QOTD Thread #332- Do you think that people should keep cats outdoors?

Сообщение от 322702

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Сообщение от Izichial

Like Elura said we mostly just get vanilla sauce for them here (delicious though, both warm and cold), only thing that goes into brownies I commonly see is nuts (almonds nomnom) and chocolate chips. I have the distinct impression that when it comes to baking people in the US are fond of the "try ALL THE THINGS" approach to variation. Also, peanut butter? Ew. Honestly I think I prefer to have nothing special in them.

As for metal things in food my dad managed to crack part of a dental filling on buckshot once so I'd probably be careful about putting anything hard in food on purpose. :9

Сообщение от Haxzor

Completely relevant

Сообщение от ElhonnaDS

#323- Describe your ideal video game in detail. What aspects of genre, storytelling, gameplay, graphics, features, etc. would you like to add? Do you have ideas on what kind of plot or characters you'd like to see?

Thanks for the question, Interest!(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##ElhonnaDS##DELIM##

Сообщение от Monday

A constantly randomizing, steampunk style dungeon crawler. It would have a plot that shifts based on the decisions that you make, without a generic binary morality system.

Сообщение от 588688

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Сообщение от 322702

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Сообщение от Rankkor

My ideal game is so ambitious, it will probably never see the light of day. A combination of several of my favorite games. This may be a really long post, so ye have been warned.

First off:

COMBAT:

As much as I enjoy a good shooting game, such as mass effect, I find that games where the main focus is physical combat, are the ones I tend to enjoy the most. In my ideal game, the combat system would be a mixture of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, and Batman: Arkham City.

When you engage an enemy in combat, the camera goes into a special position, and you use a mixture of attacks, blocks, and counter-attacks to defeat foes. Basically use the left mouse button to attack at will, performing combos when used in combination with E and Spacebar, and use the right mouse button to block, if you block an attack just as the hit is about to land, you automatically perform a counter-attack, with detailed animations that vary depending on enemy size and type.

SETTING:

Time-travel! I've found that games where you travel through time, are often the ones I enjoy the most (Such as Chrono Trigger, Legacy of Kain, and again, Prince of Persia, along with Assassin's Creed) so the setting would involve you starting in the future, very advanced very high-tech, but with some roots to the past, such as instead of laser guns, people use high-tech swords for example. I've never been good about writing a plot, but essentially what I would like is that the protagonist, has to travel to different time periods to chase a specific villain, having to recruit members along each world, and specially being able to visit the same location in different time-lines.

This can be aproached in one of two ways, and I'd be satisfied with either.

Way 1: based partially in real-life history.

As you advance in the plot, you end up visiting several historic periods in different places of the world. America during the wild west, Japan during the last days of the Tokugawa period, Spain during the inquisition, Jerusalem during the crusades, Ancient Greece, etc.

Pros: Being able to visit several real-life places, in different timelines, maybe even add a little twist by making these periods have alternate history on them, that you have to set right.

Cons: Can't deviate much in terms of plot, and for those who are history-savvy like me, it will decrease the enjoyment of the game if it deviates too much from real history. Plus you can't use fictitious elements such as monsters, or exotic creatures, so all the enemies have to be humans with different uniforms and weaponry depending on the timeline you're on.

Way 2: Based in pure fantasy.

You start out in a "magi-tec" society (Think Final Fantasy) that is partly futuristic, and partly medieval-fantasy like, the world, the history, the setting, all of it is fictitious, just to use an example, the world is called Arcadia, its based on 2 continents, different areas on each, these would be based on real life cultures, but still with their own unique history. As you advanced in the plot you visit Arcadia in several periods in time, such as 100 years ago, and 500 years ago, and 5000 years ago, 3000 years into the future etc. The game would have at least 3 different periods, past, present and future.

This would basically make my game, a "spiritual successor" to Chrono Trigger, which is based on the same premise.

GAMEPLAY:

As far as gameplay goes, the game would mix the brilliant and fluid combat system of Arkham City and Warrior Within, with the total freedom of exploration in the Elder Scrolls, and the deep conversation system and FULLY VOICED PROTAGONIST of Mass Effect (enough with the silent heroes, that crap became old really fast, after having Shepard, and Hawke, I can't go back to the same boring silent protagonist anymore)

Unlike Chrono Trigger, which severely restricts what parts of the world you can access on each time period, on my game, you can explore the entire world, from the start, at any time, regardless of what time period you're on. So it would be delicious to see the capital of Arcadia on the present, then see it again 2000 years into the future, and 1000 years into the past, and see just how radically different it is on each timezone, while still being able to fully explore every nook, cave, and cranny of the continent at any time like you can on Skyrim.

The game would be roleplaying based, you gain exp by defeating enemies, and enemies would scale with your level, with certain areas having a fixed level that you need to reach if you want to explore them without getting squashed. You'd have an inventory system, and can equip different weapons and armors, but all combat would be melee-based, with some limited ranged options available.

You can have up to 3 party members with you, and as far as they go, I'd include the very deep conversational system of Mass Effect, with the Affection System of KOTOR 2. Your decisions on the game would increase or decrease your standing with your party members. So if you plan to play a jackass &*!@#$bag, better not use the sweet innocent nun, and rather stick with the sociopatich serial killler who would approve of your actions.

Also to encourage replayability, at least 40% of the possible party members would be mutually exclusive, depending on different factors, such as what factions you align yourself with, how good or evil you are, and even something silly, such as how rich or poor you are.

Also I'd like to take the approach of Dragon Age and The Witcher, when it comes to morality.

Rather than be like Mass Effect, or KOTOR, and simply have the blue lightside/paragon bar, and the red Darkside/Renegade bar, which simply boils the gameplay down to "kick this puppy" or "hug this puppy", on my game there would be NO morality bar, you choose whatever action you think its appropriate, not the one that will award you more blue/red points, that's the part I take from Dragon Age, ZERO MORALITY METER, Pick what you like, rather than what you must to fill the blue/red bar.

And what about the Witcher? one thing I liked about the witcher, is that unlike bioware games, the consequences of your morality are not seen immediately. Too often I'm faced with a moral dilemma on Mass Effect, or Dragon Age, or any other bioware game, and then rather than truly choose, you can simply pick one, see the outcome, then quickload, pick the other option, see the outcome, quickload again, and pick whichever of the 2 outcomes you liked best. That just sucks and ruins replayability. Why would you replay the game? all you have to do is quicksave before any major decision, and then quickload to see both outcomes.

On the Witcher, you also make moral decisions, but the consequences of those aren't seen until MUCH MUCH MUCH later, thus playing as a good or evil character is something that needs to be done on different playtroughs, you can't just quick-save/load to see both sides, because this widow you just killed/saved at the beginning of the game, will have significant consequences more than 8 hours later.

As for the protagonist, as I said, fully voiced, can be human, and you can choose to be male or female, but that's about it. I like the option to pick your past from Mass Effect, so I'd have that too, you can choose from 5 different pasts, and these will have ramifications on the story later on. JENNIFER HALE IS A MUST-HAVE. as the voice of the female protagonist As for the Male protagonist? Steve Blum =)

Rather than stick with everyone calling you for your last name, you just choose a childhood nickname during your character creation, and this is what most people will call you. The game would have 2 male-only nicknames, 2 female-only nicknames, and 2 gender-neutral nicknames usable for both.

Music would be done by Jeremy Soule, that man is a GENIUS. Simple as that, he's a GOD of musical creation, and if I had the chance to make a game, he'd be the first one I'd hire to do the music.

As far as the plot goes, it would mix everything a game should have: Healthy doses of humor, horror, suspense, a few plot twists, mysteries, romance, and more. I don't have a particular love for trilogies, so for this I'd like to do something a little different, and have it be a saga of Five games. With Mass Effect's feature of being able to import your save-files into the sequels so that the many choices you made can alter the plot. Sequels would involve exploring different worlds rather than timezones, then alternate dimensions, and lastly parallel universes.

The game would make use of a Class system, though I'm not entirely sure what classes should it include asides from the ones I personally tend to prefer in games of this style, which is Full plated heavy-armored Warrior, and Light-armored, nimble, sneaky, assassin-like rogue.

PRESENTATION:

I'd avoid as much as possible the use of fancy CGI cutscenes. It feels really cheap and grating that during gameplay you see this gorgeous, eye-popping cutscene that looks almost like live-action, only for the gameplay to resume and see that in the actual game, the graphics look vastly inferior to the cutscenes. Modern game engines can produce truly amazing visuals and I don't think fancy-pants CGI is necessary to convey powerful moments when cinematics are involved.

Everything in the game would be voice-acted, and among my list of cast would be all the stars of voice-acting: Jennifer Hale, Steve Blum, Gray Delise, Simon Templeton, Yuri Lowental, James Arnold Taylor, Brian Bloom, David Hayter, Jo Wyatt, Claudia Black, Laura Bailey, and after being so impressed with the voice of the female inquisitor on SWTOR, I'd include Xanthe Elbrick.

Game Duration would be at least 60+ hours for the main campaign, plus an extra 100 for the many many many MANY sidequests, including quests for your party members.

THAT is my dream game. A dream that (IMO) is simply far too ambitious to ever be made a reality, but if I had the power and resources to make it happen, I would. As for the title of this game..... I've never been good at naming things. I'd prefer it if it was a single-word name. Nothing too fancy. The Witcher is an example of how a good name would be for a game, something short and catchy, but exotic and not common or average.

Сообщение от Levarus

Like World of Warcraft but in the world of Final Fantasy with Final Fantasy classes.

Сообщение от Haxzor

Like World of Warcraft but in the world of Final Fantasy with Final Fantasy classes.

sooooooooo FFXI or FFXIV?

Сообщение от Interest

I'll get right on this eventually. Since I'm a lazy %^&* I'll do this over time.

Genre:

Action Role-playing Game with additional elements from other genres (turn-based RPG, for instance). This is a very fluid game in the sense the role-playing genre is one of the player's choice.

Presentation/Graphics Style:

I would greatly favor towards something more cartoony like Kingdoms of Amalur or World of Warcraft. That art direction is more preferable because personally I'm not a big fan of pseudo-realistic graphics (Skyrim to a point, etc). While the latter graphic style can look good, I don't really want to be drawn into a fantasy world that would be harder to differentiate from the real world. Also, I feel that games with fantasy elements like the one I idealize are better displayed using the former art direction because there are fewer limitations and suspension of disbelief won't occur from the usage of a truly gritty, realistic graphical style.

Beyond that, I'm not particularly picky, though I would favor towards ambitiously majestic and large-scaling cutscenes to show areas. Additionally, whenever a cutscene happens, even if it's a dialogue between characters, the usage of the gameplay area is preferable, though a few cutscenes outside of the game world area is acceptable for major events as long as the graphical styles match that of the game.

Setting/General Plot:

The general idea is your character is a member of one of two warring factions, each of which is a group of nations that have been locked in a military struggle for centuries. While there are still some medieval-like elements (something common to many RPGs) such as castles, fortresses, and swords and shields, technological advancement has brought electricity and other present-day or even futuristic technology, though used unlike any way in the real-world (i.e. floating cities powered by electricity to stay afloat and so on).

Anyways, your character is forcibly drafted to the war front, a large continent with settlements belonging to either faction. The continent itself is the reason for the contest between the two factions, who want to claim it for various reasons (resources, land for settlement, advantageous positioning). Because most of the war took place on this land, huge swaths of it are scarred by the war, painted with wastelands in the wake of them. As your character travels to the war front with the newest recruits (either by boat or airship, depending on the faction you chose), they are struck by a group of soldiers from the other side. The resulting battle destroys the boat or airship, sealing the fate of all aboard, regardless of the faction.

Your character barely survives and ends up deep in the wilderness, which is either an archipelago of tropical islands or forest, depending on your faction (if you honestly can't figure this out, lololol). You will quickly find someone of the opposing faction. However, it quickly becomes apparently that your character and this other individual must work together to survive and thus the adventure begins.

The adventure can either go along a definitive story mode that involves your character and this other character making it to the aforementioned continent, where as a pair you avoid both factions (who think you are traitors for associating with each other), and eventually come upon the natives of the continent, who have gone underground or otherwise live in hidden settlements. These natives realize the symbolism of your character and the other character settling differences with each other and becoming friends.

The story mode then progresses with trying to make peace among the two factions in order to allow the nations to focus their efforts towards something more productive together. This becomes an even more important point when a distant empire that has been slowly swallowing nations one by one is revealed to be behind the orchestration of the war and this plan that has spanned multiple generations is drawing to its conclusion as the two factions, though strong due to the fact they are both nations combined together into alliances to ward off any invaders, are weakened and will inevitably be dominated by this empire without intervention.

Gradually, the full plan is cast into the light and these two groups realize their mistake and turn towards the real threat. With the help of the party, now bolstered with allies from both groups of nations and among the natives of the continent that was the warring grounds, the empire is eventually cast down and a time of peace is ushered in...or is it?

Alternatively, instead of following the story mode to its conclusion immediately, a player can instead go on numerous side quests and a secondary storyline that involves surviving in the wilderness with their new companion(s) (depending on when in the storyline this is done), eventually coming to fruition with alternative endings depending on what the player did.

Or at least something along these lines. There would obviously be a lot more complexity than this.

Gameplay:

This section is so huge it's going to need subsections.

Character Creation and Progression:

Much like games like KoA, Skyrim, Mount and Blade, and others, character creation will be extensive in terms of the detail of the character. Racial choices will determine which faction your character starts on (since each faction, like in WoW or some other MMOs lately, is a conglomerate of races allied together against a common threat) on top of the other bonuses each race gives.

However, the meat of the character lies in combat-related choices. Like in Kingdoms of Amalur, you can choose a path that involves dabbling in everything. Unlike Kingdoms of Amalur, you can literally take everything, including access to late-game abilities from every sort of combat style available. However, the choices for abilities (at least base ones) aren't unlocked in terms of talents.

Instead, you can choose what abilities you will get (you can choose a list of abilities by choosing certain pre-set "classes," combining them if you wish or choosing individual abilities and creating a custom list) as you level up. The more abilities you choose to have access to, the more experience it will take to gain levels (thus balancing out how much power you can get).

Besides that, as the character levels up, you get to choose the stat allocations to grant each level, much like Diablo 2 or Torchlight. Stats also automatically increase by a smaller amount upon level up based on your class choice. Stats consist of Might (melee damage output with heavier weapons, increases damage blocked by physical attacks), Dexterity (allows avoidance of attacks, increases melee damage output with lighter weapons and ranged damage, also determines how fast or often the character can attack and when they attack in a turn-based scenario), Knowledge (increases effect of spells and caster-type weapons such as staves, allows player to "block" spells by countering a portion of the damage, increases the rate spells can be cast), and Resilience (reduces damage taken from all attacks and increases health)

In addition, equipment greatly affects your stats to the point it effectively controls your "class choice." For instance, robes will grant huge amounts of magical power but actually LOWER your physical damage potential. There are obviously some hybrid variants of gear so players who want to use a hybrid ability and stat allocation setup don't get screwed but they give a lesser amount of stats than "pure" variants and generally penalize stats they wouldn't otherwise increase as well or have some other penalty associated with it (higher level requirements, etc).

Character creation also has another profound bit of impact - it affects your partner character as well. You can choose the gender of the "partner" character (defaults to opposite) and customize their looks and eventually name them (part of the plot - also this is important to the story). However, ability setups and stat allocations are automatically set based on your character's setups. It is intended to be a "match" to your character's class archetype. For instance, if your character is a typical warrior/fighter archetype, the partner character will be a ranger or cleric archetype.

You can choose to answer a questionnaire as well to generate these aspects of both characters (the combat-related aspects, anyways) if the customization is too complicated (but it's never too complicated for me - I'm just thinking realistically here).

Combat:

The typical combat in the game can be of the player's choice between hacking and slashing enemies (mostly KoA style with some twists) and turn-based (purely turn-based, not the Final Fantasy pseudo real-time one). I personally like what ARPGs like KoA offer, but I can't shake what a turn-based RPG can bring to the table (especially in games like Radiant Historia, where you can forfeit turns to gain additional turns later or swap turns off, though this is a mechanic I don't plan on mimicking).

ARPG Combat:

Most of the combat will borrow from KoA. It's really smooth and looks visually appealing. However, one thing I would move away from is the fact that one can literally spam click/spam push a single button and combo enemies to death. Instead, standard combos will require sequences. Advanced attacks (weapon specials) will remain about the same as in games like KoA, though there will be some slight modifications.

One aspect of ARPG combat I would definitely alter is ranged combat, particularly with bows. I would mix the Mount and Blade: Warband bow controls but increase draw speed and allow dodging while drawing the bow eventually advancing to reducing disruption when drawing (i.e. it won't completely stop the character if they are damaged while nocking and drawing an arrow, which is something that detracts from archery-based combat since it always seems like a player can fire a few shots off and then switches to a melee weapon), and firing reactive shots while vaulting and so on.

Ability usage would also be emphasized slightly like in Neverwinter Nights (2), but it won't be absolutely mandatory to maintain buff spells and the like. The idea is to reduce button mashing even further (while it is satisfying at first, it gets very dull).

Turn-Based Combat Combat:

This is the part I wouldn't change too much. Standard turn-based combat is really what it is, though stats may work a little differently. For instance, weapon classes will have "Dexterity breakpoints" that determine how often the character can attack with the weapon in a turn-based situation (i.e. if Dexterity is over double the breakpoint, the character can attack three times, though the third attack has a penalty that causes the attack to deal damage equal to ((Dexterity - (breakpoint * (number of attacks that can be done - 1)))/(breakpoint)% of the normal damage). The ARPG equivalent determines weapon swing timers, which will determine how fast the character can do an attack combo and the like.

Also, as noted in the previous section on character progression, spells will also have a breakpoint on how many times they can be used in a given turn based on the Knowledge stat. Some spells will have such a high breakpoint it will probably only be usable once a turn no matter what (though most of these spells don't have a penalty associated with them).

In addition, to compensate for the fact that most turn-based RPG combat has limited interactivity but ARPG requires much more, "action commands" (a la Legend of Dragoon, Super Mario RPG, or whatever other game you want to list) will be around. Action commands essentially mean that with well timed button presses, attacks can deal more damage and damage suffered can be reduced (or completely avoided, depending on character stats). This is the equivalent of performing combos and blocking/dodging in ARPG combat.

How to Use Combat Systems/Encounters:

Combat systems can be swapped between at will using the options menu (or by using a hotkey if assigned). Since enemies appear on the world (though most are randomly generated to compensate for the lack of random battles, which I hate anyways), choosing between ARPG will allow you to directly interact with the enemies and turn-based RPGs will allow you to interact with them to enter the battle screen (with first strikes, enemy ambushes, and the like, sort of like in certain RPGs).

Overworld, Puzzles, Dungeons...

The general idea is that the world is partially random. Survival areas are randomly generated while most other areas are static excluding some optional dungeons that are intentionally designed to also be randomly generated. Puzzles in all areas mostly involve hack and slashing through obstacles, moving them about to get to areas, accessing gated areas by finding switches, and the like. In addition, because I like Golden Sun's puzzles so much, there will be some spells accessible solely through items that are there for the sole purpose of granting new spells usable in the world like Psynergy in Golden Sun. These items, unlike in Golden Sun, take up no inventory (though using the abilities still costs standard ability resources - resources recover over a long duration of time).

Inventory:

What can I really say? Just put a static limit instead of stupid weight mechanics and stuff and I'm totally fine. Also having access to early stashes and the like would be nice too (i.e. a bank). Same goes for money. In terms of equipment, any standard system that shows stat comparisons between items is perfectly fine with me.

Sound

Orchestrated soundtrack, psuedo-realistic combat sounds and the like. Voice acting (full voice acting for at least important events, in-combat sound bites, etc) is also preferred. However, to innovate on this, while you can choose voice presets for your own character and the partner character, you can choose to add in your OWN voice overs and create a custom set of voice-acted lines (mostly in-combat sound bites and the like) for both characters.

Multiplayer:

While the game is largely intended to be single-player, one can choose to co-op, with the second player taking control of the partner character (or even importing their own character into a specific file to become the partner character). Additional players can spectate as well. This can either be through LAN or on a server set aside for the purpose of multiplayer play. Offline and online save files can be synchronized with each other (unlike some other games like *cough* Diablo 3 *cough).

Conclusion:

Too bad I can't program even 1/10th of this.

Сообщение от ElhonnaDS

#324- Who would you marry on wowhead and why, if you had to choose?

This should be fun :P

Сообщение от 322702

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Сообщение от ElhonnaDS

Can I say myself?

No- the question is no fun if you answer it that way.

Сообщение от OverZealous

Elura is pretty fabulous, I think I'd marry her

Сообщение от 240140

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Сообщение от Trollfucious

Trollfucious would be embarrassed to say, and got all red in the cheeks when he tried to type it and it was very hot. So Trollfucious will not answer this question.

Сообщение от Rankkor

#324- Who would you marry on wowhead and why, if you had to choose?

This should be fun :P

Only youuuuuuuuuuuuu

=D

As for the why: Simple, I guess I am attracted to smart eloquent women. Plus you're a gamer geek just like me, so that's a HUGE bonus.

Сообщение от Rystrave

#324- Who would you marry on wowhead and why, if you had to choose?

This should be fun :P

I'd marry WTBaggrodump. He loves being a warrior as much as I do.

Сообщение от Gone

Elhonna. I need somebody level headed that thinks before they speak, in other words the opposite of me.

QOTD Thread #332- Do you think that people should keep cats outdoors?

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