KILLER WOLF'S PROFILE

Up to a certain point, it seems like I drank the Kool-Aid and played games for the story cutscenes. I designed strategies to remove as much grinding as possible. In FF7 I would grind, but only enough to get my limit meters near full before a boss. My strategy, for pretty much every boss in the game, was to drop three limit breaks on them in the first round or two, and mop up with Bahamut Zero or Knights of the Round (or whatever my burliest summon at the time happened to be). I was so under leveled on my first trip through, that by the final dungeon I had to run from a lot of stuff, which made it difficult to get my limits up. I only beat the game because of Knights of the Round and a well timed limit break from Cloud, while the rest of his team was confused/turned into frogs by Super Nova.

Since avoiding grind was my main approach, an actual dungeon crawler would probably have given me a stroke at the time.

Morrowind was the first game that really sucked me down the rabbit hole. I had to play it at night, because I had these ridiculous 16 hour shifts where I worked, and more than a few times I played through the whole night and ended up going back to work the next day without sleeping. The main story was there, but it almost didn't feel required at all. I was always looking for new gear in dungeons and barrows, working to level up my skills, and capturing Golden Saints in soul stones to fuel my enchantments. By the end of the game, my character was pretty much God. One amulet with a constant 2-3 point dis-spell enchantment yanked the teeth out of everyone from Ascended Sleepers to Vivec.

Once I started playing more home brew rpgs, I got more and more into grinding for skills. No offense intended, but, story isn't usually the big selling point in indie rpgs. They're usually all about features and mechanics. I've had more fun playing some RMN games than I have with certain commercial ones.

I came to the Shin Megami Tensei universe pretty late, but for me it was just the right time. I don't think I would have been as interested in the games (I know I wouldn't, since I remember reading a pre-view for Nocturne and going 'eh, whatever' several years ago) if I hadn't undergone that mental re-adjustment.

Now, to properly answer the question of what draws me in: I like finding new gear, leveling my team up and mixing skills so that they can handle a wide variety of opponents, I like graphics that are at least serviceable, and I like a steep challenge, so long as I'm able to chop it back down some through diligent training. My brief (all too brief thanks to ps2 failure) experience with Persona 3 has added in a desire for something to do outside of the dungeon, every now and then, especially if it helps me to increase my strength and the efficacy of my skills.

author=kentona
irregardless is now an official word. It was accepted into the Webster dictionary some months ago. sorry dude.

That is the second most depressing thing I've seen today, thanks to this topic.

Okay, it may be the pain-killers talking (I doubt it though, since I apparently somehow still have a near Burroughs-ian tolerance), but while it was ignorant and insensitive, I didn't find as much fault with the first Perry video as everyone else. In my opinion, it was very carefully worded so as to not actually attack homosexuals, but to kind of say "Wouldn't it be nice if kids/christians can represent their faith the way openly gay people can serve in the military?" Now, what he actually means below the surface... well there is another matter entirely. The trick here being that "let X-tian's represent their faith" usually, and unfortunately, means "carry out radical acts of intolerance toward everyone who believes something else, but it is okay because we really just want to save them"

Edit - I used to rail against stuff like that in one of my old band's songs, actually.

When I get bored, I look up random things anyway. Sometimes, my game ideas/story seeds are born out of that random research, so I guess I do this in reverse order sometimes. My problem is that once I have an idea/mechanic/story in mind, I'll go off the deep end with the research. I end up with 50+ browser tabs open that I thumb back and forth through, opening new tabs whenever I get to something I think might be interesting or something I can use.

I'm really bad about devouring photos. For some reason when I describe scenes in my head, I tend to get the feeling or vibe more than the actual appearance. I have crowd pictures, architecture, pixel tutorials, and all other sorts of stuff in a collection of folders humbly named "Project title" Resources. Right now, the main folder for one project has 5,072 files in 231 sub folders.

Am I even going to attempt to shoehorn all of that useless knowledge into a game? Hell, no.

I have been doing research for a possible project lately, collecting data from websites and watching documentaries. My problem is I tend to get more interested in the research than in the project, apparently.

I guess the trick is to do enough research to be competent in whatever field you are writing about, but not so much that you become lost in your subject. As a result of my problems in that area, I tend to gravitate towards projects that require less research, and by extension offer me less opportunity to take off on a tangent, bullet train style.

author=Sauce
Or you could make a living room with an open fireplace. Every main character from the submissions is IN the room, minding their own business, drinking eggnog, etc. The player can walk around and talk to them to start that particular story/game.

Nice idea and all, but it sounds like a potential nightmare to actually implement, especially if submissions come in that aren't made in Rm2k3. I think you would have to know, in advance, how many switches,variables, items and even maps each game would require just to prevent a lot of game breaking glitches that would arise if you lump a bunch of projects in on each other.