There are also spells and job abilities. You want to make them more effective? You do so by changing clothes. You macro in often an entirely different gear set for a specific ability then back again. Some people macro in the etire 20ish slots of gear for different abilities.

And what happens when a ship is about to collide with a stationary object? Well… the ship, no matter the size, is shot out like from a cannon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS7llqy-uIU

One of the mechanics is merging “kinstones” with NPCs that unlock secrets. The Minish, microscopic people you meet and interact with state that these secrets are actually them doing stuff and it’s not magical at all.

Drift: Many of the Minish, despite allegedly being the reason for stuff happening, say this is magic.

Drift2: For one of the items, you must merge kinstones with 4 walls hidden across the world. You trade items. With a wall.

It’s a good thing I really love Zelda.

I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I think the system has more bad sides than good ones. There’s a ton of things in gaming that could be assumed and explained/non-explained away by abstraction, and this one I think should’ve been one of them.

Acknowledge the medium has limits, that it is a game, resurrect your players and be done with it without saying anything; no need to bring out the lutes.

1) Buying Enhancements from a “store” — OK, you trade in some favors, pull a bit of “you know me — you can help me” manipulation, you get an… abstract doodad that helps you by… doing something.

2) Trading Influence: It’s a public endorsement, and you lose some influence because your street cred’s now riding on this other person’s actions. Err, all right, sure…

3) The Consignment House, buying Fairy Wings or a Sledgehammer: Errrrrrmmmm….

I second Van Hemlock’s quibble as well. I have *hurt* myself kicking a stopped car before, but I can’t say I ever missed.

Diablo/II? There are some spots where you had to drink a potion every couple of seconds pretty much. It was stupidly comic to imagine the character alternatively swinging and downing a health pot. It didn’t matter at lower levels, potion drinking was sparse, but some spots at the end… it was happy hour for red liquid.

But I have to agree, of recent memory, the whole morale and minstrels tragedy in LOTRO is rather stupid. Not short bus stupid; in its own contained way I think it’s ingenious. But stupid as in… there was no need for it. I’m pretty sure early on it was dreamed as this huge change in healing mechanics that was going to revolutionize, etc, etc… but in the end you’re still looking at bars and instead of healing spells (which is passable and in-world sensical) you get chords and songs (which is ridiculous).

Had they left the health bar as it should be and instead had minstrels affect another bar or statistic, dunno, call it ‘focus’ or “will to fight” that depletes automatically as you fight and must be replenished by a minstrel singing songs of valor from the back… without a minstrel or equivalent to keep that ‘morale’ up, your attacks do less and less damage. That’s at the very least more potable.

One day someone is gonna make an MMO in which someone is hit, falls down and a healer has to run over there with actual bandages and medicine… and we won’t know what to do.