APRILSCHILD'S PROFILE

author=Shadowtext link=topic=2759.msg52022#msg52022 date=1230000534

author=aprilschild link=topic=2759.msg52018#msg52018 date=1229999888

author=harmonic link=topic=2759.msg51960#msg51960 date=1229988252
One last thing about offline... it's easy to see peoples' intentions and hidden agendas based on their body language, and speech mannerisms.

words

Intangible, non-verbal communication is a lot harder to fake than people think, and once you really learn to read another person's body language, vocal tones, and mannerisms, it's very difficult for them to pretend they're not feeling a particular emotion, even if they can lie to you about facts.

That often comes down to knowing the individual, but there's a certain degree of intuitive empathy that works even on strangers, and it's mostly just a knack.

In my experience, you can generally tell when someone's being bitchy to you, even if their words make them sound sincere. At least in real life. Online....it's tough enough to tell when someone's joking (something that has plagued me for a while, since people have a habit of taking things I type ironically at face value), much less if they're just baiting you into making an ass of yourself.

So you guys are telling me you've never had the wool pulled over your eyes IRL? You guys must be pretty good at reading people :P or you don't hang out with girls enough.

Honestly, if you look around you, the art of deception is practiced constantly. Very rarely does anyone wear their hearts on their sleeves. Go out and hang with your in-laws, for example. I bet you anything, even if you loathe them, you're saying "please," "thank you," and acting polite. How about your boss? If we were all wise to the way people really felt about us, the world would be a lot different than it is.

Yeah, sometimes you can tell how people really feel. But a lot of the time you can't. I'm guilty of it too... there's one girl I can name who I have nothing but disrespect for and she's none the wiser... I make sure of that. Tell me there's no one in your life you treat nicely that you hate, and I'll be very surprised.

As the betatester for EtG, I've already give Max my buttload of issues in terms of this game. But I have a few blatant disagreements with Griever's review.

- Turn the monster difficulty down. Having strategic battles is one thing, but knowing that almost any battle can kill you quite easily is another. Having to heal after pretty much every battle removes the need to think about conserving healing items as you know you have to use them or die in the next fight. Basically, having overly difficult battles is actually detracting from the gameplay. Try and aim your battles at worrying people, but only enough so that they think about healing and have to balance those thoughts out with item conservation.

Which class were you playing? I know that I was able to survive without healing after every battle with every class. Also, when you're playing a Protector, the battles can be too easy. I didn't have a problem with battle difficulty until I was playing a mechanique (those guys need to be better), and even then, my first mechanique survived just fine whereas my second could not win a battle to save her life. Thematically though, I don't have a huge issue with the monster difficulty, especially when dying is such a huge part of the game's theme.

- Lock picking/computer hacking is far too random. For instance, I got past one door only to die soon after so had to go back to lock pick the door again; the first time it went straight down, the second time it took 3 lock picks.

Play more tabletop RPGs. Then you will realise the evil that is die luck.

- Add more lock picks. I never seemed to have enough, and after a while found myself saving/loading until I got the door/chest in one go. Having more lock picks around would've solved this (some people won't care, I consider doing this cheating the game's systems…)
- No random chests. They don't make sense if the chests represent things left behind by other survivors of “the burning times”.
- More food/water. There simply wasn't enough around to survive on. I died more times due to fatigue/exhaustion than I did from fighting.

Maybe I'm a masochist, but I also kind of enjoyed this as well. I felt the desperation aspect of the game was enhanced by the absence of necessities. If we had what we needed all the time, it wouldn't be a scavenging game, which is really what EtG is at its heart. I like the random chests because sometimes you can get screwed, sometimes you can get lucky, and none of the loot is stuff you wouldn't find in a chest. Also, some chests are random-but-not-quite - the gun chest always spawns guns, and the drug store always has medical items. I think if there was more water and food dropped, it would be far too easy.

The old man under the bridge was kind of interesting, but with so many buildings around why wasn't he in one of those? His story didn't give enough of a good reason to be out in the cold, cold that would've killed the hero after a few days sitting there. And why is his story so damn boooooring (it certainly made me want to bash his skull in and take all his items!)

Jeez, you're heartless! I was so sad for the old man, and I didn't feel his story boring at all. Actually, I feel every character was well characterized, even if they're kind of jerks (like Reese). They have distinct personalities and that's okay with me.

In any case, I was first confused that there was a rating for characters. The main one is up to you, and s/he has plenty of different characterization to choose from. Maybe that's just an example of how I play - I kind of like being a loner, so I was more focused on my own pcs than any NPCs.

Also the story can't really be judged because it's so much up to the player. Unlike most RPGs where you're railroaded along a set storyline (don't get me wrong, I like those too), EtG is open-world and thus, the story (or lack of) is up to the player. There is a main story, which I do find intriguing, but I honestly don't think that EtG can be compared "story-wise" to more traditional RPGs. Then again, I could be wrong.

My main issue with the game is the giant gap in playability between Protector and Mechanique. Outlaw and Volta are quite balanced (Outlaw is my favorite class because of stealth mode), but Protector can be too easy with the right gear and mechanique is just too hard starting out.

Other than that, I am quite fond of this game, if only because I'm addicted to character creation and very into the scavenging, survive-against-all-odds tone to the piece.

My Winrar has too, but it still works for me. You should give it a shot and see what happens.

author=demondestiny link=topic=2724.msg51397#msg51397 date=1229774717

author=aprilschild link=topic=2724.msg51383#msg51383 date=1229760636
I play(ed) cricket, softball, and volleyball.

Now, I just do scottish highland dancing, which is something like this.

lol that looks even more awesome. I may get my girlfriend starting this.

Boys can (and should) do it too. They were the ones who originally did it in Scotland, but like anything, the wars caused a dearth of men, so women began to do it in their absence. But if you notice, lady highland dancers often wear "drag" (what they're wearing in that video) to emulate the male warriors who used to do those dances.

It's also very tough to do. :D

author=iamnot link=topic=2724.msg51377#msg51377 date=1229748615

author=waytogo24 link=topic=2724.msg51363#msg51363 date=1229739780
is that just wikipedia crap or is it real?

It is as real as it sounds fake. Just check out the video.

Lol, this is awesome.