SLASH'S PROFILE

My family is Christian Catholic, and I went to Christian Catholic private schools for 12 years. I still believe firmly in a lot of the religious ethics I was raised with, but the dogmatic parts of the religion were too much for me. The nearly blatant fearmongering regarding premarital sex, not going to church every Sunday, homosexuality, etc... it all strikes me as very irrelevant. It has nothing to do with what I believed was the core message of Jesus, which is: be a good person, be forgiving, and do you best to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. And despite all their trying, biological teenage horniness trumped scripture. At some point I decided it'd be less stressful to just be a sinner.

So, while I still think some parts of the Bible are good, I'm not nearly devout enough to call myself a Christian. I'm also not theistic, although I'm not atheist either. I don't find the existence or non-existence of God relevant to my daily life. I don't think it should have anything to do with my actions or reasoning. I believe good morals are important because they benefit humanity - which is also god for me by proxy - and not because they were decreed to be correct by someone with higher authority.

Now I'm a lot happier and self-satisfied! I don't stress about breaking rules that don't make sense. I don't feel guilty about sex. I don't condemn people just because of arbitrary bullshit. And I save an hour every week not going to church.

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I assume Warcraft is just going to be a passable medieval action movie, but I think I'll end up seeing it and I'll still silently geek out at the fanbaiting :P

Sorry, I s'pose "Tiers" was misleading: It's not actually a Fire-Fira-Firaga system, it's just the way I categorize the skills personally (by level of complexity). Each skill is totally independent from the others. But, I definitely prefer keeping things simple at the beginning while players are still having fun with the basic rules of combat, and introducing new twists as players get used to the rules. Pyre Call is something that seems very complex for the beginning of the game, especially if was alongside equally complex skills :P

Going off of Craze's "multiple paths to victory" - I feel like this design method gives players a lot of choice and creativeness, as well as a self-managing difficulty level. Dark Souls, for example: there are a lot of parts in the game that are just straight up easier with a shield, or a bow, but trying to beat them with a dagger just because you like daggers is fun and gives the player a fun choice. Changing strategies shouldn't be too cumbersome, so that players can try their preferred method of attack, but if they get tired and just want to progress, they can switch easily.

That's not to say that you can get away without balancing your game, but giving the player a mixture of options can help spackle over the spots you miss.

Oh, and finally! The last thing I like as far as progression that doesn't scale out of control: instead of increasing the power level of items, gear, and skills, consider instead increasing the risk/reward factor. This means that as the player progresses and gets better at the game, they get wilder and riskier weapons to use. For example, RPG skills:

• Tier 1 skills are simple and straightforward. They deal damage, they heal HP, maybe they inflict Poison. You start with these.
• Tier 2 skills have an element of strategy and combination to them. A skill that inflicts Poison & deals extra damage to Poisoned characters. A skill that heals a lot, but slowly over time. A skill that deals more damage based on the caster's closeness to death. You get these over the course of the game.
• Tier 3 skills are the weird ones, the convoluted but powerful combos, the riskiest tactics. Maybe they're only *slightly* stronger than Tier 1, but they're way more difficult, interesting, and fun to use. They involve multiple characters timing things perfectly or multiple turns of setup. We're talking Hedron Alignment complexity. Stuff like the Dr. Fetus in Binding of Isaac, which turns all of your attacks into bombs that can hurt you.

I'm experimenting with this for BOSSGAME! Your power level only goes up slightly over the course of the game - mainly due to a growing variety of options, but you get a lot of very different skills & gear. I want to start with low-to-medium complexity items and ramp it up for more creative players as the game goes on :D