DARK GAIA'S PROFILE

Well, it pretty much comes down to what is appropriate and suits the tone of whatever you're writing/creating and who you consider to be your target audience. I DON'T consider my games to be "kiddie" games (similarly to how my published book isn't marketed to children) and I don't consider kids to be my target audience.

If people outside my target audience are accessing material that may not be intended for them, they're doing it at their own risk, I reckon.

Stephen King uses "fuck" and "cunt" all the time, and they fit the tone of his work and are effectively used for emphasis, though he doesn't use them in every sentence.

Likewise, I generally stick to things like damn and bastard and hell but I certainly don't turn off a work just because I see the curse word in there, whether it's offensive to me or not: I NEVER say the word cunt in normal conversation, because I consider it to be a genuinely offensive word, but if I see it used in a story, it often serves to enforce the gritty tone for me.

Hey all,

Just thought of something interesting (or not) that I'd like to get your opinions about: how appropriate do you feel bad language is in your games? What is the absolute point where you will draw a line? What do you consider to be "bad" language?

I ask this because, to some, it seems to be an important issue. Now, I don't generally have a problem with it (unless there's a fuck in every sentence and it loses all meaning or something like that) but I recently received an email from a player claiming to be under the age of 16, who was pretty offended to see the words "damn" and "bastard" in my games.

He/she raised the point that "40%" of my players are people in the same age group, and that although these are relatively tame words, they may be considered inappropriate to some players (to the extent that he/she claimed my "popularity was rapidly dropping" because of this.

Basically, this was my response to the player:

Dude, chill out. I'm a writer. I've published many stories with "bad language" in them and have a book with similarly "bad" language. I don't write or make games for kids, I make games for mature people who can handle mature material. I don't get paid to make games, and to be honest, I don't care if my popularity is "dropping".

I expect people who access my material to make their own judgments. If you don't like the content of the material, don't access it, and I trust that any parents who feel that my material is inappropriate will also not allow it to come into the hands of their children.

That's my stance: I at least expect people to make their own judgment. If the word "damn" offends you, don't play. I use the words that I feel are appropriate.

What do you guys think?

@Crystalgate: From what you've said, the classes are now working pretty much how I want them to. Aside from tightening up the bosses a little more (which I'll do for the next release), it seems that the difficulty I'm aiming for has been reached. The only thing to do now is to fix the randomness of the enemy targetting; that's basically a matter of getting the coding for the Threat stat done (as if does exist in the engine and can be manipulated) and adding in abilities, items and equipment that adjust Threat. This way, you'll be able to direct physical attacks to your Warriors and magical attacks to your Mages, which will enable strategy.

Also, Gunner isn't a useless class as a main class. I use Aelia as a Gunner/Warrior and she does very well - equipping guns actually increases your evade and critical rates, and the Gunner has Agility and Attack in between the Warrior and Rogue, along with a high evasion rate and the highest critical hit rate of all the classes (it's 15% base, plus whatever you get from equipping the more powerful guns).

As for Cleric, its stats are essentially identical to Magus, except it has slightly lower Defense and slightly higher Attack. It's pretty much a duplicate of Magus.

@bigtime: Try dual wielding status inflicting weapons and using Bullet Time :)

@Rainen: It's uninentional. They're not really speaking to Lionel directly; they're more speaking to the party as a whole (the entire group), or Aelia, since she's the general. Thus why nobody personally addresses him. Though I'll probably make a few NPCs address him in the next release.

As for why the Senator doesn't seem to recognise him... He's a ruling class politician, and Lionel was a lowly soldier when he lived in Corinthe. It's unlikely Brutus would have known him personally.

Well, it mainly expands on the previous one, and there are no new classes or skills (those will be turning up in the actual next chapter - two new classes and skills to match) so with most of the balancing issues from the first release already worked out, it should be a lot smoother this time.

Thanks to all the beta testers who helped out, of course!

Good point. That's generally how I did it in Legionwood 1 as well, but in this case, there's a whole extra stat to account for that really changes things.