You keep calling a character-driven story “lore”. Lore has nothing to do with how a character looks, talks, or his personal details - like hair color or background. Lore is the world in which the character exists.
Alright, Kulze, sorry but I have to go. Have a great weekend!
That’s your misconception, sorry to burst your bubble.
The ‘lore’ is the knowledge of the happenings in a fictional world. This includes underlying concepts like how magic systems for example are set up. The societies inhabitating it, the myths they’re following which shapes their distinct behavior and also the background stories of individual characters, including a character you play in games.
You can easily look it up yourself, I mean… Google is a easy tool for that, especially since they included AI into the workings as well to provide summaries of questions.
For example if you put in: ‘Is a character’s Backstory part of lore?’ You get as a result:
Yes, a character's backstory is generally considered a part of the lore of a fictional world or story. Lore encompasses the history, mythology, and background information of a fictional universe, and character backstories often provide important context and depth within that lore.
Why is it lore? Because the background story can enforce a characters looks and behavior. A character which has grown up in a city where ‘might makes right’ is the only existing thing, away from culture and mostly exposed to issues related to the passing of seasons then they’ll likely be barbaric. You won’t have them become a righteous paladin or a smart scientist. Unless you depict them as the social outcast in that environment and all the things coming along with that.
The story that you read or play is instead called ‘story’ and not ‘lore’. Why? Because it’s not yet established, lore is, it’s what’s fixed. A story is what you see or play directly, all before is so called ‘lore’.
So when you play the story of ‘Tomb Raider’ you inherently get the lore of Lara Croft, hence Lara can’t be anything different.
In the story of Zelda you play Link, and Link can’t be anything else but Link.
If you play a Mercenary in PoE 2 then it can only be the Mercenary because he distinctly is designed with his backstory in mind. Making him a old sage would be ill-fitted, so it’s not allowed, the option not given. Making a witch male is also not allowed, since a witch is inherently female, it would be a warlock then.
This bubble, like many others, exists only in your head. You can burst it all you want - it’s fine.
About your previous reply: Yes, the PC is a part of the lore but not the lore itself. A finger isn’t a human just because it’s part of a human.
Now, back to lore. Let me break it down with examples. Maybe you’ll get it:
Imagine an empty stage in a theater. On this stage, plywood panels are installed with images of 14th-century Italian homes glued onto them. Through a cut-out hole acting as a window, a young woman in medieval Italian dress looks out. Medieval Italian music plays in the background. It’s nighttime. Beside the window, a young man in a red farsetto sneaks toward her. That’s Setting.
Who is this man named Romeo? Why is he sneaking around at night? What’s his connection to the woman in the window? What happens if her family catches him? That’s Lore.
Why was Romeo played by one actor yesterday - a 20-year-old guy with a ponytail and mustache - but today a different actor, a 25-year-old bald guy with a goatee? That’s Character customization.
I don’t know how to explain it any clearer.
I only disagree with what you call Lore. Lore is the history of the world you set up. Traditions, events that occurred in the past, legends, etc.
For example, in LotR, when they go to Moria and they explain what happened in the past there, that’s lore.
It’s just the general knowledge available to a character that lives in that world and that players/readers usually don’t have.
Other than that, I agree that character customization has no impact on lore. Whether you play a male or female Rogue, whether they are short or tall, etc, doesn’t change what happened before nor does it really have an impact on how the story unfolds (unless it’s a specific character for the story, like Lara Croft, but that’s not the case here and not what’s being discussed).
Actually it is.
Because of the distinction in setup which EHG wanted to provide.
Multi-MC games are in existence after all, PoE 1 and PoE 2 are prime examples for that in the same genre even. Each character goes through the same story to be played but they all come from a varying amount of backgrounds, with different voicelines, specifically set up personalities and hence also design according to that.
Which EHG seemingly wanted to copy in style… but failed entirely to do so. The general setup they provided is actually more detrimental then a boon currently as working from a singular adaptive model would’ve reduced the overall work needed on items substantially compared to the current several models which exist.
But all of that setup only makes sense when there’s lore (Which started this whole sidetracked discussion here) reasoning behind it, meaning fixated background character information which enforces a static depiction without major customization being possible.
We don’t have that. We don’t know where our character came from. We don’t have any distinct behaviors in terms of voicelines or dialogue options, our character ‘has no personality’.
That sets it up as a undefined thing which is usually used for the player to immerse into a specific role instead, be it self-insertion or role-playing.
But… we can’t do that either.
The current setup combines simply the worst of both worlds 
Because Romeo has a specific depiction of a archytype, nothing more. He has no visual description provided… outside of being slender (so you can’t use a heavy-set person, which reduces that option for customization, right?), he’s young (so you can’t use a old person, removes that aspect of customization), he’s has noble etiquette (so you can’t simply provide him with the mannerisms of a street-rat now, also a part f customization).
And so on and so forth.
The more distinct the lore the more ‘set in stone’ the depiction.
That generally leads to the following:
The more lore a character has the less customization is applicaple to said character..
Now we get into the distinct aspects which enforce build, age and looks even.
A character born in a dwarfish mountainhome is obviously a dwarf, meaning unless distinct further separations are made it’ll be a short, stock-ish character. Depending on the lore of this race in that world it comes along with further behavioural limitations and also visual limitations.
As an example, if they got a belief about aligning with a sort of mountain-god and the respective traits of that they could come to a potential conclussion that cave-ins and crushing is the only applicable method of enforcement in a dispute. So they could abstain completely from any cutting weapons as example… which would enforce only using blunt weaponry hence during the story unless they are an exile.
Your original argument was: Customization has no concern with lore and that argument is simply a factually wrong one. Which was everything I wanted to point out.
First off to make you realize how the current situation probably came to be.
Secondly to broaden your horizons and hence expand your potential skillset.
Thirdly to avoid misconception for other readers which go along and actually read up to the end of this thread.
But we did in the past, didn’t we? Before the campaign rework there were cutscenes explaining the backgrounds. For example, the Sentinel was a soldier part of Rayeh’s army who fled. Or do I confuse something here?
PoE and any other similar piece of crap, has absolutely no right to influence how LE is developed.
Yeah, before we did.
I got no clue what EHG thought in removing those aspects rather then improving on them.
It’s a common theme with their design… make dungeon… dungeon is ‘lame’ gameplay wise… simply skip design.
Make characters distinct… story is not well designed… remove distinction.
And so on and so forth. It’s kinda baffling actually.
D2 is the core influence on the whole direction of PoE 1. PoE 2, LE and Torchlight by the way, which developed alternatively from games like TQ or Dungeon Siege.
And saying ‘they have no right to influence development’ is actively one of the absolutely dumbest notions I’ve heard in relation to game design. You don’t ignore games, you pick them apart, take the best concepts and optimally refine them further while you remove the worst. That’s how you get a good product.
You don’t re-invent the wheel from scratch.
And ignoring those things makes for a nigh guaranteed shitstain of a game on the market, and we got more then enough of them dimpling around already because arrogant developers don’t take their time to actually do proper research.
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Me playing LE: - Hmm, ignite stack or fire melee, which build I should test for now…
Another ppl playing LE: - Damn, my character appeareance doesn’t fit my sense of harmony. That ugly male druid, ugh, I want female druid! let me play my game!
What, taking other games apart & taking the best from them? Have you ever developed anything ever? Like, even a spreadsheet? If someone else has a good idea then it’s normal to take that into account, this is called progress.
I made a slight modification to your reply.
There hasn’t been a single game released in this century that wasn’t heavily inspired by previous games.
New genres/sub-genre defining games are rare, and even when they happen, they lean heavily into previous games’ mechanics.
I have. And I can tell you that developing anything anywhere in any format is 80% using what already exists. Sometimes you put a different spin into it, plenty of times you use things “as is”.
In fact, the same thing applies to a bunch of things, really. Movies, books, music, etc, is all about the influences that came from before and spinning them in a new way.
Being inspired and being influenced are two different things, don’t you think? If a game is a true pioneer in the industry - which PoE clearly is not - then yes, some elements might serve as a foundation for new ideas, but nothing more. What Kulze and Lama8 are suggesting is essentially bringing PoE into LE.
Not really, no. What comes before has to obviously influence your decisions.
Nothing is created that is actually new. Everything draws from previous iterations. You can spin things in a unique way, but it was still both inspired and influenced by previous works.
PoE is obviously influenced by D2. Which is obviously influenced by D1. Which is obviously influenced by previous ARPGs and dungeon crawlers. And you can trace them all back to the original Pong. Which itself is also just a copy of table tennis.
LE is heavily influenced and inspired by 3 games: D2, GD and PoE. Pretty much everything they have in the game can be traced back to mechanics already existing in those 3 games. They put their unique spin to it, but we can safely say that without those games we wouldn’t have LE.
Even the big mechanic this season, the weaver tree, is basically taken from PoE. And that is because that is a good mechanic for players. So you adapt it to your game if it’s a good thing to add.
There hasn’t been any game that can be truly considered a pioneer in this industry for over 20 years.
Maybe we interpret this word differently. Let’s say I’m a musician who has always admired Pink Floyd, and I decide to play in a similar style - I would say I’m inspired by PF. Now if I want to play exactly like Pink Floyd, sing like them, and even emulate D. Gilmour’s look, people would say my music is influenced by Pink Floyd.
First of all, I recommend highly to take a step back and take a breather.
You’re starting to attack someone as a person, not their distinct singular ideas/thought processes/believes.
That’s not acceptable.
The difference is that one is acceptable as otherwise communication is impossible. The other is a banable offence for good reason.
As much as I know Llama actually has. So I would say ‘yes’.
Same as me, automation of production lines, microelectronic mostly, hence chip-based control systems. Also design for furniture in carpentry. Also I dabbled a while in optimization processes for life coaching methods, in charge of adjusting them to specific personality types and the major applicable learning styles (based on which sensory learning method is the most effective for said person).
While the last has been debunked as a full-scale methodology to use as the only method of furthering learning processes by now they are still a helpful tool to improve the capability of information intake to a degree.
So… have you?
What you indirectly suggest with this sentence is to not research anything related to the topic you want to create something.
That would mean your likely outcome as an artist would be caveman style drawings at best, since you don’t know how to use geometrical shapes to ease drawing for organic things, you don’t know perspectives, you don’t know color ranges or what additiva versus subtractive colors would actually be. You don’t know the RBG ruleset, don’t know which medium to even start drawing on or which tools to use to ensure the best possible outcome.
What you describe is incompetence on the highest level hence.
You seem to not understand that creativity is primarily combining pre-existing things into new ways rather then coming up with something entirely new. Which is not creativity, it’s inventing something. Which yes, enforces the usage of creative thinking as well but is inherently distinct in outcome.
For example the skill tree system of LE is creative. Nothing in it has been invented though. Pasisve trees are common thing to use, leveling skills is a common thing to use and even how a passive tree is set up follows a common style for a reason.
The whole thing is a copy of the systems other games formerly provided and putting it forth in a new style.
That’s what creativity is.
How would you know the difference?
Every single thing you’ll ever create in your life will come from experiences you formerly had in life.
In the creation of a piece of furniture you could for example get the idea of using a pulley-system to move a hidden compartment upwards while opening a tool cabinet. The doors and the tools attached to it taking up all the space though and hence the need to move the things stored in the pulley-drawn segment to not be in that space at that time.
Hence to actually get that idea you would need to likely know how secret compartments had been designed back in the day, how a pulley system actually works, how to attach one to a moving part with the proper transmission to ensure it moves the right amount and doesn’t lock anything up as well as the base idea that multi-level storage devices physically are even a thing.
You might come up with one thing of those… but it’s nearly an impossibility to come up with the whole line of thought at once without ever seeing even how a tool cabinet even is set up.
Then name the respective ‘true pioneers’ and we can talk about the aspects which are actually copies of some other systems and which are real inventions. You would be surprised 
@Llama8 is fervently against anything related to PoE making it into LE style-wise. So saying that he wants to do that is kinda baffling.
Also I’m not proposing that either. There’s a difference between copying a system 1 to 1… or to adjust existing ideas to fit into overarching universal design choices which have proven to function superior to others in the whole genre… with several examples.
Especially if one knows why those things work better then others and you’re hence able to reason the full logical route.
For example:
The shard system of LE is a sub-par system on the market.
Why? It produces a high RNG based spread of those shards, causing through the high variance in options a sub-par experience of progression where you’re either lucky and skip a lot of content (when getting rare affixes early and hence your power skyrockets… because they are distinctly powerful) or you get stuck lacking in power when they don’t appear in the right amounts.
The solution to that on the market is to exchange the individual shards with a alternative system unifying that and hence taking the RNG of individual acquisition away. Namely a resource taking the spot of all of them at once, hence the rarity and acquisition rate being the cost of those materials to allow the crafting to happen.
Why is it commonly (exceptions always apply) a superior method? Because in nearly all (exceptions still apply) situations it provides a more streamlined and smooth experience of progression, which is a major aspect of a game on how well it is received.
As for the smoothness of progression. Putting a top-end boss in terms of mechanical difficulty at the beginning of a game is extremely grating for example. You put them at the end and gradually challenge the player more and more. If it’s put at the beginning with lower difficulty following that’s a bad experience overall. Such design issues are common and discern a good game from a bad one when the respective amount overshadows the individual quality of development aspects.
Yes, and if people like your music the wouldn’t have it if Pink Floyd didn’t make theirs first.
You picked up the style and put a creative spin to it.
If your creative spin is picked up by many others and re-used since it’s a highly enjoyable direction then you create hence a new sub-genre.
Like… Rogue-lites rather then rogue-likes.
Metroidvania’s rather then a simple platformer.
I never attacked you as a person.
I only attacked arguments, which hopefully don’t define you overall, that would be sad if single aspects are everything you have.
Yeah, you interpret it differently. Your example is about emulating Pink Floyd, not being influenced by them. Being influenced by them means that you have your own spin on things, even if you clearly see that there’s an influence there.
For example, to continue with Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree are heavily influenced by Pink Floyd, but you would never consider it a copy. Their sound is unique to them.
Likewise, Tomb Raider was very obviously influenced by the Indiana Jones movies and by platforming games that came before it. It’s not a copy of it nor does Lara Croft have a fedora and a whip.
Games usually come from the previous ones. A developer looks at a game and thinks “Oh, I can do a game like that, but I would change this thing and that thing into a different spin”. But most of the mechanics are “borrowed” from previous games, many times identical because it’s a good system.