LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

author=Fallen-Griever
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is God able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is God neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

From a "purely logical" standpoint, it's clear that god either doesn't exist or is a massive douche.

This makes the assumption that preventing evil is possible. The fact that God cannot do something does not necessarily mean he is not omnipotent. God cannot create a round square. He cannot create a boulder that is too big for him to move. He cannot name an integer between zero and one. These are ideas that simply do not make sense, and therefore cannot be done, even by a perfect being.

Likewise, God cannot remove human evil without removing free will. The possibility of evil is a necessary result of free will. And God has determined that removing free will would be worse than allowing evil, so he allows people to maintain their free will.

I like to pick enemy roles based not just on what groups mesh ideally and haven't been overused yet, but also based on what works well with the player abilities.

Earlier in the game, I like to create monsters with tactics that can be disabled by abilities the player has. For example, if the hero has access to a free self-heal and a sleep effect, I might put him in a chain of several non-stop battles with no chance to open the menu in between, to see if he can figure out how to restore to full health at the end of each battle. If the hero has just gained access to a stun ability, I'll include enemies that inflict massive Def Down effects on the hero or Attack Up effects on themselves. If you just gained an area lightning spell, I'll include an all-aquatic enemy group or two. This especially works well right after introducing a new character, since you know exactly what skills the player just got, and you want to train the player to use them correctly.

Later in the game, I do the opposite: I make enemies that deliberately counter the player's abilities, so that the player must improvise his strategy. If Protect and Shell statuses have proven extremely powerful, I'll start giving enemies the ability to dispel those effects. If you only have a single-target Esuna spell, I'll give enemies area status effects with high hitrates (low lethality effects: poison and blind, not confuse and paralyze). If some of your strongest abilities are multi-hit skills, I'll give some enemies counterattacks, so they get multiple counters if you use those skills. If the enemies are all weak to lightning, I'll make one of them able to cast a Reflect Lightning buff on the entire enemy party. At first I'll only do these types of things for bosses, but eventually I'll start doing them for normal enemies also. This makes the game get more challenging as it moves forward, and challenges the player to master his abilities and pay attention to his situation.

author=cho
i also think religion is a bad thing but not necessarily that religious people are bad (oh boy i can't wait until someone gets offended)

I think the opposite is true. Religion is like FF7 or Harry Potter. It is a decent product that is ruined by its fanbase.

My mom scrapbooks. I think that is way worse than this.

Awesome, thanks :)