Merin

I'd rather there be no lore skill nor identify spell for magic items, nor a need to drop 100 gold at a store to find out what it does. For certain special items, maybe you need to take it to a hedge wizard or scholar or temple to have them tell you what it is, as part of quest lines or some such... but the extra step of casting spells or spending gold to learn what your recently hard-won treasure can do has never added anything to the game for me. In most of the games I've played, and all the games I ran, you just know what the items were. Quicker and more fun IMO. In the table top games with identify crap we'd collect a huge bag of crap, then spend like an hour as the "designated knowledge arcana, detect magic and identify spell" guy would make all the rolls. What a horrid waste of an hour - but if he hadn't gather them, and cast the spells each time we found an item, a horrible waste of resources. If Identify and Lore (to identify items) is in the game, it'll be a minor annoyance at worst to me. I just don't think it adds to the fun at all. .... I'm all for chanters, or maybe even priests or wizards, having special lore abilities that can tell you about the world and stuff at certain points - you need to get that exposition anyway, might as well feel special about the news by adding a [Lore] tag before the info dump. But having to spend resources on the treasure you acquired? I'd rather not.

While I'm all for content available only to certain situations.... in a party-based cRPG, especially where you can create new party members... this kind of feature (parts of the game accessible only to a certain class) will kind of be lost, or make people create the odd rogue or monk or whatever just to run off and see that content then drop said rogue or monk. I do think there will be reactive parts of the game that will take into account / acknowledge your main character's race, gender, class, culture... but this is likely to be dialog reactions and options of what to say, small things like that. Nods to player choices in character design.

Yes, we are disagreeing. Absolutely disagreeing. see? still disagreeing I understand what Scot McCloud's "gutter" is better than you do. Bold, declarative statement. You said you understand it better than I do. Yep, that settles it. You said you understand it better, must be true. Because you say so. Wonderful! Great job! Did you want a cookie? *looks around for a virtual cookie* Clearly you understand the concept much better than a professional in the field of sequential art does about his own medium. Are you a savant, like Mozart? Were you selling comic strips to the syndicate when you were just a tot? Understanding an author without having read him. There must be a name for that - for claiming to understand a subject with no research on it.... hmmm, concept is slipping my mind since all I can come up with are derogatory statements about ignorance, arrogance, bluster and hot air. I guess it's time for you to educate me. Let's see, what is the gutter really about... You were right, you do understand it better than I do! That's not what I got from Scott McCloud at all! Thanks, Game_Exile! Clearly! A man who's won Harveys, an Eisner and a Kirby is one who is mocked by his peers and disrespected by all in his field. Mr. McCloud has nothing on Game_Exile! .... man, the snark came out heavy there - but sometimes some things are just so plain awful that the only thing you can do is ridicule them

No. "You’ll create your own character" - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity Character Creation At a minimum, players will be able to specify their main character’s name, sex, class, race (including subrace), culture, traits, ability scores, portrait, and the fundamental starting options of his or her class (gear, skills, and talents). We have not worked out customization details of character avatars, but we believe those are important and will be updating on these specifics in the future. - that's from Josh Sawyer. .... So, uhm, what's the dev defined motivations for you characters in Wasteland? Curse of the Azure Bonds? Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines? Alpha Protocol? I don't mean what is the story of the game. I don't mean what external forces are coming after you. I don't mean what are the pre-defined limits of the game and the starting position given to you. I mean underlying character motivations. In Wasteland you are Rangers, sure, and you've been tasked with investigating the stuff happening in the area. But WHY? Why is Angela Deth (if you keep the pre-mades, even) a Ranger? Why does she do the job? What motivated her to try and disarm the bomb under Felicia's chair instead of giving the kidnapper what he wanted? In Azure Bonds, why does your Ranger work with the party? Is he after money, does he like killing monsters... what is his motivation? Your Brujah in Bloodlines is working with the Prince because the Prince orders it and you have to obey - but does she actually want to help the Prince? Maybe she's infatuated with him? Do you want to help out Nines because he's a fellow Brujah, or does she decide that the Asian monsters are more her liking. Where did Brian Mitsoda and the others at Troika give you the underlyng motivations for your Brujah making those choices? Oh, right. They don't. You do.

Who said the character's motivations shouldn't be? No, they didn't. Well, yes they did, but not in the way you implied. They had the motivations you gave them. They were your character, inside of a setting and a provided background. Many DM/GM's will do this with table top games even - give you a setting and background and say "you are all part of this town" or "you are all mercenaries" - because the DM (or cRPG game) dictates parameters for your character to be created inside of doesn't equate to your character suddenly being predefined entirely. There's zero. And there's a trillion. And there are nine-hundred ninety-nine billion nine-hundred ninety-nine million nine-hundred ninety-nine thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine numbers between them. It's not either or - there's a whole range of options between. So just because you can't decide everything about the character you make (what, you are telling me I can't make a Starfleet Science Officer in your Vampire: The Masquerade game? but I get to make my own character!!!!!) doesn't mean you don't make your own character. Some games can be pretty wide open (play Rifts, be practically anything) or pretty specific (play Frank's Buffy Campaign and you all have to be high school jocks) but you still are playing the character you shape to be your own. As I had said before, PS:T is like Total Recall - Hauser didn't decide Quaid's motivations and actions. If you were Quaid in Total Recall, Hauser's actions and motivations are NOT yours - you, as Quaid, make decisions regardless of what Hauser did. Not in IE games, no. Not even really in PS:T, though you are much more limited. Zero. One trillion. And lots of room in-between. Wait.... who was arguing for player motivation over player character motivation? I know there are players who play the game as themselves, making the decisions they would. It's a legitimate option, just not one I ever use. But who was saying this that you are replying to? Politely, again.... best to not be telling people who the "true" role-players are, and who isn't a "true" role-player. That's the kind of thing where you start to really insult people. Close. Role-playing games are games where you choose or create a character and make decisions for that character as you believe that character would. You can play pre-made characters (playing as the crew of Serenity, picking Batman or Superman in DC Heroes) or you can make your own characters. For single player cRPG's there is a range. You can play something like The Witcher, where you are given a VERY defined character (straight out of a novel even.) You can play something like Daggerfall, where the ONLY piece of background forced on you is that you start out with a mission given to you by the Emperor, and there are ranges in between. You get some fuzzy areas like Hawke and Shepard - you get to choose some stuff, but a lot of who you are is pre-shaped and pre-determined. You can take on the role of a pre-defined character, like Luke Skywalker, and play Star Wars acting as you think Luke would... or you can create your own character in Pathfinder and role-play the defeating-death obsessed gnome re-animator alchemist who is also a pyromaniac and actually hates practical jokes that you, yourself, dreamed up from whole cloth (well, as much as the Pathfinder rules and GM for the game grant you.) Which is PE? From the Kickstarter - "You’ll create your own character" Read pick from the characters we pre-created for you in that at your own leisure. If it is a character you created, yes, it absolutely is role-playing that character. You created it - you are the arbiter of what that character's motivations are. how do you even believe what you are saying? Wait, what? What your describing is the PLAYER deciding what the PLAYER wants to do (which, honestly, is legitimate in a role-playing game, as it's a GAME also, but bear with me) and NOT the PLAYER deciding what his CHARACTER would do. Let's try this - "motivations should be based on what 'you' the player have stated that characters motivations to be" != "something that you want your character to do, but know in your mind that your character wouldn't truly do" Those are NOT the same thing.

You have the player character react. It is your character you made. If the writer prescripts your character's reactions... it's not longer your character. You act like how Bethesda does things isn't right. It is role-playing, perhaps a purer form than some of what more linear-story oriented games do. Because you don't like having control of your character and imagining your character's reactions doesn't mean it's wrong. It means it isn't what you want. You want an adventure game, with some preset characters, that you can tweak the combat abilities of, it seems like. I like action adventure games, too. Recently just finished Alan Wake, great game. Since it wasn't a cRPG I didn't expect to have control over who my character was nor his motivations, and I was fine with that. But with a cRPG I want to control that part of the character. It is sort of the defining thing of what makes a role-playing game a role-playing game... not the stats, not the levels, not the loot, not the story, not the "choice and consequences" - all (okay, most, not loot) of that helps you define your character and control your character, but those are the TOOLs. The means, not the end. You are getting caught with the words and not the meaning - English isn't my native language. I obviously meant that they give a choice for the player either to save a baby or not but that should've been clear enough from my text. So, if it's the player's choice how his character reacts, and not the writer dictating exactly how the character must react... I'm failing to see where you are arguing with me on substance. I'm going to say this once, and be nice about it, as I think you may be giving what you think is a sincere suggestion. I've been role-playing, create your character and run with it, for nearly thirty years. I've been playing cRPGs for almost exactly as long. I have been both a player and a DM in countless campaigns for D&D alone, not even looking to other table tops I've played. I've tried out many MMORPG's since Dark Sun Online, beta-ing many of them. I cut my teeth on Phantasie, Bard's Tale and Pool of Radiance. I know precisely the kind of games I want to play. So, for the sake of future civility, please stop telling me what kind of games I should try. I would bet money you can't mention a kind of role-playing game that you have played I haven't tried (with me giving up the one kind that I don't want any part of - LARPing.) The kind of single-player cRPG I like isn't some pipe-dream - it's the majority of cRPG's that have been made. I can play table-top RPG's with other people. I played cRPG's, as Sylvius is oft to say, to emulate the table top experience without other players. ... Yes. And? Wait, let me quote yourself back to you - "You're not seeing The Big Picture." And by big picture, I mean big font - .... jarpie. jarpie. jarpie. You are not disagreeing with me. You are writing long posts that say what I said with one small addition of trying to tell me that, somehow, I am wrong for saying that in a cRPG like PE we will be making our own character and not playing the dev's character. It's like you just want me to be wrong, but can't find WHERE you can say I'm wrong. If your sticking point, that you repeat ad naseum despite all your examples, is - "the choices/options the devs have written for you - your character can't be anything more in the game and game world what the devs have written into the game" - you aren't proving me wrong. You are defining the limitations of the medium. Those limitations do not prevent role-playing... they limit the range of role-playing allowed. As does every game system written for role-playing - rules limit what you can and cannot do inside a rules system. At the sad state of repeating myself yet again - What are you on? Do you think that the focus of PS:T is the limits on your main character when they mean when they say emotional writing and mature thematic exploration? Really? REALLY? really? You can, *ahem*, choose your gender, race, class, background.... and you say this is more limited than BG because they are giving you more options to help shape your own character? "Excuse me, sir, I'm afraid our company must declare bankruptcy" "What? How?" "We have just split our stock shares 3 to 1." "But... that's a good thing. That means the prices were so high for a share that the split was done to make buying and selling shares easier. Now more people can buy shares, more people can invest, the shares will go up in price.... this is a good thing!" "Sir, each share is now only worth a third of what it was originally." "But you have three shares of each on you had before, so it's the same... do you understand what you are talking about? We have MORE options now, and this is a good thing for the company." More options in shaping the character the way you want it, jarpie, means even MORE ability for the player to make the character his or her own, and have the game react even more individualistically to the player's design. .... ....

IWD"s story (yeah, I said it!) was awesome and better than BG's story, IMO... but that intro and closing *shivers* were amazing! Keyser Söze ain't got nothing on that.

Okay, that example is better than what I've been giving. Thank you.

Actually they have to write the players reactions in dialogue to other dialogue. Amentep, you aren't being this nitpicky are you? Let me try again to explain this, and maybe you'll see where there is confusion. ahem and so... Yep, hence - uhm, I quoted it above. When I say they shouldn't write the player character's reactions, I don't mean they don't write the options you can choose. of course they do I mean they should NOT predetermine exact reactions for the player character. Major example, one that burns me to this day and I'll never forgive... Mass Effect 2's DLC, Arrival. In a cut scene, with no input from the player, Shepard kills 300,000 batarians. My Shepard I had played to that point would NEVER have made that choice. My character was torn away from me. Decisions, character defining or simple, should not be made for the player character. The writers can only give so many options, but hey need to let the player choose which option... in a cRPG in the style of PE which (you get the point...) .... So I think we're actually in agreement here, right?

Ridiculously bad math is ridiculously bad. http://youtu.be/0Qkyt1wXNlI ---- Forget the digression, though... don't you want to create a character and experience the 'verse with this music in the background? http://youtu.be/D7vS4z6ngQo Obsidian, make it happen!

Skipping voiced dialog used to be a thing for me, but I've noticed the same thing you mention - in some games trying to skip the voiced dialog either skips all the dialog or makes for a very jarring experience... so I end up having to deal with the impatient for the voices to finish. It's not a major complaint, but it is there.

I can't help myself - apologies ahead of time.... http://tvtropes.org/...talPiracyIsEvil http://youtu.be/zGM8PT1eAvY

I have this issue too. Most of the time I'm done reading before the voice is even half way through talking, so I sit there feeling impatient. Even regular dialogues this can come up for me. When they have the option, turning the dialogue subtitles off as much as possible helps because then I'm "forced" to listen instead of automatically reading because the text is there. I'm not against narrated stills/cinematics per se, btw. I just like to see them kept to a bare minimum, like most such things. Start of/intro to the game, maybe one for the ends of a couple big "act" sections, and end of the game.And as mentioned, can sometimes work/be needed for certain things like dream sequences etc. Altho, IIRC, I didn't even realize there were dream sequences in BG1 for a while because I kept force-marching without resting a lot of the time. Heh. I do the opposite. My hearing isn't the best, so I much prefer reading than listening... I sometimes miss words or phrases. On top of that it's rare for me to be in a silent, solitary location to play a game so head phones and avoiding distractions becomes an issue, where I can read the text at my own pace. I always turn sub-titles on. I think I played Mass Effect 1 or 2 once with sub-titles off. It did give a completely different, and not unenjoyable, experience. I prefer reading, but I can see the appeal to the cinematic approach. In non-RPGs, in games with absolutely set characters and little to no dialog choices, cinematic games are things I can and do enjoy. For cRPGs... meh, less voice acting, less pre-rendered sequences, less cut-scenes entirely, the better.

I'll continue to keep the fire burning for the Obsidian Firefly RPG. Eternal Flame.