BACKWARDS_COWBOY'S PROFILE

Just looking at the poll results, I think we're gonna be able to choose between Ghost Stories, Survival Horror, and Other, with Other being Urban Legends. Was kind of hoping that Alien Horror might somehow be in there (even though I didn't vote for it myself), just because I have a bunch of sci-fi resources that have never been used.

I don't think anybody has mentioned the Fallout series yet. Those games have virtually non-stop swearing, yet it never bothers anybody. It just works with the setting. The world is destroyed, any crime imaginable can be committed freely and there's nothing you can do short of butchering somebody to prevent it. There's one point in Fallout 3: The Pitt where there's a paragraph of dialogue along the lines of "Fuck this shit. Fuck the cure, fuck the slaves, and fuck you fucker." When taken into context with why the NPC says it, it works. You have to consider the emotional tensions, current situation, and environment when using absurd amounts of swearing. Compare Fallout to Bethesda's other trademark series, The Elder Scrolls, and you're going to see things more like whore and bastard as opposed to fuck and shit.

Another thing to consider is the age of the speaker. I'm in college and have two professors who say fuck and shit several times per class. One is a Rock & Roll professor and the other is an economics one. They feel comfortable doing it because all of their students are between 18 and 24 years old, and it works. You'd never hear it coming from somebody who teaches 5-12 year olds. Teenage characters in your game would probably throw out asshole, bitch, whore, slut, crap, and bastard. They might occasionally throw out shit and fuck, but not every line, unless that's their thing, or it's situational. Adults and the elderly wouldn't be calling people sluts or any homosexual derogatory term, but they would be throwing out damn, shit, bastard, or fuck every so often.

author=kentona

We are writing tell you about an important change to Diablo III: we're going to be removing the gold and real-money auction house system from the game.

When we initially designed and implemented the auction house system, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But after much review and player feedback, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo's core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot.

We're working out the details of how the auction house system will be shut down, but we wanted to share the news as soon as we made the decision in order to give everyone as much advance notice as possible. Please note that the final shutdown will occur on March 18, 2014. We will keep everyone informed as we work through this process, but feel free to check out our blog post on the subject, and stay tuned to Diablo 3.com for further details.

- The Diablo III team

:O

And upon viewing the updated credits, you see LockeZ listed as a designer.

author=LockeZ

author=Backwards_Cowboy
As for "Random Spell" skills, you could have it semi-random. Final Fantasy III had a Geomancer class that used different skills based on the terrain, with the chance of casting a 9999 damage spell or auto-kill spell regardless of the current terrain. Or you could have tiered random spells, with each tier having better spells. You'd have a general idea of how good the spell will be, but it might not be the element you were hoping for, or could just end up being a status effect targeting all enemies.

I'd like to hear your reasoning for why this would solve the problems that other random skills have? I mean, FF3/FF5 geomancer and the slot machine skills in FF6/FF7 are basically perfect examples of the problem cases that I'm trying to solve. They're as unpredictable as any skill I've ever seen in a video game, there's nothing you can really do to improve or control or respond to them at all, and they lack any compelling reason for players to use them once they realize how the skills actually work.

The Geomancer's (at least in 3. I didn't use it in 5.) worst possible skill if I remember correctly was a moderately powerful wind spell. Using the random terrain skill basically guaranteed you would at least deal some damage, so taking the chance didn't have a massive downside like a possibility of missing would. The appeal I found to it was that the first few bosses after the class became available were dispatched much more quickly with a Geomancer than with any of the spells available to mages. The Geomancer was pretty much a decently powerful mage who traded the ability to choose which spell you used for infinite MP, as well as being a bit more bulky with physical stats. I didn't play 6 or 7, so I'm not quite sure how the slot machine skills even work, but if you were to make a roulette wheel/slot machine where the player chose when the spin stopped, you could eliminate some randomness.