Posts made by Lithium

@skew This sounds like how I coded at first, I stared at the screen, started with the functions I knew, when those didn't work, started digging through help files, experiment, so on and so forth. It's part of why I know someone who is a more practiced coder could probably make something much more elegant, but as long as it works damnit

@faraday said in Creative Outlets:

@surreality said in Creative Outlets:

I actually agree with you about this completely. And per the way WoD is written, it should be like that.

A professional rolling 5 dice (3 skill + 2 stat) gets at least one success about 83% of the time. So if you rolled a "few dozen times" and literally never got a single success then please never take that char to Vegas because your luck is astonishingly abnormally bad

Arguably though 83% is low for a competent professional doing "their thing" under routine circumstances. But that's an artifact of the nWoD dice in particular. SR4 and FS3 have different percentages.

A competent professional should be able to get by without rolling dice to begin with, every 4 dice is 1 success in a non-stressful/high pressure situation. So 5 dice should get them through the average work day. Now take a professionally skilled person (3 skill) with good aptitude (3 attribute) and a specailization (1 more dice) and you're up to 7. 7 dice should get at least 1-2 successes on most rolls, above 90% of the time. In general.

When you factor in equipment bonuses it gets even better (Because a professional should have professional grade equipment) for +2 dice or so, which puts you at 8 or 9 dice which should be 2 successes for rote/mundane stuff.

This segue's into the creative outlet part to me, because what a character is, and isn't, good at should be part of the creative process, but there is a very real fear in a lot of games that we're going to make a character, and then be useless cuz of sheet optimization, or twinkery.

@arkandel I was branching off of your saying you liked justifications.

@arkandel I like justifications for anything out of the ordinary. I also like the idea that all characters should not be experts at everything.

The current trend of give everyone tons of xp is to me, homogenizing. Nobody is special if everyone is.

If I have a character who is of a specific type, and they should be good at this one thing, it's ok to not be awesome at /everything/ else. It adds to character personality and strengthens the 'group' ideal.

If everyone fights as well as the Rahu/Ahroun, then they lose a lot of what makes them special.

The problem is we see these huge character sheets, and power creep gets involved, and then you need to have uber big bads to challenge the group because everyone is capable of taking on regular stuff.

3 /should/ be a perfectly acceptable skill level for a professional soldier with experience...

Limits are great for creative outlet because it helps characters find their niche and what makes them special.

@ganymede Sounds good, but, I still play those games on the PC If I ever catch it on sale where I won't feel like I've wasted $50+ if the game frustrates me, I might pick it up.

Otherwise...

FF12 Redone for the PS4! Woo!

I know what's swallowing my soul!

@faraday said in Creative Outlets:

In my experience, the overwhelming majority of players never read character descs. Folks can lament about the “good old days” and moan about lazy people all they want, but it doesn’t change the reality. Descs should be considered supplementary info for those who care, and the essentials captured in glance and emits as appropriate.

That is because of the prevalence of PB's and wiki pictures. We've /lost/ a major chunk of what used to be an introduction to a person's writing style and persona.

The description.

Remember when Descriptions used to give us an indicator of how much crazy we were dealing with? Or how someone posed, typed, or otherwise?

This aim for the most common denominator just puts an emphases on mediocrity.

@bored I feel the same way, I dislike the inability to even have social RP on the grid, cuz it's like, how am I supposed to make connections with people?

@auspice We all know that I'm not talking about the one line people.

I'm talking about the people who have to detail /every little thing/ in their pose about how special their outfit is.

As for spamming when people read a description? No. That's not spam. That is me choosing to read your description at a time that is convenient to me. It isn't being tossed out there on everyone's screen.

@jaded I agree, the Phantasy Star games were very good.

We could have six feet of snow drop overnight... have to dig ourselves out of our house... and still School would not be cancelled.

Society is getting /weak/.

@arkandel Not at all, what I am saying is that it's rude to not allow everyone involved in the scene access to the same information when it is readily available information that is /also/ pertinent to the scene at hand.

If your characters clothing is of such import it needs to be written and mentioned when you are arriving, it should be mentioned when everyone arrives, so that they can feel involved into the scene. Otherwise, how will /they/ know what your character is wearing? That's why, in my opinion, clothing should just be described. If you have the ability to type it all out when you are going into scenes... then you can type it into a multi-descer and at that point all you need to do is RP the behavior.

It cuts down on needless clothes posing, and I'd like to think that while clothing is important, as is presentation, but what the rest of a character looks like is at least as important? So they're going to need to read your description anyways.

I guess it comes off to me as spotlighting behavior.

@arkandel said in Creative Outlets:

@lithium said in Creative Outlets:

@arkandel You're making my point for me. You can RP the small things without forcing people to read the same thing over and over and over.

Well, I never advocated spamming.

Yes you did, if you don't even have a description, and you are trying to point something out to multiple people about mood, or habits, or the situation, and you have to include your clothes /every single time/ you are, advocating, spamming.

@arkandel You're making my point for me. You can RP the small things without forcing people to read the same thing over and over and over.

@peasoupling said in Creative Outlets:

@lithium said in Creative Outlets:

See I love posing /actions/ people can respond to, not stuff that is a barrier to entry to RP. They can easily look at my character and read what I look like, or if they know me, they have already done so and posing it over and over again can be... intrusive.

I feel like people respond to what people look like all the time, though. Moreso if it's something that's likely to stand out for some reason, whether because it just does, or because of context. Maybe you're in leopard print, hot pink, and wearing gold mirrored aviators indoors. Or maybe you're wearing a vintage Dior dress with pockets, which is always relevant.

Either way, I don't tend to have a description for every single outfit my characters might wear. The closest is on Arx, but even then people kinda skim and assume all kinds of things.

Yes people respond to what people look like, but there are /so many/ multi-descers out there that are /easy/ to use and manipulate on the fly. There's absolutely no reason to need to pose it every single time rather than set a multidescer up.

The why? Cuz if you are posing your outfit, you are going to have to pose it every, single, time, someone new comes into the scene, and you know what? We all don't need to read that crap seventeen times during some bar rp. We just don't.

It's rude.

It's inconsiderate.

It's spammy.

@ganymede I already own a PS4, I am just no good at using the controller for those type of games. It ends up being frustrating and not fun.

The nitpicking over first or third person is beside the point, the point is I fucking /hate/ the thumb analog sticks on /any/ controller. I prefer keyboard and mouse for controlling any sort of action game where reflexes matter.

Case in point, I died, so much, playing Rise of the Tomb Raider just for missing the timing on things, it would have been /so much worse/ if I had been trying to do so on a controller.

I played Dead Space and Dead Space 2 on the PS3, when it was ported to the PC, so much more fun for me.

So, all of this means is it's simply not going to be a good game for me, no matter how pretty or intriguing the concept is.

@ganymede Cool! I have wanted to play the game, but A) I don't do FPS with a frikken /controller/ and B) Money was tight last year.

I haven't looked to see if there's a PC port or not though. If there is, I will eventually play it.

ETA: I was honestly curious as to what they ate, since I only ever saw robots.

@Zz @Arkandel You can, and should, definitely pose aspects of the character that are obviously telling signs, that's called... roleplay That said I don't mind the occasional outfit pose but... some people just are super frikken obscenely bad with it, they spam the whole screen with their intro pose, half (or more) is there description 'at that time'.

It's like... c'mon, is that an important detail? The black bra under the white shirt? Why is it important? IS someone going to be ripping off that shirt? Are you exposing yourself? Do we need to know about the thong undees (Which I love to wear, so comfortable, but I am not going to pose them in cuz it's irrelevant).

It's also kind of rude, to me, to come in and try to dominate a scene like that, because other people may not even be looking towards the entrance, they may not care what is going on being involved in a really in depth conversation, maybe they're drinking, maybe they're in the middle of a fight, who knows, the possibilities are endless!

So, if I want to know what someone looks like, I'd prefer to look at them myself. Otherwise, your PC is just another faceless NPC until I see reason for it to be anything else. Why? Because it's a city. Streets have people on them usually. Lots of people. Bars are usually pretty full, dance clubs too, etc.

@juke said in General Video Game Thread:

@lithium The story explains what/why they eat. They process 'biofuel' from the environment, basically converting organic matter. The reasons why are spoilers, though.

I meant the people, what do the /people/ eat.

Clearly not robots.

@arkandel said in Creative Outlets:

@lithium said in Creative Outlets:

I love writing descriptions.

I just wish people read them more.

I love posing descriptions. I just wish people posed them more often.

See I love posing /actions/ people can respond to, not stuff that is a barrier to entry to RP. They can easily look at my character and read what I look like, or if they know me, they have already done so and posing it over and over again can be... intrusive.

To me.