I wonder how many different biomes / unique features of the land / world / structures and settlements, varied dungeon layouts and unique enemy types and how many options of consequences for how many (hopefully) memorable encounters are ~'needed' / desired; to reach a point where the world / game feels ~'alive' / close to an expected / believable representation of how an ~'ideal' / proper medieval fantasy world should / ought to be represented within a digital media such as video games, films, books etc.? What is the critical mass / tipping point to take a 7/10 R.P.G. into a 8/10 or 9/10 R.P.G. for I really struggle to properly in full / in an entirely understand all elements with great clarity in how an R.P.G. can be worth playing for the community at large, stand the test of time and become an irrefutable masterpiece? What are the sources of high quality player experience?
@Minus Dungeon Games I put a lot of work into that ~'work'(?) / comprehensive ~'divine structure' and I pretty much read through all of Wikipedia on religion and most mythology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pantheons + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C5%ABma_Eli%C5%A1 + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_by_type Lots more off of Wikipedia like listening to Native Americans and their legends and stuff just that is esoteric and off the beaten path as well. I also did a sort of meditation / used dreams but being awake to think more abstract / creative in parts as well so there is some funky originality from the aether / void / where ever dreams come from. Perhaps one could say I used a sort of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93%C3%B0r and a lot of trial and error and iterations over the years / decades; iterate, iterate, iterate. Also: have you ever read roger zelazny's amber books? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Amber these? If so then I have not. Yet I probably have seen some fan art or something and not noticed where it was from. I wonder how many things I could be inspired from and it is refreshing to find potentially new things to learn from or at least reflect upon.
2 and 5 plus 4 (well all of the answers really but mostly 2 and 5 and a bit of 4). I ran out of brain power a fraction the way through. I am still not 100% confident in how I feel about my answers in how close they reflect how I feel (there is not enough ~'emotional bandwidth' here to give proper answes and it sucks) in my heart of hearts but this is what we get today I suppose. Also to the length of answer kind of has to be readable so if I ramble on too long I kind of win the battle but lose the war.
5. I have lots of points yet if I had to touch upon them briefly I would say that lots of women do play video games, millions of women play R.P.G.s yet there is a noticeable 'gap' in the content in R.P.G.s where the end game is bias towards challenges more typically populated by men. Which I feel is a shortcoming not in women but a lack of content / reflection of humanity within the game world. I want to not make a big list of complaints for it would be long and taxing to read and feel quite negative probably and I would like to bring about more positive outcomes for the effort towards the community; optimize existence not pessimize existence.
5. Again, I feel there is a lot of untapped potential with women and video games. It seems odd to myself that history is made of women and men yet in most R.P.G.s the most critical and deepest parts of progression are usually all vastly populated my men by natural interest. Yet empires and wars were run and managed and lost and won and vast throngs of human history is founded upon women being responsible successfully in very challenging circumstances; that laid the foundation of macro and micro life in their times and long after (Queen Victoria comes to mind).
5. Extra, I feel the current state of most R.P.G.s kind of fails to manifest this balance / area of intrigue and purpose / challenge that is naturally populated by the interests of men and women alike. I find this most unnatural and it really bugs myself. I find it sad / kind of dead on the inside to find games where all of the easy challenges and roles and 'base game' are populated by women and men yet there is a distinct failing of the world to naturally allow human interest / ~'bring out the human spirit' (something like that) in women and to also go beyond just killing things over and over; death and life are two sides of the same coin. I think Minecraft and Stardew Valley even Pokemon do these things where its not just death death death.
5. (Edit: Oh god what I have done / here we go again with the bible wall of text: Basically I wish that in popular culture that men and women could be viewed differently yet capable of achieving same potential to conquer extremely difficult challenges if they both undergo the same sacrifices. Adversity is the only thing that grows character; and adversity is not sexist it hits everything equally) Men and women are different yet are the same; although the potential to succeed in high difficulty is possible with both men and women (soviet women on the Eastern Front can attest to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II ). Also it is kind of really boring / lop sided with only bits of the games where men naturally invested ungodly amounts of time in an R.P.G. yet lots of other areas / type of progression (e.g. not constantly killing things over and over in a slaughterfest) are neglected and I think tentatively that most women around the world alive and dead would rather not be in a fight to the death as a profession yet many men have done these things (like roughly around ~1 in 100 men verse ~1 in 10,000 women), perhaps because of the biological bias that men cannot become pregnant and thus can be less expensive to a civilization as a whole to ~'sacrifice' men to war / chaos than women (lose 90% of the women, get ~10% of the kids, lose 90% of the men you still get 100% of the kids with polygamy and yet with ~10% of the genetic diversity; because incest is bad X.X). This is an ugly, ugly part of humanity / human history and I wish this was not taboo to talk about. Yet there is a great inequality in biological opportunity for women verses men (meaning mostly physically); like some one has to have the babies, people keep dying and people need to be born and young to middle age people pay all the taxes / run the show effectively (a person gets 40 ~'good' years 20-60 to work before being ~'bad' at working / costly to exist on society). Being pregnant is very expensive biologically and globally around the world all women on average start having more and more issues having children past 35 and just naturally cannot have kids past their 50's. Which is really bad today because basically everyone (90+% of people above the poverty line globally) are in debt up to thier 40's or 50's+ and can't afford kids responsibly within their financial means (but that is a tangent so it gets truncated here). Most people in humanity's ~300,000 year history only lived on average to 20-30? It is almost like our bodies don't expect us to live past 30 and front end load the most productive parts in that 20-30 year window and after ~30-35 your body starts a slow and arduous process of dying while alive / aging (unlike hydras which are effectively immortal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality almost lobsters too). Life without civility is unequivocally brutal. Our ancestors had one hell of a journey to get to where everyone one alive today is an unbroken biological chain stretching back from the dawn of time immemorial, hailing from people who lived, struggled just enough to have kids strong enough to keep having kids and then not quite know why we are here and then die. Life back in the day was hard and messy and the struggle of the ancestors should be highly respected given that at times it is a miracle that we even exist. It is hard to live and easy to die. Biology is a hell of a thing and the differences of men and women are not random but serve a purpose (if not an antiquated purpose in some cases in modern life, thank god for birth control). Yet say you have some kids (a biologically successful human being has kids, and is not a biological DNA dead end) Dad dies of one of 10,000 things, kids are starving now what do you do? Let the kids die or adapt, or rise to the occasion? Same thing with Mom, if she dies same things apply to Dad. Maybe this is why men and women can do the same things yet also why kids raised in broken families suffer from single parentage in mental development (also less resources and kids are expensive no matter what era of human history). Also having no real Dad and or Mom kind of sucks it turns out for the kids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_figure + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_deprivation God help the poor bastard who has no mother and is loved by no one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans#Conditions_in_orphanages . I am getting a bit off track. Men and women are different because history and life is hard and we inherited stone age biology in a modern reality world. Yet I feel this difference is not being treated properly / applied to its full potential and I feel there is a lack in ~'having the entire picture' of humanity with both masculine and feminine elements that comprise the medieval fantasy worlds and or interactive hero's / heroine's journey. I am aware of this 'heroine's journey' of taming the uncivilized man and all that with the Vampires, Pirates, Billionaire etc, but I refuse to believe that is the same thing as what is found in deep progression in R.P.G.s for it is so basic and misses a lot of fun and emotional development and ~'human depth' and it just seems like its missing some kind of point I am struggling to properly articulate; like underselling the emotional depth of potential in women like putting a square peg through a round hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ePDKlF6T0 + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w5x04l9S-o . If I am wrong on this then life has one wicked sense of humour for my god that would be insanely tragic. As in to a significant degree my most valued of my life's works would feel like a sad joke in where I am wrong to believe that women are able in having the same challenge conquering ability as men; yet I think that I am right in believing in the latent potential of all women. As in I strongly (if not outright palpably) believe that women do have equal amounts of potential on average as men. That is what I base my whole video game foundation on that women can be just as good as men in high difficulty situations. Yet I can't be stupid and wash away 300,000 years of human history just because I want to chase an ideal that actively wars with myself. This is not easy to find ways that make peace with the masculine and feminist components of the hero's / heroine's journey and be confident in my execution of these things for I don't have a women's brain nor body. Thus I am effectively at least half blind and this irks myself to no avail that over half of the human world is female yet I am probably blind to many critical feminine psychological things / aspects of life / human existence. It feels as if all that I can do is listen and try to see what works and keep failing until, 'something' works; if nothing works. Yet I think that I can pull this off and make a game (hopefully eventually if I win enough battles with implementing game mechanics, wish myself luck) so both of these parts of humanity can flourish together. So that hopefully there is no latent ~'haunt' upon world with a huge schism / void / a large realistic distance between the interests of men and of the interests of women; hopefully they can ~'live together in harmony'. As it currently seems like in most R.P.G.s today where there is this divide of masculine and feminine in deep progression (intentional or not by the developers) where all too often in an R.P.G. you either kill everything to rule the world or effectively you raise everything to rule the world. I wish you could do both like in world history; perhaps as it should be living in a sort of effective balance / harmony.
I have more thoughts but damn I am running out of room here and I wish that I could say more with less for I feel like a potato that is not even half peeled and I am shown as ready to consume. I feel half baked in my replies and it bugs myself (not as in high, but like the potato analogy; I don't do drugs for there is not enough time to waste today / everyday).
I kind of butchered the rest of the points but yeah I can't just telepathy my understanding into you guys with this so I am sorry but yeah this is very much a half peeled potato on a dinner plate XD.
2. Is kind of like being like: My human experience on everything history + ~video games / medieval fantasy and dev tools = R.P.G. I want to make before I die (hopefully). As a result I am feeling kind of trapped in a huge problem of where I just feel like I suck at communicating my understanding of the world and how things tend to work out in small bite sized pieces that hopefully do something to communicate a fraction of how I feel / think; given this low 'emotional bandwidth' communication medium.
"Interesting. I haven't played WoW myself, but I've looked into it some. How do item teirs facilitate a player's ability to skip content and/or progress to other areas?"
- The attached vanilla World of Warcraft Map with level ranges, main cities, dungeons and raids marked upon each respective area ( source link: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/am6owg/labeled_classic_wow_... ) highlights / emphasizes the wide diversity of choice (dungeons 5 players) are green, yellow and orange mountain icons, main cities are faction icons, raids (20 or 40 players, UBRS is the only 10 man raid) red mountain icons) end game world (raid) bosses use dragon icons) the player has in what areas of the world the player may pursue to advance their character's level and potentially short-term, mid-term and long-term power by pursing deeper levels of challenges scattered across the world. As in the (non exhaustive) forms of quest chains, dungeons, battle grounds, end-game raids, and potentially player trade / auction house ~'farming'.
Power brokers of WoW: -Player levels = player power
(Acquired by just adventuring in any level range area (efficient leveling or not) ~+/- 5 player character levels (e.g. 27 can go to 32 areas with random low power questing items ~5-10 levels lower that character level) and the player can keep doing this all the way to max character level (of level 60). Pretty much anyone interested can level up any character to max level. Yet leveling takes around ~2 months of relaxed / mediocre / average play skill / intensity to go from 1 to 60 for most classes / play-styles (for vanilla WoW).
-Equippable / Usable / Consumable Items = Player power (So far just like any R.P.G. yet vanilla WoW has low / medium and deep content.)
Short-term / ~shallow / low-power / questing / bad PvP items: A player can 'bare bones' / ghetto / questing gear trash / random low power item ~filter feed / semi-passively / semi actively / 'just playing the game' obtain a wide collection of items to equip that are obtained without great difficulty that trickle to a player character in all leveling scenarios; even if the player is being very inefficient they will get 'enough' random low power easy to obtain items to 'get the job done' for all questing level brackets from 1 to 60 / max level. It might be slower or painful in some spots. As in like going 'dry' / unlucky / not getting a weapon upgrade for say ~10 levels and also using less optimal specializations for questing / doing damage to average questing creatures.
Mid-term / ~average / medium power / ~'power' questing / kind of PvP items: A player who wants a bit more impact / power in their level bracket / general areas of applicable / suitable content / wants to kill / dominate things kinda fast / be decent can choose to stop taking random path willy nilly and make a plan and willing take on ~'islands' (only in select locations / not everywhere) of challenging content with average to high chances of frustration / character death / difficulty and they have to make a choice to risk their easy play style for a more structured / somewhat more disciplined playstyle where they must understand some level of incoming threats and proactively solve these problems to win; or else they lose / suck / constantly wipe the group and get black listed for you just don't get 'it' / are bad for other people's progression. If a player is not an inept troglodyte and can spent stress and use risk to over come extra challenges (and don't just face plant from the extra challenge) they can generally get rewarded with items that are around twice as powerful if not effectively (3 or 4 times) more so than the low power trickle fed 'questing trash' items that are only good for questing and struggling to do anything else; but act as a starting point for mid-term ~average challenges (like low to mid 10-50 level dungeons, long tedious / challenging quest chains that require either lots of skill or help from without / a group / a carry; also PvP battlegrounds / world PvP can get players 'honour points' for not sucking and these can be farmed to get good items that can last at least 10 to even 20-30+ levels of questing).
Long-term / hard / high power / wreck and shred through questing / Good PvP items: A player who just wants to kick ass and take names has to sacrifice the conveniences and excuses of low and average difficulty to 'full send it' / push their character to the very edges of performance in order to risk a lot of frustration for potentially huge pay off; separate the children from adults effectively. This means getting as much out of the world and opportunities presented / farming the meta / making no excuses and pushing yourself to the very edge and usually willingly undertaking lots of frustration, pain and sacrifice in order to squeeze out these chances to get these game changing items. These items can at least last 20 to 40-50+ levels of questing and they are fear inducing for players of the same level bracket to play against. These require a lot of sacrifice and off the highest player power that is still sane / reasonable to obtain.
End Game items: A player who wants to see what is just beyond leveling, a bit more into the world, a bit more content to much on, play with friends, large scale battles, see the sights, feel the experience of raiding or large scale PvP, this is the end of the game, a time of high reward, high risk and where the end and the beginning meet. You get to be a 'hero' / 'heroine' / live the class fantasy, be a force to be reckoned with, master of almost all of the game's content. You have little reason to push forward besides maybe that one extra shiny item that gives a lot of power but is just outside of reach; yet if not you still are a master of the game; not the best but you definitely had your fun.
Deep End Game items: A player who aspires to be the best they can be goes after these items, you suffer and win or you give up and make an alt or play something else. No rest for the wicked. You don't have friends for fun, you have people who are just as nuts as you who you struggle with in good times and bad. You are in the trenches and it is getting dark and the night is very long and cold. Can you win?
"I don't disagree, but I'm not clear on how this stacks up to other games. What are some games that do pander or feel childish? What are contrived lack of mature themes? All fictional worlds are "contrived", but that's clearly not what is meant here. What are some examples of "contrived worlds" as a counterpoint?"
- Plate bikinis with women with breasts bigger than their head depicted to win medieval wars, skinny little spaghetti noodle armed pretty boys swinging slabs of metal with the weight of a truck; yet their wrists couldn't even threaten a pop can if they tried to squeeze it. Look at these poor bastards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_by_casualties I don't see any concubines and prepubescent degenerates in the winners' column. All the of the anime B.S. and painfully obvious and stupid yet insanely profitable 'lowest common denominator' logic that goes into most super hero / heroine movie / game plots where magic person lives in regular world (that conveniently anyways changes to the current-day of audience) but the movie / game ignores these magic power potential in it would realistically be used to make money, win wars, be corrupt and not stupid stuff like save plot armour nobodies that panders to convenient audience whims decade by decade of popular culture. The world is a messed up place just behind the thin veneer of civility; listen to this guy; Stephan Westmann a German WW1 combat veteran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XruYsAmKLyU , look at the Battle of Stalingrad or what Leopold II did in the Congo, the history under Men Behind the Sun, or the realities of communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity_under_communist_re... or nature and people like the Black Plague, Or when potentially modern homo sapiens / humans almost went extinct over a super eruption with a decade of volcanic winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck... . If not that then the evidence that we all descend from monsters who committed genocide that drove whole human cultures, subraces and races like the Neanderthal and Denisovian and entire animal species and whole genetic orders of species extinct. Or how our blood of our blood ancestors raped so many women that almost 1 in 200 males can find a common ancestor; and there are like 9 or 10 of these super progenitors in modern human genealogy. Murder to the scale where ten of millions of innocent bastards get wiped out for the sake of the ideal of a handful of people; that ultimately fails anyway in under 100 years. 1,000 years of war over lines on a map and still we have pretty much the same damn map so what was the point; look at it! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1000_CE,_Europe.svg ? Torture so extremely evil that nothing across all the billions of years of all known history of nature's wickedest instances of the animal kingdom can compare; where death is a high charity to its victims. All of this across all of our shared human history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UL4rmBLOnw . Our world is built on evil; yet it is resurrected from hell with true love.
"What is "audio 'juice'" is that a specific type of music compilation?"
- Very high / superb quality sound effects that happen frequently and with intelligent placement and high saturation that bring a level of richness beyond even regular full blown 1st person existence as a human being. Or like really cool sound effects for buttons, icons, sound details that can be easily underappreciated. Yet if implemented with high quality they can bring to life a rich spirit to a perhaps otherwise bland mediocre setting / scene / ho-hum / experience. The little audio details that makes a ~7/10 'B' into a ~8/10 'A'.
"Why? I mean, I'm sure it is, but what makes it better than others? What is it about the combat that makes it great?"
Incredibly so. I must have raided vanilla WoW (a very much female consciously designed; albeit very masculinely biased game from the get go) with 750 people at least over a 5 year span and maybe 1 in 20 were women. Of a guild or group of guilds (some 'rented players' thrown in) of 300 or so people with about ~100 active people I can count on one hand women who cleared all of the hardcore raid content as a core raider who ~ran / carried / lead the raid and I still have at least a spare finger (to be fair about 10-20 women were ~'carried' / did not last a month). One of these Core Raider / Guild Officer women was a transplant from another guild as well. At one point in world history my old guild Unite And Vanquish was the undisputed best raiding guild in the biggest vanilla WoW server in the world and a server open to the entire world hosting arguably the greatest M.M.O.R.P.G. in human history. It took 40 hardened veterans in the non-world buffed uptuned Naxxramas over 4 hours to get one clear of all bosses (well 35 great players in under / around ~3 hours to set records but some very rare people are high powered mutants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrd-sfoAv9A or a down right aberration of en mass ever-prevalent synchronized human nature; like myself X.X)
I might need a ~'part 2' for my observations / personal reflections on the non-question bits / parts of your reply. For this, my brain power is feeling quite low after that trip around space, time and my own ~'chromatic' sets of memory XD.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be more awake to give this a proper answer. I am just about to call it a night when I found this XD. Lots of points and I feel that I should use my ~'full' brain power to give a proper set of replies / answers. Perhaps I will have a dream about it or something perhaps. Although until I can better focus (hopefully tomorrow / later today after so sleep); I can give this a proper shot at giving a proper set of answers / thoughts. It is good to see an active / intrigued mind though :-).
I agree with the desire for a more wide mythology for giving life to the ~'divine workings' of the game setting. I went to look far and wide for all over the globe to ~'listen' / to better understand the myths and legends of people groups across the world and across human history. I tried / I am trying to sort of codify / make a system / make a structured pantheon / use 'soft power' / try not to have a bunch of dudes and ladies in togas with wishy washy powers as the 'gods' / 'goddesses' of the medieval fantasy setting. I ended up with a rough idea of the main gods / goddesses which look up / care take / have soft power influence over mostly mortal affairs: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Black-Book-Pantheon-845732650 + https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Balance-of-the-Powers-the-D... + https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/The-Jewelled-Eye-Of-AGABAL-... This only happened over more than a decade of iteration and trial and error. I feel that I am still not fully 'done' / 'finished' yet either. Iterate, iterate, iterate.
Okay should an open test bed mod be made for these type of new experimental features / pushing the engine to new areas of performance? Not a game per say but a show case open to the community to tinker and try new ideas with? Like a developer test / 'blocked out' experimental set of areas?
Would anyone also be interested in that kind of idea? Share ideas, try them out to see if they work and share solutions and theory-craft? Given the nature of the open source if we find solutions everyone can use them to make their projects better so everyone wins?
I try to share my new features / successful experiments and experiences trying to realize my theory crafting so far. Although I wonder if a more direct and open approach would be better so more minds could come together and we could have a test bed to share and show case solutions and even known problems. It could be almost like a community digital test bed library of sort preserving and sharing developer knowledge. This could potentially lead to an easier learning curve as in being able to show new people examples of how to build things and or show bits of experimental features like in an open interactive feature archive. Kind of like this but open to the community and ~'alive': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9hGJy0Hn8M
I wonder how many different biomes / unique features of the land / world / structures and settlements, varied dungeon layouts and unique enemy types and how many options of consequences for how many (hopefully) memorable encounters are ~'needed' / desired; to reach a point where the world / game feels ~'alive' / close to an expected / believable representation of how an ~'ideal' / proper medieval fantasy world should / ought to be represented within a digital media such as video games, films, books etc.? What is the critical mass / tipping point to take a 7/10 R.P.G. into a 8/10 or 9/10 R.P.G. for I really struggle to properly in full / in an entirely understand all elements with great clarity in how an R.P.G. can be worth playing for the community at large, stand the test of time and become an irrefutable masterpiece? What are the sources of high quality player experience?
@buttons I tried to pay like 5,000 dollars (to start) for a ~'skyrim clone' (more like mount and blade but still) engine prototype on Unity (hell skyrim on Unity that I don't get sued if I make a commercial release from out be all that want / wanted and then more) but after like trying to get 'the wonder team' together and after herding the cats for ~half a year I could not get past broken versions of https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/third-person-c... and https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/third-person-m... before just saying to hell with forums and then heading to https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-c-sharp and then fighting myself to stop suck at coding XD. I still suck at coding; iterate, iterate, iterate.
@Minus Dungeon Games I put a lot of work into that ~'work'(?) / comprehensive ~'divine structure' and I pretty much read through all of Wikipedia on religion and most mythology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pantheons + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C5%ABma_Eli%C5%A1 + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_by_type Lots more off of Wikipedia like listening to Native Americans and their legends and stuff just that is esoteric and off the beaten path as well. I also did a sort of meditation / used dreams but being awake to think more abstract / creative in parts as well so there is some funky originality from the aether / void / where ever dreams come from. Perhaps one could say I used a sort of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93%C3%B0r and a lot of trial and error and iterations over the years / decades; iterate, iterate, iterate.
Also: have you ever read roger zelazny's amber books? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Amber these? If so then I have not. Yet I probably have seen some fan art or something and not noticed where it was from. I wonder how many things I could be inspired from and it is refreshing to find potentially new things to learn from or at least reflect upon.
2 and 5 plus 4 (well all of the answers really but mostly 2 and 5 and a bit of 4). I ran out of brain power a fraction the way through. I am still not 100% confident in how I feel about my answers in how close they reflect how I feel (there is not enough ~'emotional bandwidth' here to give proper answes and it sucks) in my heart of hearts but this is what we get today I suppose. Also to the length of answer kind of has to be readable so if I ramble on too long I kind of win the battle but lose the war.
5. I have lots of points yet if I had to touch upon them briefly I would say that lots of women do play video games, millions of women play R.P.G.s yet there is a noticeable 'gap' in the content in R.P.G.s where the end game is bias towards challenges more typically populated by men. Which I feel is a shortcoming not in women but a lack of content / reflection of humanity within the game world. I want to not make a big list of complaints for it would be long and taxing to read and feel quite negative probably and I would like to bring about more positive outcomes for the effort towards the community; optimize existence not pessimize existence.
5. Again, I feel there is a lot of untapped potential with women and video games. It seems odd to myself that history is made of women and men yet in most R.P.G.s the most critical and deepest parts of progression are usually all vastly populated my men by natural interest. Yet empires and wars were run and managed and lost and won and vast throngs of human history is founded upon women being responsible successfully in very challenging circumstances; that laid the foundation of macro and micro life in their times and long after (Queen Victoria comes to mind).
5. Extra, I feel the current state of most R.P.G.s kind of fails to manifest this balance / area of intrigue and purpose / challenge that is naturally populated by the interests of men and women alike. I find this most unnatural and it really bugs myself. I find it sad / kind of dead on the inside to find games where all of the easy challenges and roles and 'base game' are populated by women and men yet there is a distinct failing of the world to naturally allow human interest / ~'bring out the human spirit' (something like that) in women and to also go beyond just killing things over and over; death and life are two sides of the same coin. I think Minecraft and Stardew Valley even Pokemon do these things where its not just death death death.
5. (Edit: Oh god what I have done / here we go again with the bible wall of text: Basically I wish that in popular culture that men and women could be viewed differently yet capable of achieving same potential to conquer extremely difficult challenges if they both undergo the same sacrifices. Adversity is the only thing that grows character; and adversity is not sexist it hits everything equally) Men and women are different yet are the same; although the potential to succeed in high difficulty is possible with both men and women (soviet women on the Eastern Front can attest to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II ). Also it is kind of really boring / lop sided with only bits of the games where men naturally invested ungodly amounts of time in an R.P.G. yet lots of other areas / type of progression (e.g. not constantly killing things over and over in a slaughterfest) are neglected and I think tentatively that most women around the world alive and dead would rather not be in a fight to the death as a profession yet many men have done these things (like roughly around ~1 in 100 men verse ~1 in 10,000 women), perhaps because of the biological bias that men cannot become pregnant and thus can be less expensive to a civilization as a whole to ~'sacrifice' men to war / chaos than women (lose 90% of the women, get ~10% of the kids, lose 90% of the men you still get 100% of the kids with polygamy and yet with ~10% of the genetic diversity; because incest is bad X.X). This is an ugly, ugly part of humanity / human history and I wish this was not taboo to talk about. Yet there is a great inequality in biological opportunity for women verses men (meaning mostly physically); like some one has to have the babies, people keep dying and people need to be born and young to middle age people pay all the taxes / run the show effectively (a person gets 40 ~'good' years 20-60 to work before being ~'bad' at working / costly to exist on society). Being pregnant is very expensive biologically and globally around the world all women on average start having more and more issues having children past 35 and just naturally cannot have kids past their 50's. Which is really bad today because basically everyone (90+% of people above the poverty line globally) are in debt up to thier 40's or 50's+ and can't afford kids responsibly within their financial means (but that is a tangent so it gets truncated here). Most people in humanity's ~300,000 year history only lived on average to 20-30? It is almost like our bodies don't expect us to live past 30 and front end load the most productive parts in that 20-30 year window and after ~30-35 your body starts a slow and arduous process of dying while alive / aging (unlike hydras which are effectively immortal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality almost lobsters too). Life without civility is unequivocally brutal. Our ancestors had one hell of a journey to get to where everyone one alive today is an unbroken biological chain stretching back from the dawn of time immemorial, hailing from people who lived, struggled just enough to have kids strong enough to keep having kids and then not quite know why we are here and then die. Life back in the day was hard and messy and the struggle of the ancestors should be highly respected given that at times it is a miracle that we even exist. It is hard to live and easy to die. Biology is a hell of a thing and the differences of men and women are not random but serve a purpose (if not an antiquated purpose in some cases in modern life, thank god for birth control). Yet say you have some kids (a biologically successful human being has kids, and is not a biological DNA dead end) Dad dies of one of 10,000 things, kids are starving now what do you do? Let the kids die or adapt, or rise to the occasion? Same thing with Mom, if she dies same things apply to Dad. Maybe this is why men and women can do the same things yet also why kids raised in broken families suffer from single parentage in mental development (also less resources and kids are expensive no matter what era of human history). Also having no real Dad and or Mom kind of sucks it turns out for the kids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_figure + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_deprivation God help the poor bastard who has no mother and is loved by no one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans#Conditions_in_orphanages . I am getting a bit off track. Men and women are different because history and life is hard and we inherited stone age biology in a modern reality world. Yet I feel this difference is not being treated properly / applied to its full potential and I feel there is a lack in ~'having the entire picture' of humanity with both masculine and feminine elements that comprise the medieval fantasy worlds and or interactive hero's / heroine's journey. I am aware of this 'heroine's journey' of taming the uncivilized man and all that with the Vampires, Pirates, Billionaire etc, but I refuse to believe that is the same thing as what is found in deep progression in R.P.G.s for it is so basic and misses a lot of fun and emotional development and ~'human depth' and it just seems like its missing some kind of point I am struggling to properly articulate; like underselling the emotional depth of potential in women like putting a square peg through a round hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ePDKlF6T0 + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w5x04l9S-o . If I am wrong on this then life has one wicked sense of humour for my god that would be insanely tragic. As in to a significant degree my most valued of my life's works would feel like a sad joke in where I am wrong to believe that women are able in having the same challenge conquering ability as men; yet I think that I am right in believing in the latent potential of all women. As in I strongly (if not outright palpably) believe that women do have equal amounts of potential on average as men. That is what I base my whole video game foundation on that women can be just as good as men in high difficulty situations. Yet I can't be stupid and wash away 300,000 years of human history just because I want to chase an ideal that actively wars with myself. This is not easy to find ways that make peace with the masculine and feminist components of the hero's / heroine's journey and be confident in my execution of these things for I don't have a women's brain nor body. Thus I am effectively at least half blind and this irks myself to no avail that over half of the human world is female yet I am probably blind to many critical feminine psychological things / aspects of life / human existence. It feels as if all that I can do is listen and try to see what works and keep failing until, 'something' works; if nothing works. Yet I think that I can pull this off and make a game (hopefully eventually if I win enough battles with implementing game mechanics, wish myself luck) so both of these parts of humanity can flourish together. So that hopefully there is no latent ~'haunt' upon world with a huge schism / void / a large realistic distance between the interests of men and of the interests of women; hopefully they can ~'live together in harmony'. As it currently seems like in most R.P.G.s today where there is this divide of masculine and feminine in deep progression (intentional or not by the developers) where all too often in an R.P.G. you either kill everything to rule the world or effectively you raise everything to rule the world. I wish you could do both like in world history; perhaps as it should be living in a sort of effective balance / harmony.
I have more thoughts but damn I am running out of room here and I wish that I could say more with less for I feel like a potato that is not even half peeled and I am shown as ready to consume. I feel half baked in my replies and it bugs myself (not as in high, but like the potato analogy; I don't do drugs for there is not enough time to waste today / everyday).
I kind of butchered the rest of the points but yeah I can't just telepathy my understanding into you guys with this so I am sorry but yeah this is very much a half peeled potato on a dinner plate XD.
2. Is kind of like being like: My human experience on everything history + ~video games / medieval fantasy and dev tools = R.P.G. I want to make before I die (hopefully). As a result I am feeling kind of trapped in a huge problem of where I just feel like I suck at communicating my understanding of the world and how things tend to work out in small bite sized pieces that hopefully do something to communicate a fraction of how I feel / think; given this low 'emotional bandwidth' communication medium.
@MedicineStorm
"Interesting. I haven't played WoW myself, but I've looked into it some. How do item teirs facilitate a player's ability to skip content and/or progress to other areas?"
- The attached vanilla World of Warcraft Map with level ranges, main cities, dungeons and raids marked upon each respective area ( source link: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/am6owg/labeled_classic_wow_... ) highlights / emphasizes the wide diversity of choice (dungeons 5 players) are green, yellow and orange mountain icons, main cities are faction icons, raids (20 or 40 players, UBRS is the only 10 man raid) red mountain icons) end game world (raid) bosses use dragon icons) the player has in what areas of the world the player may pursue to advance their character's level and potentially short-term, mid-term and long-term power by pursing deeper levels of challenges scattered across the world. As in the (non exhaustive) forms of quest chains, dungeons, battle grounds, end-game raids, and potentially player trade / auction house ~'farming'.
Power brokers of WoW:
-Player levels = player power
(Acquired by just adventuring in any level range area (efficient leveling or not) ~+/- 5 player character levels (e.g. 27 can go to 32 areas with random low power questing items ~5-10 levels lower that character level) and the player can keep doing this all the way to max character level (of level 60). Pretty much anyone interested can level up any character to max level. Yet leveling takes around ~2 months of relaxed / mediocre / average play skill / intensity to go from 1 to 60 for most classes / play-styles (for vanilla WoW).
-Equippable / Usable / Consumable Items = Player power (So far just like any R.P.G. yet vanilla WoW has low / medium and deep content.)
Short-term / ~shallow / low-power / questing / bad PvP items: A player can 'bare bones' / ghetto / questing gear trash / random low power item ~filter feed / semi-passively / semi actively / 'just playing the game' obtain a wide collection of items to equip that are obtained without great difficulty that trickle to a player character in all leveling scenarios; even if the player is being very inefficient they will get 'enough' random low power easy to obtain items to 'get the job done' for all questing level brackets from 1 to 60 / max level. It might be slower or painful in some spots. As in like going 'dry' / unlucky / not getting a weapon upgrade for say ~10 levels and also using less optimal specializations for questing / doing damage to average questing creatures.
Mid-term / ~average / medium power / ~'power' questing / kind of PvP items: A player who wants a bit more impact / power in their level bracket / general areas of applicable / suitable content / wants to kill / dominate things kinda fast / be decent can choose to stop taking random path willy nilly and make a plan and willing take on ~'islands' (only in select locations / not everywhere) of challenging content with average to high chances of frustration / character death / difficulty and they have to make a choice to risk their easy play style for a more structured / somewhat more disciplined playstyle where they must understand some level of incoming threats and proactively solve these problems to win; or else they lose / suck / constantly wipe the group and get black listed for you just don't get 'it' / are bad for other people's progression. If a player is not an inept troglodyte and can spent stress and use risk to over come extra challenges (and don't just face plant from the extra challenge) they can generally get rewarded with items that are around twice as powerful if not effectively (3 or 4 times) more so than the low power trickle fed 'questing trash' items that are only good for questing and struggling to do anything else; but act as a starting point for mid-term ~average challenges (like low to mid 10-50 level dungeons, long tedious / challenging quest chains that require either lots of skill or help from without / a group / a carry; also PvP battlegrounds / world PvP can get players 'honour points' for not sucking and these can be farmed to get good items that can last at least 10 to even 20-30+ levels of questing).
Long-term / hard / high power / wreck and shred through questing / Good PvP items: A player who just wants to kick ass and take names has to sacrifice the conveniences and excuses of low and average difficulty to 'full send it' / push their character to the very edges of performance in order to risk a lot of frustration for potentially huge pay off; separate the children from adults effectively. This means getting as much out of the world and opportunities presented / farming the meta / making no excuses and pushing yourself to the very edge and usually willingly undertaking lots of frustration, pain and sacrifice in order to squeeze out these chances to get these game changing items. These items can at least last 20 to 40-50+ levels of questing and they are fear inducing for players of the same level bracket to play against. These require a lot of sacrifice and off the highest player power that is still sane / reasonable to obtain.
End Game items: A player who wants to see what is just beyond leveling, a bit more into the world, a bit more content to much on, play with friends, large scale battles, see the sights, feel the experience of raiding or large scale PvP, this is the end of the game, a time of high reward, high risk and where the end and the beginning meet. You get to be a 'hero' / 'heroine' / live the class fantasy, be a force to be reckoned with, master of almost all of the game's content. You have little reason to push forward besides maybe that one extra shiny item that gives a lot of power but is just outside of reach; yet if not you still are a master of the game; not the best but you definitely had your fun.
Deep End Game items: A player who aspires to be the best they can be goes after these items, you suffer and win or you give up and make an alt or play something else. No rest for the wicked. You don't have friends for fun, you have people who are just as nuts as you who you struggle with in good times and bad. You are in the trenches and it is getting dark and the night is very long and cold. Can you win?
Best In Slot / God-tier / Second Job items:
https://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=53953
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFors1WXgTM (A day in the life)
Transcendency / You are on top with only the void left; everything and nothing. Time to make a new adventure? You create items:
https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Game-Master-Veldryn-858651305
"I don't disagree, but I'm not clear on how this stacks up to other games. What are some games that do pander or feel childish? What are contrived lack of mature themes? All fictional worlds are "contrived", but that's clearly not what is meant here. What are some examples of "contrived worlds" as a counterpoint?"
- Plate bikinis with women with breasts bigger than their head depicted to win medieval wars, skinny little spaghetti noodle armed pretty boys swinging slabs of metal with the weight of a truck; yet their wrists couldn't even threaten a pop can if they tried to squeeze it. Look at these poor bastards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_by_casualties I don't see any concubines and prepubescent degenerates in the winners' column. All the of the anime B.S. and painfully obvious and stupid yet insanely profitable 'lowest common denominator' logic that goes into most super hero / heroine movie / game plots where magic person lives in regular world (that conveniently anyways changes to the current-day of audience) but the movie / game ignores these magic power potential in it would realistically be used to make money, win wars, be corrupt and not stupid stuff like save plot armour nobodies that panders to convenient audience whims decade by decade of popular culture. The world is a messed up place just behind the thin veneer of civility; listen to this guy; Stephan Westmann a German WW1 combat veteran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XruYsAmKLyU , look at the Battle of Stalingrad or what Leopold II did in the Congo, the history under Men Behind the Sun, or the realities of communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity_under_communist_re... or nature and people like the Black Plague, Or when potentially modern homo sapiens / humans almost went extinct over a super eruption with a decade of volcanic winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck... . If not that then the evidence that we all descend from monsters who committed genocide that drove whole human cultures, subraces and races like the Neanderthal and Denisovian and entire animal species and whole genetic orders of species extinct. Or how our blood of our blood ancestors raped so many women that almost 1 in 200 males can find a common ancestor; and there are like 9 or 10 of these super progenitors in modern human genealogy. Murder to the scale where ten of millions of innocent bastards get wiped out for the sake of the ideal of a handful of people; that ultimately fails anyway in under 100 years. 1,000 years of war over lines on a map and still we have pretty much the same damn map so what was the point; look at it! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1000_CE,_Europe.svg ? Torture so extremely evil that nothing across all the billions of years of all known history of nature's wickedest instances of the animal kingdom can compare; where death is a high charity to its victims. All of this across all of our shared human history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UL4rmBLOnw . Our world is built on evil; yet it is resurrected from hell with true love.
"What is "audio 'juice'" is that a specific type of music compilation?"
- Very high / superb quality sound effects that happen frequently and with intelligent placement and high saturation that bring a level of richness beyond even regular full blown 1st person existence as a human being. Or like really cool sound effects for buttons, icons, sound details that can be easily underappreciated. Yet if implemented with high quality they can bring to life a rich spirit to a perhaps otherwise bland mediocre setting / scene / ho-hum / experience. The little audio details that makes a ~7/10 'B' into a ~8/10 'A'.
"Why? I mean, I'm sure it is, but what makes it better than others? What is it about the combat that makes it great?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjiiiQVDw5U If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is worth at least a million words.
"Is it rare?"
Incredibly so. I must have raided vanilla WoW (a very much female consciously designed; albeit very masculinely biased game from the get go) with 750 people at least over a 5 year span and maybe 1 in 20 were women. Of a guild or group of guilds (some 'rented players' thrown in) of 300 or so people with about ~100 active people I can count on one hand women who cleared all of the hardcore raid content as a core raider who ~ran / carried / lead the raid and I still have at least a spare finger (to be fair about 10-20 women were ~'carried' / did not last a month). One of these Core Raider / Guild Officer women was a transplant from another guild as well. At one point in world history my old guild Unite And Vanquish was the undisputed best raiding guild in the biggest vanilla WoW server in the world and a server open to the entire world hosting arguably the greatest M.M.O.R.P.G. in human history. It took 40 hardened veterans in the non-world buffed uptuned Naxxramas over 4 hours to get one clear of all bosses (well 35 great players in under / around ~3 hours to set records but some very rare people are high powered mutants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrd-sfoAv9A or a down right aberration of en mass ever-prevalent synchronized human nature; like myself X.X)
I might need a ~'part 2' for my observations / personal reflections on the non-question bits / parts of your reply. For this, my brain power is feeling quite low after that trip around space, time and my own ~'chromatic' sets of memory XD.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be more awake to give this a proper answer. I am just about to call it a night when I found this XD. Lots of points and I feel that I should use my ~'full' brain power to give a proper set of replies / answers. Perhaps I will have a dream about it or something perhaps. Although until I can better focus (hopefully tomorrow / later today after so sleep); I can give this a proper shot at giving a proper set of answers / thoughts. It is good to see an active / intrigued mind though :-).
How?
Look in the items folder and find "sets.txt" and dig through a bit more to find "level_16_unique.txt"
From "sets.txt":
"[set]
id=4
name=Underworld Armament
color=255,64,255
items=421,422,423,424,425,426,427,428,429
bonus=3,currency_find,25
bonus=4,speed,125
bonus=5,xp_gain,15
bonus=6,absorb_min,20
bonus=6,absorb_max,20
bonus=7,fire_resist,40
bonus=7,ice_resist,40
bonus=7,lightning_resist,40
bonus=7,dark_resist,40"
From "level_16_unique.txt":
"# Stronghold #1
[item]
id=421
name=Underworld Cloak
INCLUDE items/base/armor/mage_alt2/head.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=960
abs=6,7
requires_stat=defense,27
requires_stat=mental,16
bonus=mp,54
[item]
id=422
name=Underworld Platemail
INCLUDE items/base/armor/plate/chest.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=2400
abs=8,9
requires_stat=defense,28
requires_stat=physical,14
bonus=hp,600
[item]
id=423
name=Underworld Boots
INCLUDE items/base/armor/plate/feet.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=960
abs=7
requires_stat=defense,27
requires_stat=offense,15
bonus=avoidance,48
[item]
id=424
name=Underworld Armguards
INCLUDE items/base/armor/plate/hands.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=800
abs=7
requires_stat=defense,27
requires_stat=offense,15
bonus=accuracy,48
[item]
id=425
name=Underworld Greaves
INCLUDE items/base/armor/plate/legs.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=1600
abs=8
requires_stat=defense,28
requires_stat=physical,14
bonus=poise,48
[item]
id=426
name=Underworld Tome
INCLUDE items/base/misc/spellbook.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=1600
requires_stat=defense,26
requires_stat=mental,16
bonus=mp_regen,48
[item]
id=427
name=Underworld Blade
INCLUDE items/base/weapons/melee/greatsword.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=3200
dmg=melee,85,90
requires_stat=physical,30
bonus=dmg_melee_min,30
bonus=dmg_melee_max,30
[item]
id=428
name=Underworld Bow
INCLUDE items/base/weapons/ranged/greatbow.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=3200
dmg=ranged,85,90
requires_stat=offense,30
bonus=dmg_ranged_min,30
bonus=dmg_ranged_max,30
[item]
id=429
name=Underworld Sceptre
INCLUDE items/base/weapons/magic/greatstaff.txt
level=16
quality=unique
price=3200
dmg=ment,85,90
requires_stat=mental,30
bonus=dmg_ment_min,30
bonus=dmg_ment_max,30"
It looks good?
I agree with the desire for a more wide mythology for giving life to the ~'divine workings' of the game setting. I went to look far and wide for all over the globe to ~'listen' / to better understand the myths and legends of people groups across the world and across human history. I tried / I am trying to sort of codify / make a system / make a structured pantheon / use 'soft power' / try not to have a bunch of dudes and ladies in togas with wishy washy powers as the 'gods' / 'goddesses' of the medieval fantasy setting. I ended up with a rough idea of the main gods / goddesses which look up / care take / have soft power influence over mostly mortal affairs: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Black-Book-Pantheon-845732650 + https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Balance-of-the-Powers-the-D... + https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/The-Jewelled-Eye-Of-AGABAL-... This only happened over more than a decade of iteration and trial and error. I feel that I am still not fully 'done' / 'finished' yet either. Iterate, iterate, iterate.
Okay should an open test bed mod be made for these type of new experimental features / pushing the engine to new areas of performance? Not a game per say but a show case open to the community to tinker and try new ideas with? Like a developer test / 'blocked out' experimental set of areas?
Would anyone also be interested in that kind of idea? Share ideas, try them out to see if they work and share solutions and theory-craft? Given the nature of the open source if we find solutions everyone can use them to make their projects better so everyone wins?
I try to share my new features / successful experiments and experiences trying to realize my theory crafting so far. Although I wonder if a more direct and open approach would be better so more minds could come together and we could have a test bed to share and show case solutions and even known problems. It could be almost like a community digital test bed library of sort preserving and sharing developer knowledge. This could potentially lead to an easier learning curve as in being able to show new people examples of how to build things and or show bits of experimental features like in an open interactive feature archive. Kind of like this but open to the community and ~'alive': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9hGJy0Hn8M
What got you into Flare and what would you like to see in the future?
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