HALIBABICA'S PROFILE

Meep, the moment of truth! Hopefully you won't be so disenchanted as with PH4's demo (which I now know needs some serious help). Good luck, and if you get stuck anywhere, remember: I'm a living strategy guide.

Okay, Max, I've reconsidered your offer, and I'd like to make a counter-one. I would pay you $20 to play my game and review it, BUT:

1. You'd have to play it all the way through, beginning to end (not necessarily in one sitting).

2. If your opinion of the game is turned around and you actually enjoy it, you pay me back $10.

So, how does that sound? You get $20, only have to pay back half if your opinion changes, and I get my review. Fair enough?

Whenever I come to issues like this, I always have to consider three things.

1. Coherency - how does this subject tie into the world, and if it doesn't, what must be done to make it do so?

2. Game balance - how does this affect the way the game plays? Is it integral for the game to work right? Can it function better in a different way?

3. Payoff - is this actually worth changing? How much effort needs to be put forward to make this work, and will it make a big enough difference to warrant it?

As far as money drops by monsters goes, it doesn't really bother me how it's done. I don't care if creatures that would never own a dime drop cash for the heroes, because it's more an aspect of gameplay than coherency (to me, at least). You can explain it like Clest did and make it coherent with the world, and that's just fine and dandy. But, it's not something that would make or break a game for me.

I draw my own lines of coherency where I like, as there are a lot of things I don't like about other RPGs. For example, I don't like having treasure chests lying around everywhere. That makes no sense to me. But then, I turn around and have monsters drop all the equipment you could ever hope for and hide special skill books around every corner instead. Does it make sense? Not in the least. But I know what I like and what I don't, and I divide the things that don't make coherent sense into what should be questioned and what should be accepted as part of the game.

The reason I don't make a big deal out of stuff like this is my third consideration up there: payoff. If something is so trivial that it makes almost no difference at all (like monsters dropping money), then I don't bother changing it. It all depends on the subject of what's being changed. A better example might be a CMS. I always use the DBS in my RPGs because CMS's are hard to script for and would serve virtually the same purpose (and probably be broken in a few places). So, I don't bother.

Just my lengthy two-cents...

Hmm...$20 for a review...I'm not that desperate (yet). It's more the principle of the matter than it is the actual cost; 20 bucks is nothin' these days. If you're truly that deterred from it, then I shant bother you again. Good luck with the rest, though!

Edited, but left up for the record. ;)

FALCOOOOON CHOMP!!!

Side note: This caption's more relevant for me, as I know a portly African-American fellow who's a die-hard fan of Captain Falcon. He's kinda weird, and this guy reminds me of him.