I love to bits out there, yet the perfect one is still to be made.

 

Well, if you don't see how love is a special kind of feeling yourself, I don't think I can fix it with words.

 

I put these together so I'll answer both once:

 

I didn't say about love, I talked about romances and those two are separate. There are many kind of love; between friends, siblings, parents and children, mentor and apprentice etc etc. Romantic love is powerful one sure but it's not any more powerful than other kind of love.

 

Friendship-, sibling-/parental-, mentorship-love etc are as special as romantic love but it's different; case-in-point Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir in DS9 when Miles' wife asks from Julian in the series to tell her that her husband loves her more than Julian, he can't say so.

 

Would've film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Predator, The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Thing been any better stories if they would've had romances in them? I know films and games are different medium but they both still tell a story.

 

No, not true. I would not be happy with only one rout per character at all. So you basically want them to be as streamlined and nonreactive as possible? So the player character is running around robbing people, excavating graveyards, kicking puppies and eating babies, still a lawful good paladin from the party is a PC's best buddy simply because the only rout he has is a rout of friendship? Not good!

 

Those are different - if you say romance the said paladin there would be lines for objecting those activities which most probably would be unique for each branch, for romance, non-romance, rivalry etc, the characters should react to what you do depending on their relationship with the PC.

 

There are of course branches in the dialogue trees which leads to different dialogue-parts but for every larger branch the amount of the written dialogue multiplies exponentially, for example (I'm throwing this out of the hat) there are twenty dialogue events/lines per every branch and when you add another one it multiplies with another twenty...and then another twenty etc.

 

So unless they add more lines per character which would increase the time and budget for the said companion they have to divide the lines between all the possible routes.

 

Why do you think devs havent put more than one or two routes tops for characters in RPGs, of if they do, their lines are almost copy-pasted for each route?

 

Not so much fewer as you think according to the the polls.

 

See my answer from the before about the polls and how many backers there are. Those who are passionate about specific cause, tends to rally behind it so they are bound to come to forums and want or demand romances in if they really really want them in.

 

Goddamit, they have already confirmed low intelligent player character dialogues will be included in the game!! It is not something most of the players are gonna see in the end and it will take 90% more time to wright than the all theoretical romance dialogues put together! Something everyone here seems to miss.

 

Avellone and Cain loves to write low-intelligent dialogue, but they have said that they dislike romances. You wouldn't force them to disregard something they like to write for something they hate or dislike, would you?

 

We've asked this before: If the story of the game doesn't concern romances at all, then they would be separate from it, should they write the romances in if they don't like to write them just to pander players who wants romances?

[qloher]

I'm really interested on how you came up with the "week to write romance", especially if you want it to be substansial.

Here.

 

Where did you get that 10%?

I've pulled it out from my behind basically. But really, let's take NWN2 and MotB for examples. Both had romances. Can you seriously tell me romance dialogues there took more than 10% from the whole pool of dialogues with romanceable characters? I bet you can't.

Almost all interactions have always been in RPGs just between the PC and the companion which is mostly just talking about their background or interaction dialogue which is mostly friendship or romance. There's always been very little of dialogue with the companions during quests since the main character handles the conversations on 90% of the time.

 

For romance being at least remotely substansial it would have to be 30-50% of the all dialogue between the main character and the said companion. For those who don't want the romance there would have to be friendship route which uses different dialogues and dialogue trees.

Well 30-50% of dialogues written specifically for romance routes is a dream come true, I would totally love it, but it is not necessary at all.

See my examples with NWN2 and MotB.

Or would you be happy with friendship dialogues just copy-pasted and just "darling" added in the end of them with maybe line or two added in the end of the romance?

Give me my 10% of unique romance dialogue + 30% of darling-modified friendship lines and I'm a happy person. Seriously.

No. Throwing more dialog into X doesn't automatically means throwing less dialogue into Y. Something else might be sacrificed instead. Like doing less loot. I personally don't care 'bout loot.

 

The loot is very small part of what writer does for the companion and that is usually the item descriptions, as for example if companion has his own family sword. The actual loot itself (such as statistics) is done by the game-/system designer who has to balance it with the encounters and other loot/equipment.

You assume I was talking about loot descriptions solely. I was talking about project budget money management. Let's cut loot not only in terms of descriptions, but in terms of quantity: less models, less textures. Than we can use our spare money to hire an extra writer!

Would you sacrifice companion's quest for romance?

I would sacrifice loot. I like companion's quests, so I would rather sacrifice a non-companion's quest if needed. Or a bunch of combat spell.

Wrong, Kickstarter takes 5% and Amazon takes another 5% so that's 10% there, and paypal takes 2,9% + 0,30 dollars per transaction, so let's calculate.

 

This might be complicated so try to keep up.

Kickstarter:

3,986,929 * 0,10 = 396 692,90

3,986,929 - 396 692,90 = 358 823 6,10

 

Paypal:

176,279 * 0,029 = 5112,09 so 176,279 - 5112,09 = 171,166.61

3 681 Paypal backers so 0,30 * 3681 = 1104,30 thus 171,166.61 - 1104,30 = 170 062,31

 

So we get now can calculate both together:

358 823 6,10 + 170 062,31 = 3 758 298,41

 

Since obliviously there are going to be failed pledges it will lower the final sum but it wouldn't surprise if it would be 10% of the pledges, depends on which pledges will fail payment.

 

I was a little off with my calculations made in the head but I was right about how much Kickstarter, Amazon and Paypal takes but with failed pledge payments the final sum would be around 3,5 - 3,7 million.

 

http://www.kickstart...ter basics#Kick

 

"If a project is successfully funded, Kickstarter applies a 5% fee to the funds collected.

Additionally, payment processing fees work out roughly to 3-5%."

 

And here's about Paypal fees:

https://www.paypal.c...mpp/paypal-fees

Ok, you are absolutely right here, thanks for the clarification.

So it is less from 4M. Still a lot of money.

A game about choice should have a choice for as much people as possible. We don't want it to be lenear. We want it to be an epic advanture as personal as humanly possible. No romances = not perfect for me. When we are talking about a party based RPG that is. Still may be great and awesome, but not perfect, no.

For the record, so far there are some great and awesome RPGs for me I love to bits out there, yet the perfect one is still to be made.

 

Well, if you don't see how love is a special kind of feeling yourself, I don't think I can fix it with words.

 

I put these together so I'll answer both once:

 

I didn't say about love, I talked about romances and those two are separate. There are many kind of love; between friends, siblings, parents and children, mentor and apprentice etc etc. Romantic love is powerful one sure but it's not any more powerful than other kind of love.

 

Friendship-, sibling-/parental-, mentorship-love etc are as special as romantic love but it's different; case-in-point Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir in DS9 when Miles' wife asks from Julian in the series to tell her that her husband loves her more than Julian, he can't say so.

 

Would've film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Predator, The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Thing been any better stories if they would've had romances in them? I know films and games are different medium but they both still tell a story.

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

Edited October 21, 2012 by qloher

[jarpie]

 

I've pulled it out from my behind basically. But really, let's take NWN2 and MotB for examples. Both had romances. Can you seriously tell me romance dialogues there took more than 10% from the whole pool of dialogues with romanceable characters? I bet you can't.

 

Well 30-50% of dialogues written specifically for romance routes is a dream come true, I would totally love it, but it is not necessary at all.

See my examples with NWN2 and MotB.

 

Give me my 10% of unique romance dialogue + 30% of darling-modified friendship lines and I'm a happy person. Seriously.

 

You assume I was talking about loot descriptions solely. I was talking about project budget money management. Let's cut loot not only in terms of descriptions, but in terms of quantity: less models, less textures. Than we can use our spare money to hire an extra writer!

 

I would sacrifice loot. I like companion's quests, so I would rather sacrifice a non-companion's quest if needed. Or a bunch of combat spell.

 

Ok, you are absolutely right here, thanks for the clarification.

So it is less from 4M. Still a lot of money.

 

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

 

 

I'm going to let you give counter-arguments for rest of my message before answering yours, only fair.

[rjshae]

A little unrequited love between companions A and B could be entertaining, while throwing a little social turmoil into the group dynamic.

[kenup]

-snip-

Dude stop taking calculations you make in your head as the most legit thing in the world. Avellone and others on the team know what they are talking about, they've done it before. If they say a romance takes two months, it takes two months. Unless you want the sappiest, stupidest written romance ever(see ME2 and DA2 for many examples). There was only one per gender in NWN2 and MotB and unless you were a total **** to them, they always had some romance progress to them. So no, you can't have many routes with characters, something is going to get sacrificed. Plus they actually were affecting the plot in MotB.

 

An extra writer, costs more than an extra armour or sword design. Sacrificing spells and side quests for romance? you just ask to do what you want now without caring of consequences and others' preferences.

 

The point is both movies and games, don't need romance with the protagonist to have a deep meaning. And as we repeated a gazillion times, the fact that you participate doesn't change, that the narrative, premise and plot are already set. Minigames that don't affect the plot, will only sacrifice its integrity(see ME series).

Edited October 21, 2012 by kenup

[qloher]

Thing is, my answers are so dig that forum engine won't let me post 'em sometimes due to an excessive use of quote tags. So I have to cut my expenses based on the total "budget" . But yeah, it's only fair to let me answer everything.

Let's see what I've missed the last time.

Because polls on this very forums show 75% of people are pro-romance. Here. So you are in fact a vocal minority as cliche as it sound nowadays. And don't say polls are not an indicator. They are the closest thing to an indicator that we have.

 

530 voters from 73986 backers is 0,72 percent so that's not indicative at all.

Not true. You can't dismiss a poll merely by saying that the sample taken is actually small compared to the whole population which opinion is involved. That contradicts to statistical science in it's basics. For example, US National exit poll samples usually consist of 8,000 to 20,000 people while there are 314 million people live in USA overall. So 8,000 constitutes only 0.00254%. So our poll is pretty damn good from this standpoint.

Let's say that you go to the deep south to ask if they want Obama or Romney as president, what do you think will be the result?

Obama will win because tech-savvy youngsters prefer democrats statistically. But that's off-topic. And I'm not even a US cytizen .

A game about choice should have a choice for as much people as possible. We don't want it to be lenear. We want it to be an epic advanture as personal as humanly possible. No romances = not perfect for me. When we are talking about a party based RPG that is. Still may be great and awesome, but not perfect, no.

For the record, so far there are some great and awesome RPGs for me I love to bits out there, yet the perfect one is still to be made.

 

Well, if you don't see how love is a special kind of feeling yourself, I don't think I can fix it with words.

 

I put these together so I'll answer both once:

 

I didn't say about love, I talked about romances and those two are separate. There are many kind of love; between friends, siblings, parents and children, mentor and apprentice etc etc. Romantic love is powerful one sure but it's not any more powerful than other kind of love.

 

Friendship-, sibling-/parental-, mentorship-love etc are as special as romantic love but it's different; case-in-point Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir in DS9 when Miles' wife asks from Julian in the series to tell her that her husband loves her more than Julian, he can't say so.

Well, I'll clerify. Romantic love is special among specials. You compare how much there are movies about parental love and about romantic love, you'll see for youself. There is a reason behind it.

No, not true. I would not be happy with only one rout per character at all. So you basically want them to be as streamlined and nonreactive as possible? So the player character is running around robbing people, excavating graveyards, kicking puppies and eating babies, still a lawful good paladin from the party is a PC's best buddy simply because the only rout he has is a rout of friendship? Not good!

 

Those are different - if you say romance the said paladin there would be lines for objecting those activities which most probably would be unique for each branch, for romance, non-romance, rivalry etc, the characters should react to what you do depending on their relationship with the PC.

 

There are of course branches in the dialogue trees which leads to different dialogue-parts but for every larger branch the amount of the written dialogue multiplies exponentially, for example (I'm throwing this out of the hat) there are twenty dialogue events/lines per every branch and when you add another one it multiplies with another twenty...and then another twenty etc.

 

So unless they add more lines per character which would increase the time and budget for the said companion they have to divide the lines between all the possible routes.

I have already answered this in my previous post where I've told 10% + some more with darling-modified lines is enougth.

Those who are passionate about specific cause, tends to rally behind it so they are bound to come to forums and want or demand romances in if they really really want them in.

So you are basically saying the poll should be discarded not because there are too few people who had voted (as you've suggested earlier), but because the poll itself is a magnet for certain kind of people, hense biased? Well, actually that is a much better strategy, it makes sence (in contrast to your first argument) and there may be some truth to it.

Also I can counterplea that romance topics are a magnet for anty romance people just as well.

Goddamit, they have already confirmed low intelligent player character dialogues will be included in the game!! It is not something most of the players are gonna see in the end and it will take 90% more time to wright than the all theoretical romance dialogues put together! Something everyone here seems to miss.

 

Avellone and Cain loves to write low-intelligent dialogue, but they have said that they dislike romances. You wouldn't force them to disregard something they like to write for something they hate or dislike, would you?

 

We've asked this before: If the story of the game doesn't concern romances at all, then they would be separate from it, should they write the romances in if they don't like to write them just to pander players who wants romances?

So you've basically agreed it's not about a budget or time anymore, but about Obsidian's preferences. Am I right?

 

As for the second part, this has been answered a lot already. We are stating our preferences, we are asking but we are not demanding. If the authors decide not to do romances, we'll accept it.

[qloher]

Dude stop taking calculations you make in your head as the most legit thing in the world. Avellone and others on the team know what they are talking about, they've done it before. If they say a romance takes two months, it takes two months.

Where did they say this? Link or it didn't happen.

Sacrificing spells and side quests for romance? you just ask to do what you want now without caring of consequences and others' preferences.

You do exactly the same by asking to sacrifice romances for spells and side quests. You are no better.

[kenup]

Dude stop taking calculations you make in your head as the most legit thing in the world. Avellone and others on the team know what they are talking about, they've done it before. If they say a romance takes two months, it takes two months.

Where did they say this? Link or it didn't happen.

Sacrificing spells and side quests for romance? you just ask to do what you want now without caring of consequences and others' preferences.

You do exactly the same by asking to sacrifice romances for spells and side quests. You are no better.

Here:

 

Nick K: “Romances, are you planning on developing them in Project: Eternity as well?”

Feargus Urquhart: “Romances take a lot of effort, and I don’t want to be cagey on romances at all. We don’t want to make them a stretch goal, it’s just a question of if we feel comfortable with the funding. We have to do them right. Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

 

 

Spells and side quests add something. Spells add to gameplay, defining the character and level up options, side quests add to definition of character(s), world and gameplay + hours. Romances don't need to be added to make anyone deep. And making them into minigames just makes them into romance simulators, they don't add anything.

Edited October 21, 2012 by kenup

[Loranc]

Dude stop taking calculations you make in your head as the most legit thing in the world. Avellone and others on the team know what they are talking about, they've done it before. If they say a romance takes two months, it takes two months.

Where did they say this? Link or it didn't happen.

Sacrificing spells and side quests for romance? you just ask to do what you want now without caring of consequences and others' preferences.

You do exactly the same by asking to sacrifice romances for spells and side quests. You are no better.

Here:

 

Nick K: “Romances, are you planning on developing them in Project: Eternity as well?”

Feargus Urquhart: “Romances take a lot of effort, and I don’t want to be cagey on romances at all. We don’t want to make them a stretch goal, it’s just a question of if we feel comfortable with the funding. We have to do them right. Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

 

 

Spells and side quests add something. Spells add to gameplay, defining the character and level up options, side quests add to definition of character(s), world and gameplay + hours. Romances don't need to be added to make anyone deep. And making them into minigames just makes them into romance simulators, they don't add anything.

 

Hate to say it but that 2-3 months bit is about writing up a new companion not about writing a romance. This is a sentence completely within itself

 

"Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

[kenup]

Dude stop taking calculations you make in your head as the most legit thing in the world. Avellone and others on the team know what they are talking about, they've done it before. If they say a romance takes two months, it takes two months.

Where did they say this? Link or it didn't happen.

Sacrificing spells and side quests for romance? you just ask to do what you want now without caring of consequences and others' preferences.

You do exactly the same by asking to sacrifice romances for spells and side quests. You are no better.

Here:

 

Nick K: “Romances, are you planning on developing them in Project: Eternity as well?”

Feargus Urquhart: “Romances take a lot of effort, and I don’t want to be cagey on romances at all. We don’t want to make them a stretch goal, it’s just a question of if we feel comfortable with the funding. We have to do them right. Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

 

 

Spells and side quests add something. Spells add to gameplay, defining the character and level up options, side quests add to definition of character(s), world and gameplay + hours. Romances don't need to be added to make anyone deep. And making them into minigames just makes them into romance simulators, they don't add anything.

 

Hate to say it but that 2-3 months bit is about writing up a new companion not about writing a romance. This is a sentence completely within itself

 

"Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

See jarpie's post and my previous one. Don't separate arguments to make them fit your logic. Every way a character is written is an entirely different character. You have the romance choice and all the sub trees that brings, and the rival choice and its sub choices, and the friendship choice and whatever choices that brings etc etc. You have to change the character according to what path the player chooses. Unless you want a darling at the end.

 

Also "just for writing it up"! We are not into the peer review and technical implementation parts yet.

Edited October 21, 2012 by kenup

[qloher]

kenup

Well, if for your a battle spell is more meaningful and impactfull to the story than a romantic love sub-pot, I don't know what to tell you. Guess our brains are just arranged differently or something. For me a battle spell is but another munchkin ability I can absolutely live without.

As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

[Madae]

I was thinking of posting something like this last night. I tried searching the forums, but I couldn't find anything about it (weird?). Glad I decided to wait.

 

Anyway, romance is important to me in a RPG, but not the kind of romance that we see in pretty much every RPG nowadays. I think one of my favorite romance stories was Aribeth in Neverwinter Nights. Not necessarily for the story itself, though, it's a combination of many things; it took the whole game to cultivate it, you got a small window of opportunity to tell her and see reciprocation, it didn't involve sex, and it was left ambiguous - you don't know how it turned out for them except for a small bit of the ending narrative that, I think, said she was pardoned and they had their typically "happily ever after" theme. It was more about the emotion of the moment, building up over the entirety of the game and then finally exploding at the end. And I thought it was touching too, because it wasn't me pushing all the buttons and trying to "persuade" her, it was mostly her coming to once she had saw you kept the ring.

 

And I may be in the minority, but I didn't really like the romances in Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Liara and Leliana were just spilling "let's have sex" all over the screen. They come on very strong and don't let up, and even take certain "friendly banter" as initiative to get personal, when I really just wanted to be nice. The only two stories I liked from all of them were Zurvan and Jack; Zurvan, because he was actually a good character with an interesting betrayal story, and then Jack, because she was just so damaged that you spent more time redeeming her than anything else. The others were just not very interesting to me and not worth bringing up (though a minor shoutout for Tali, who I genuinely liked, I just thought your interactions were weak and limited).

 

So, what I'd like to see in the game;

 

1. Dialogue choices; I think what made ME and DA suffer was that your choices were very limited in dialogue, and when it came to romance, it felt like some responses were just shoehorned in there to keep it "interesting". I think romance is more than just flirting all game and throwing sexual innuendos back and forth.

 

2. It shouldn't be quick. The game is more than a dating sim, and there's obviously something more pressing out there that's taking everyone's attention. I think there's a time and place to be all touchy feely, and then a time to be serious about whats going on in the world. Since it's a fantasy RPG (and not a fantasy sex RPG), I would half expect it to be aimed more towards the latter.

 

3. Sex... it has a place sometimes, but not all the time. I expect to see things like brothels and whatever, and the occasional romp if need be, but when I genuinely like someone - and maybe this is weird - sex is not really on my mind. I mean, we're talking about "romance" here, not "one night flings" where you work half the game to get them into the sack and it's over... as if the entire point of the romance was to get them to bed so you can collect your trophy.

 

So, except for Aribeth, I guess another story worth looking at is Aeris from FF7. For one, she dies... that was pretty tragic for me since I genuinely cared about her and didn't see it coming. That type of thing is powerful for story... maybe not the most well-liked (non-happy ending and all), but if you're looking for generating some kind of emotion, that's a good place to start... though, I'm not saying that every love interest should die. I like that type of thing, with choices that have consequences and such, but the Kaiden/Ashley thing from ME1 was irritating. There's better ways.

 

Hmm, so I guess I'll leave it at this for now. Maybe I can think of more later, but I got some stuff to do.

Edited October 21, 2012 by Madae

[Loranc]

Dude stop taking calculations you make in your head as the most legit thing in the world. Avellone and others on the team know what they are talking about, they've done it before. If they say a romance takes two months, it takes two months.

Where did they say this? Link or it didn't happen.

Sacrificing spells and side quests for romance? you just ask to do what you want now without caring of consequences and others' preferences.

You do exactly the same by asking to sacrifice romances for spells and side quests. You are no better.

Here:

 

Nick K: “Romances, are you planning on developing them in Project: Eternity as well?”

Feargus Urquhart: “Romances take a lot of effort, and I don’t want to be cagey on romances at all. We don’t want to make them a stretch goal, it’s just a question of if we feel comfortable with the funding. We have to do them right. Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

 

 

Spells and side quests add something. Spells add to gameplay, defining the character and level up options, side quests add to definition of character(s), world and gameplay + hours. Romances don't need to be added to make anyone deep. And making them into minigames just makes them into romance simulators, they don't add anything.

 

Hate to say it but that 2-3 months bit is about writing up a new companion not about writing a romance. This is a sentence completely within itself

 

"Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

See jarpie's post and my previous one. Don't separate arguments to make them fit your logic. Every way a character is written is an entirely different character. You have the romance choice and all the sub trees that brings, and the rival choice and its sub choices, and the friendship choice and whatever choices that brings etc etc. You have to change the character according to what path the player chooses. Unless you want a darling at the end.

 

 

 

I wasn't separating anything to fit my logic. I was just reading what was said and objectively understanding that they were essentially talking about two different things in their statement. I have no idea how long it would take to write a romance, but if you actually take a moment to read that quoted sentence you can understand that the 2-3 months that was mentioned was about creating a new companion in general, not just one aspect of that companion. They were pretty annoyed from the sounds of it at the amount of flak they were getting.

 

Until we get an official word, there's really no way of telling. But, you can't honestly get the idea that it would take 2-3 months just for the 'romance' part by reading that statement. If that were the case a companion would never get written, because then you'd be talking 2-3 months for the friendship route, 2-3 months for the... etc etc. 2-3 months is a general term used for the entirety of a companion, how much of that time specifically would be allocated to romance? I have no idea, but not the entire 2-3 months.

[Living One]

 

 

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

 

 

 

Hate to say it but that 2-3 months bit is about writing up a new companion not about writing a romance. This is a sentence completely within itself

 

"Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

Even if it was half/ a third of 2-3 months just for the romance path for it'still quite a bit.And we are also talking about 'a pretty quick writer' here,eh.

[Loranc]

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

 

 

Hate to say it but that 2-3 months bit is about writing up a new companion not about writing a romance. This is a sentence completely within itself

 

"Some people were giving us flak about, you know, the goal to get to the first companion, class, race, and things like that. They weren’t completely wrong in their criticism, but we don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If it’s a pretty in depth companion Chris Avellone, who is a pretty quick writer, is looking at 2 or 3 months just for writing it up.”

Even if it was half/ a third of 2-3 months just for the romance path for it'still quite a bit.And we are also talking about 'a pretty quick writer' here,eh.

 

This is true, but i'm still and have always been on the stance that romance should be added in the format of PS:T. If it makes sense and is true to the story put it in, otherwise it'll look forced and will annoy me.

 

My main reason for posting was just to let people know that it's not going to take 2 or 3 whole months just to write a romance. I just felt like people were getting the wrong impression of the length of time it would take.

[Elerond]

And we are also talking about 'a pretty quick writer' here,eh.

 

That is phrase which you can use most of the professional writters.

[Monte Carlo]

As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

 

JesusIi've been trying to ignore you, but seriously you know nothing about writing. If you care to go back a few pages I've done you the courtesy of a brief explanation of why you are staggeringly incorrect. I'd be interested in what you think about it.

 

And, yes, I suppose our brains are wired differently. I'll give you that.

Edited October 21, 2012 by Monte Carlo

[qloher]

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

Funny thing is, your "counter" has been countered as well thousand of times. I guess you just really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point'.

Now should I repeat this counter to the counter, someone will pop up and say I'm repeating myself. But of cause I'm repeating myself, my opponent makes me do this by repeating himself in the first place.

[kenup]

kenup

Well, if for your a battle spell is more meaningful and impactfull to the story than a romantic love sub-pot, I don't know what to tell you. Guess our brains are just arranged differently or something. For me a battle spell is but another munchkin ability I can absolutely live without.

As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

It doesn't matter if it's important to me; it is important to me, but it doesn't matter. The point is that it helps give more choices for combat, and we all know what happens when you cut off spell choices. And you don't ask for a sub plot, which may or may not be filler, you ask for filler minigames and simulators, because you think RPGs are there to experience a virtual reality. And what the **** is a romantic love sub-pot?

[qloher]

As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

 

JesusIi've been trying to ignore you, but seriously you know nothing about writing. If you care to go back a few pages I've done you the courtesy of a brief explanation of why you are staggeringly incorrect. I'd be interested in what you think about it.

 

And, yes, I suppose our brains are wired differently. I'll give you that.

Care to share a link?

kenup

Well, if for your a battle spell is more meaningful and impactfull to the story than a romantic love sub-pot, I don't know what to tell you. Guess our brains are just arranged differently or something. For me a battle spell is but another munchkin ability I can absolutely live without.

As for 2 or 3 months per romance, you've got your answer already. It's 2 or 3 months per character.

It doesn't matter if it's important to me; it is important to me, but it doesn't matter. The point is that it helps give more choices for combat, and we all know what happens when you cut off spell choices. And you don't ask for a sub plot, which may or may not be filler, you ask for filler minigames and simulators, because you think RPGs are there to experience a virtual reality. And what the **** is a romantic love sub-pot?

We all know what happens when you don't care much about combat in your game altogether. And I absolutely love this particular result.

As for the "pot", can you find a better argument than clinging to typos? That's just low.

Edited October 21, 2012 by qloher

[Living One]

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

Funny thing is, your "counter" has been countered as well thousand of times. I guess you just really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point'.

Now should I repeat this counter to the counter, someone will pop up and say I'm repeating myself. But of cause I'm repeating myself, my opponent makes me do this by repeating himself in the first place.

Except it hasn't.Unless you are trying to tell me there are arguments in favour throwing random stuff in games even if they don't make sense.

[kenup]

We all know what happens when you don't care much about combat in your game altogether. And I absolutely love this particular result.

As for the "pot", can you find a better argument than clinging to typos? That's just low.

PST having a bad combat system, doesn't help your argument about sacrificing combat for romances.

I made arguments against yours. If you are offended by a light hearted joke at the end, you really need to man up, boy.

 

@Loranc Even if you ignore the rest, romances still "take a lot of effort".

Edited October 21, 2012 by kenup

[qloher]

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

Funny thing is, your "counter" has been countered as well thousand of times. I guess you just really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point'.

Now should I repeat this counter to the counter, someone will pop up and say I'm repeating myself. But of cause I'm repeating myself, my opponent makes me do this by repeating himself in the first place.

Except it hasn't.Unless you are trying to tell me there are arguments in favour throwing random stuff in games even if they don't make sense.

Romances making no sense in RPGs as a matter of principal is not a fact, but only your personal bias.

As for "it's up to the guys at Obsidian to decide, not to the romance crowd" argument, the counter is the following: "Yep, it's up to the guys at Obsidian to decide, not to the anti-romance crowd either".

[Living One]

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

You really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point',eh?

Player choice is not an excuse to put in whatever you want.It's still the designer who has to choose what gets in and he should choose what makes sense.

Funny thing is, your "counter" has been countered as well thousand of times. I guess you just really like the 'wait a bit and repeat arguments that already received a counter point'.

Now should I repeat this counter to the counter, someone will pop up and say I'm repeating myself. But of cause I'm repeating myself, my opponent makes me do this by repeating himself in the first place.

Except it hasn't.Unless you are trying to tell me there are arguments in favour throwing random stuff in games even if they don't make sense.

Romances making no sense in RPGs as a matter of principal is not a fact, but only your personal bias.

It doesn't have to do with just RPGs per se.It has to do with the themes of the game.

As for "it's up to the guys at Obsidian to decide, not to the romance crowd" argument, the counter is the following: "Yep, it's up to the guys at Obsidian to decide, not to the anti-romance crowd either".

You're right it's up to Obsidian and they don't sound too happy about romances.

There is a difference between the two crowds tho'.We have better informed arguments.

[jarpie]

I've pulled it out from my behind basically. But really, let's take NWN2 and MotB for examples. Both had romances. Can you seriously tell me romance dialogues there took more than 10% from the whole pool of dialogues with romanceable characters? I bet you can't.

 

Well 30-50% of dialogues written specifically for romance routes is a dream come true, I would totally love it, but it is not necessary at all.

See my examples with NWN2 and MotB.

 

Give me my 10% of unique romance dialogue + 30% of darling-modified friendship lines and I'm a happy person. Seriously.

 

I have already answered this in my previous post where I've told 10% + some more with darling-modified lines is enougth.

 

If you pulled the 10% out of your behind and then again argue the same percentage? I remember there being more romance-dialogue than 10% but I guess we have to believe you since you just threw the percentage out of your behind...oh wait, we don't.

 

10% of the dialogue between you and the companion would usually mean in games maybe 2-3 or 5-6 conversations tops. Since you loved BG2, let's take Aerie for example, there were first what, 15 or 16 friendly-conversations and after that you become lovers - with the whole two or three conversations after that, and those conversations were all short with only couple lines for each.

 

Wow, you sure are happy for little content, you can really make deep romance with that.

 

You assume I was talking about loot descriptions solely. I was talking about project budget money management. Let's cut loot not only in terms of descriptions, but in terms of quantity: less models, less textures. Than we can use our spare money to hire an extra writer!

 

The actual loot in game like PE is actually a very very small part of what modelers do since the items won't be very large in the gameworld or in the inventory and certainly wont take one modeler to make them - they would have to remove helluva lot of models from the game to pay salary for one extra writer.

 

I would sacrifice loot. I like companion's quests, so I would rather sacrifice a non-companion's quest if needed. Or a bunch of combat spell.

 

Kenup already answered this well enough but I'll reiterate this; on one quest you can add depth to the whole game world, all your companions, antagonist, your own character and give him to do some real choices and consequences, you know things what actually makes the difference in the plot or sub-plots and actually lets you choose how your characters behave vs. different moral dilemmas or ideologies. How many quests would you willing to sacrifice for truly well written and deep romance? one fourth? one third? maybe half?

 

Quests wont have to be just stand-alone quests, they can be used to tell over-arching subplot/-story where you can make before mentioned Choices and Consequences, you know things in which RPG can truly excell on giving you chances to build up your own role in single-player RPG.

 

Ok, you are absolutely right here, thanks for the clarification.

So it is less from 4M. Still a lot of money.

 

True but still not excessive amount, it's been reported that Baldur's Gate 1 cost 3-4 million and Baldur's Gate 2 cost 5-7 million, and that was when salaries and expenses were lower.

 

Not true. You can't dismiss a poll merely by saying that the sample taken is actually small compared to the whole population which opinion is involved. That contradicts to statistical science in it's basics. For example, US National exit poll samples usually consist of 8,000 to 20,000 people while there are 314 million people live in USA overall. So 8,000 constitutes only 0.00254%. So our poll is pretty damn good from this standpoint.

 

Those polls are made by professionals who excell in doing actual polls - They combine them from different demographies so that they can get the fairly balanced view on the poll. They go to actually ask from the people (either from the street or calling them) and not just put poll into some corner on the street.

 

There's a big difference in forum poll and the actual political polls made by professionals.

 

 

 

Point is, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a party-based RPG. It's an absolutely different medium. With 2001: A Space Odyssey you are a passive viewer, not an active participant. You don't have to do any choices. You are not supposed to live in their fictional world, just to watch it as things unfold before your eyes on their own.

You can't really compare the two only because both have a plot involved to some extent.

 

 

Actually in single-player RPG you are put into the situation the game developer decides to write you in, and you choose what you do as well as game developer can write the different alternatives how you act - these are usually called Choices & Consequences - you watch things unfold as the writers have written them and sometimes but rarely the world reacts to what you do.

 

Second edit: I have to add this too; You still have story (or stories) in RPG what the writer wants to tell even if it's not linear and if there are alternate paths or choices you can make and you still play a character what the writer has written - it's not just character in same vein as in films but still character - the difference is that you get to choose how your character behaves, reacts, what routes he takes, and what happens to him as the writer has written to his ability.

 

You do not play the role you want to play, you play the role/roles what writer has decided to written for you to choose from so it's not a given that there should be every possiblity conceivable - the roles the writer has chosen to write might not have anything to do with possible romances if he so chooses, same as the writers who writes films, tv-shows and books.

 

"Living in their fictional world" would be much more akin to the MMO roleplaying server or RP server in Neverwinter Nights - in which I played for 3-4 years playing different kind of characters with different kind of personalities with different kind of players who had their own different kind of characters with different kind of personalities and our characters interacted as we played the roles as well as we could.

 

Bah third edit: As I said and implied below is that if the romance is just tacked on to the characters the writer has written, they feel forced, and will be without any proper substance, would you be happy with that? With the romance which would feel pretty much seprate entity from the rest of the character that the writer has decided to write just because they were added to the game even though they dislike to write them (as Avellone has said)?

 

Well, I'll clerify. Romantic love is special among specials. You compare how much there are movies about parental love and about romantic love, you'll see for youself. There is a reason behind it.

 

 

Sure, there is actual genre for romantic films, they are called romantic films, I presume you know them but you know why they are called romantic films? could it be because the whole films are devoted to the romance.

 

Better comparison would be...let's say some actiony film or somekind of suspense or something and tell me how many of those films have some romance tacked onto them and it's either been just a unnecessary addition which had been felt forced, and sometimes very forced, and how many times it has felt very lacking without any substance?

 

 

So you are basically saying the poll should be discarded not because there are too few people who had voted (as you've suggested earlier), but because the poll itself is a magnet for certain kind of people, hense biased? Well, actually that is a much better strategy, it makes sence (in contrast to your first argument) and there may be some truth to it.

Also I can counterplea that romance topics are a magnet for anty romance people just as well.

 

 

 

Both are solid arguments as I replied to you earlier in this message about the polls, but as you just admitted that the poll is biased. Better way to ask about romances would be to ask from all pledgers if people wants romances if it means for cutting quests, choices & consequences, loot, other dialogue and sub-plots or branches from the main story.

 

So you've basically agreed it's not about a budget or time anymore, but about Obsidian's preferences. Am I right?

 

You brought up low-intelligence dialogue which has been asked a lot by people and devs actually -likes- to write low-intelligence dialogue, and where did I agree that it's not just about time or budget? I asked about disregarding low-intelligence dialogue because you brought it up and devs have actually said that they like to write it.

 

So I ask again since you brought it up, if writing romances would mean to disregard low-intelligence dialogue which they like to write for romances which they don't like to write, would you still want them to write them in and dropping something what they want to do?

Edited October 21, 2012 by jarpie