Philocthetes

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="17" id="2278151"]...I must continue in my duties to warn everyone of the dangers of such reckless actions....[/quote] Seriously. You need your ass for lots of important things. On the other hand, laughing it off does open up alternative responses to being ordered to "get your ass in/over here."

Any chance of getting this thread locked sooner rather than later? I like reading people argue politics and religion, even when they do it badly. But this dancing on someone's grave stuff is just creepy. And I'm not any sort of MJ fan or defender-- The Jeffersons is one of my favorite South Park episodes.

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="18" id="2277960"]...There has to be a spell that lets your human foot soldiers grow an extra arm! Imagine, sword and 2 shields, 2 swords and shield, 3 swords, 3 shields [/quote] A third arm sounds rather Fallen to me, not something a Kingdom faction would want to do, and also like something that could work well as an extension of MoM's Chaos Channels spell. Which makes me wonder if the Elemental base game will include anything like that swell old spell--m

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="12" id="2277493"]...I think that the 'real campaign' is going to actually be a real campaign - a series of events in a conflict between the Kingdom and the Empire (Humans and Fallen respectively). I think the Master Quest victory condition will be something else entirely. I mean, they've even released an official map of the world, which I presume would be the world in which the campaign occurs. It'd really be false advertising to say "this game will have a cam

[quote]... In short I don't want blanket spell disjunction spells, that undo any badness cast against you, if you pump enough energy into them. Does that make more sence?? ....[/quote] That's an interesting idea, but I suspect a large crowd might howl if the game has no generic counterspells. Global Disjunctions and the like aside, I'd be really impressed with mechanics that meant some spells could work undetected unless the target made a sort of 'spell awareness' skill roll o

Charlie's angles. Heh. They were curves, if anything.

Subtitles are so underappreciated.

I enjoyed mocking MJ more than the average bear did, but this OP is just mean. The man(entity) is dead, some unbelievably large number of people have an irrational fan relationship with him, and a much more 'reasonable' number of people doubtless depended directly on him for their jobs and/or their larger career aspirations. Let's at least wait until the Comedy Central News Hour officially opens the jackass-humour floodgates...

Beg pardon, but isn't 'mount' a really mistaken word for a sentient creature that might go into battle with you on its back? It seems to me that the relationships start 'down' on the centaur end where the paired units are a warlike analog to a figure skating duo, and towards the other end you find things like Anne McCaffrey's take on ' dragon riding ' and the symbs in John Varley's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ophiuchi_Hotline

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="13" id="2276716"]... I was referring to spells to counteract, weaken, or break specific typesw of curses. ... My mistake on being so vague originally.[/quote] No worries. I was vague also. The Detect Curse talk was at least half-digression into RPG taste debates, and Elemental is a TBS first. I was just muttering about how I think it might be fun if 'curses' were maybe more dependent on quest-object code than they were on item-object code. And I sh

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="5" id="2276177"]One thing I would like to see from an MM perspective is an AI that can recognise when something big is going on, and not only ping it, but automatically cut any automation in that area for the player.[/quote] Oh, yes, please, indeed.

[quote]... In rural areas without streetlights, it gets really BLACK, and fighting becomes all but impossible.[/quote] Unless skies are clear and the moon(s)light is strong. Here in North Florida, we regularly have full moons bright enough to read newspaper headlines by (you could read articles too, but your eye doctor wouldn't like you making a habit of it). Still, even though night battles are possible if uncommon, it might be way to much to ask of the art team to be able to

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="11" id="2276000"]Sounds like a good idea. Of couse, there would be the obligatory group of counter-enchantments and buffs to go along with it.[/quote] That sounds unwholesomely multiplayerish to me. Back when I had regular RPG time around a table, I was always far prouder of figuring out that a curse was at work by what happened to us as the game progressed than I was by being able to cast Detect Curse. Robbie seems to have a real sense of curses as parts

[quote who="Martok" reply="24" id="2265317"]Is Elemental even going to *have* a scenario/mission-based campaign? I don't remember seeing any mention of it; I was kind of under the impression there will just be the sandbox mode. [/quote] Brad says 'yes,' more or less, at the top of dev journal from April , but the thread is mostly about modding, and Brad explicitly rules out scripted campaigns. I suspect that completing the Master Quest in sandbo

I like the general idea of 'contextual counter magic,' but if I had to choose, I'd probably go for a traditional pratice similar to countermagic in MoM. I especially like the idea of making both the total mana invested in a spell and the caster's skill part of the equation for determining the costs and success chance of a generic counterspell. On the other hand, if the Elemental spell mechanics are based on some form of 'integrated metaphysics,' then perhaps contextual countermagic is

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="18" id="2275501"]... In my book, LotR is about as pure a good vs. evil story you'll find. ...[/quote] I admit I was sorta baiting folks with that--but only sorta. Sure, the main protagonists are, for the most part, 'good' or 'evil.' But for the LotR itself (do you think even a near-majority of LotR readers have read the Tolkien apocrypha?), there are plenty of details (Tom Bombadil, Ents) that smack of capital-n Neutrality. Then there's the end of the

I'd like to see the game guts always expect the same amount of micromanagement--lots. Rather than choose an MM level at game start, I want to be able to do something like zooming in and zooming out only have the micro tasks be what moves from high-res to highly-abstracted. Through the course of a single, long game of GC2 I can find myself wishing that I had finer controls on this or that for these few turns and wishing I had trustworthy AIs to delegate to for long stretches of relati

Please pardon me for aiding this severe threadjacking, but on the black-and-white/good-and-evil thing, I have to mention again that Gandalf was "the Grey" for most of his extremely long life--i.e., you're mistaken if you think that LotR is a pure good vs. evil story. Tolkien was a serious Catholic, so I can accept the idea that he might have thought he was writing a pure good vs. evil thing, but the text itself is just not that simple. Also, the colors for good and evil in an

[quote who="kryo" reply="5" id="2274229"]You only see the karma on any one site that was given in the forum categories that appear on that site.[/quote] Addendum: for karma earned in a site-spanning category like Off-Topic, you won't see any karma on a specific site until someone gives you karma from that site. Then all your 'non-specific' karma will appear along with any karma from 'local' threads. For example, one of Brad's nicknames (I forget which) showed 0 karma at Elemen

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="9" id="2271899"]... Also, it seems like undeads would also require a fair degree of essence ...[/quote] IMO, regular undead units should not cost essence, but an undead champion should, even if you just recruited the thing instead of raising or resurrecting a champion who'd died in your service. In sloppy D&D terms, I'm talking about skeletons and zombies vs. vampires and liches. Other than being tagged with that 'undead' word, the former pair

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="3" id="2271805"]... Don't break a mold because you enjoy breaking molds. ...[/quote] Unless you know the mold rules well enough to break them really well. Which is not at all a common thing. [quote who="Luckmann" reply="3" id="2271805"]... Bend molds to fit whatever you're trying to convey. ...[/quote] The trick for a game project like this is figuring out the 'bending' boundaries for those different well-known unreal-critter names. For exa

I confess I ducked this one on account of the format taxing my eyes and brain. The latter part involved not wanting to see things like "Was any decision reached regarding the economic model?" get an answer any time soon. I kind of hope that many (most?) of the questions will remain open perhaps even past the first beta, and definitely for the alpha. And even though I didn't do the form this time, I still appreciate Denryu's ongoing experiment. I'd be interested in a summary an

[quote who="dctrjons" reply="20" id="2271675"]Question how this is going to be presented in alpha. Are we going to see multiple layers of icons? Meaning, for example, 3 different icons at different levels of zoom before we zoom into the 3D map. [/quote] Last word I've caught is that the alpha won't be able to zoom into the 3D view. Seems likely though, given the icon proof sheet that Scott posted, that we'll see zoom-level variations in icons on the cloth map.

[quote]... Turtling is lame and a chickens strategy.[/quote] You were sounding reasonable until you got to your last line. If you really want to help out around here, please try to get over your apparent conviction that *your* playstyle should be *the* playstyle. Elemental is attempting to improve on GC2's very wide playstyle appeal by deliberately supporting the 'RPG' side of TBS games that has always been in the background for many of us. This turtle talk (snappers i

Talk about avatar-as-inside-joke... [e classic]:lol:[/e]