7th Circle said:
Any organisation that tells me that their aim is "to end world hunger" probably is completely clueless about the nature of hunger on a global scale.
I hate to break it to you, but there's a difference between aim and estimate, and the logic you present here isn't exactly enough to convince people not to follow their dreams or set the bar lower in their every project. Hell, I know just as well as you do you dumb fuck, that ngo's with slogans such as "STOP ALL POLLUTION" or "SAVE MOTHER EARTH" or "We promise no species will become extinct under this millenia" aren't going to fill the shoes they set up for themselves, but expecting that they adapt "Stop 5% of all pollution", "Save Oklahoma" or "We promise at least 10% of the endagered species will dodge the bullet" is but another overestimation. You set the bar as high as you can, and you work towards that impossible goal, so achieving a better general result than if you set realistic expactations and fill them.
7th Circle said:
That's a contradiction. How can you administer something without being involved in it?
Heck, ask a big corporation. A good deal of the higher-up's probably don't even know what actual work their company is doing, what sort of workers they got going at the bottom floor. It's not a contradiction, because a rather standard general practice philosophy is that workers don't interfere with the administrations administration, and that the administration doesn't interfere with the workers work. They're co existant and dependant of each other, and they do make decisions for each other on a regular basis, but they are not directly involved with each other.
7th Circle said:
You said that's "quest based" not "use based".
This is either a lie or a misinterpretation.
7th Circle said:
What you describe as a "quest based" system doesn't have an independent existence.
You mean in current systems? I thought this was a big argument for use-based, y'know, that the next generation would pick it up and perfect it and shite eh.
It could have an independent existence, as it's an advancement system based on the premises of exp, that is rewarding successes, but without a communal pool.
7th Circle said:
It's folly to argue that this robs the player of choice because the player can choose the type of response they want. In a combat situation, you can choose to fight or flee, to use certain weapons/skills/spells etc.
Your sub par thinking obviously doesn't extend into THE FUTURE, where you might have bested me at this argument by blurping out "You could also, of course, initiate dialogue in combat mode, rolling a diplomacy check for success." Nevertheless, I would assume there's some advancement to be gained from fleeing.
7th Circle said:
In a conversation, you can choose your response, which may be skill related.
"Which may", as in "may and may not be"? I guess you want dialogue skill advancement as a sort of minigame puzzle, where you choose the right responses to gain skills accordingly?
7th Circle said:
It's more direct but that's hardly grounds to say that one system is rpg worthy and another isn't.
I've given a number of reasons why a use-based system as a standalone is unfitting for this type of genre, and while these have been debated ( many times with "Gosh you're thinking of current systems. Just wait untill 2032" ) I wouldn't say they've changed much.
7th Circle said:
My point was that your earlier comment implied that a failed action is not a meangingful interaction. Do you hold that or not?
If you set out to fail, it's not quest material and would in all likelyhood not be rewarded. (ie. having no locksmith experiance at all, not to mention being dastardly unlucky, yet attempting to bypass an intricate lock mechanism ) Interacting on the grounds of possible success, as in aiming for a successfull result, we have a meaningful interaction undepending of the consequences.
7th Circle said:
No, it's not a multi-user sandbox. Sandbox implies an almost completely static world outside of the pc's (or, in this case, pcs') actions.
Well, per the example a player was still needed to get the ball rolling. The likeness to a sandbox, where you shape your surroundings by your presence, is, at least in my book, damning. A completely static world, that I'd have some difficulty to regard as a sandbox, as a dynamic world is one of the biggest criterias to the title -- I mean, what good is the sandbox if you can do nothing with the sand?
7th Circle said:
St. Toxic said:
In the same line, I write that I regard complete balance as something impossible. I'll assume you went out of the room for a half hour, before you read about the player control. No, the player can't do perfect balancing, but he's the one responsible for the character builds that he creates with the material, and as in charge of balancing it's simply up to him wether he will be TEH BEST CHAR EVAH or OGOSH, IT'S LIKE PLAYING IT IRON MAN. That is, if the game has sub-par balancing.
Nice selective quoting of me there.
Answer the question I posed. Why does the player being able to balance things mean that xp based system avoids the impossible criteria of perfect balance that you insist is essential for use based systems?
It's already answered.
7th Circle said:
Then you shouldn't be discussing the underlying game mechanics of it...
Oh I don't know, I just ordered myself a rpg mechanics doctorate diploma over eBay. Soon I'll have titles to bash you with. I might even be doing guest-lectures in your community!
7th Circle said:
Just for the heck of it, explain to me how you think Diablo II's skill system actually works? You seem confused.
I am.
Diablo II: Passive abilities, Agressive abilities, Combat proficiencies. However, classes provide a whole lot of variety on this field.
Diablo I: Stat based advancement, class difference only in caps.
7th Circle said:
Because I am trying to work out whether the apparent factual and logical errors are due to poor expression or actually are due to your lack of thought and knowledge. Given the way you are carrying on and your admission that you feel perfectly fine about talking about Diablo mechanisms when you haven't even played the game, I'll assume it's the latter...
If I would call you up right now, and ask you if your refrigerator was running, you'd say "Please hold." and go into the kitchen and check?
7th circle said:
Wrong. Diablo does adjust its difficulty; it just chooses to do so via plot and level as opposed to direct levelt scaling.
I assume you mean Diablo II then? Diablo I allows for more laxed Super Mario gameplay, ai. skipping levels and using shortcuts asf. Not to mention randomly generated opponents, or if you don't clean out entire dungeons to progress to the next ( because the exit could often be just 5 steps from the entrance ).
7th circle said:
Having now established that you haven't played Diablo, I now have to ask have you even played Oblivion?
Sadly, yes. However, I never went beyond level 15, and I had done nothing but prodded and poked after choices and quests where speech mattered, so maybe 10 of these levels were nothing but speechcraft skills. Still, being a sub par combatant on the theoretical plane, was not a factor of increasing difficulty. If your argument is that I should have tried the same at level 20, it's -- well -- pretty shit esé.
7th circle said:
Also, the comment about having "nothing but speechcrafting skills under my belt" is completely non-sensical as all character have all skills in Oblivion (just at differing levels).
Cant leave anything already assumed alone can you?
7th circle said:
Considering you can't really skip levels in Diablo II*, has it dawned upon you that maybe it's not obvious because you don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about?
* You can dodge some side/sub quests but you need to complete Act 1 to start Act 2 and so on. You also have to complete the "normal" difficulty before continuing with your character to "nightmare" and then "hell" difficulty?
You can in Diablo 1, so hey. And yeah, Diablo 2 has a good lot of those underground lairs which you can just run on by. In fact, you can basicly run up to the boss monsters without it getting all that hairy, and whack em.
Still, here's a thought.
7th circle said:
If you're 1337 enough, you can kill Diablo and Baal with level 1 ice bolts
I'd say that's a statement that warrants non-linearity.
7th circle said:
Your descriptions of your criteria do not match your examples of application of said criteria. Considering, you don't seem to understand the gameplay mechanisms underlying Diablo and admit to not playing it, this is hardly surprising.
The sheer thickness of mind not reading the sarcasm in a "I saw some on tee-vee" comment is beyond my comprehension. Maybe -- I don't know -- but maybe, and take this possibility into consideration: You have a problem with understanding what's communicated to you, and what you read is not compliant with the signals analyzed by your brain. The arguments you present often conflict with your earlier arguments, while others are rehashes of the same thing in continuation. Perhaps before responding, you could re-read everything a second time, and then have a festive debate with yourself, taking up pro and con positions in your own privacy, and forming your opinions of such, instead of attacking me for things obviously taking shape in your head, and not mine.