I'm not saying things always have to be the same. I just don't find the "conflict" in this part of the game to be engaging at all.
You could have stopped right here. This is perfectly fine, this is after all a very subjective issue. But it doesn't make the story they're telling bad or wrong. Different people like different things. Deviating from the Heroes Quest isn't for you, I guess, but for some of us it's a breath of fresh air.
Fortunately there are a million and one games that stick to more traditional antagonist tropes.
I haven't got very far into the game yet so I can't talk about specifics, but generally I can't help but think that a game is really not the place for a fairly mundane motivator like poverty, at least not if the story is to be told well.
I think that a compelling story about that kind of struggle has to show that poverty is a chronic problem, so it's not going to be easy to portray well in a 25 hour video game, unlike say, betrayal/murder/being hunted/saving the world.
If Bioware managed to show the true depressing nature of poverty, for example by showing your family struggling with hunger, scraping a few pennies together begging or being unable to afford healthcare in illness, then I could see it working, but it would still require a lot of patience from the audience and I suspect that may be the limiting factor in a game that is pretty action packed.
It wasn't so much "get money 'cause you don't have any and being poor sucks" it was "get money so you can make a name for yourself, which will afford you the status and social power to keep the Templars at bay"
Each individual quest so far has been engaging, but if I were given the option to have my Grey Warden swoop in and become the protagonist, I would take it.
Particularly if it meant making Hawke's mom poor again.
I mean people complain about unvoiced mains being kind of empty shells, but holy moly is Hawke a nothing. Probably exacerbated by being a mage in this environment that begs for commentary by a mage.
Oh on a different note: that dude who wrote about why they made a fully romanceable cast was great! I mean, finally. I never understood why they refrained from this in other games. People were all "no that makes no sense!" when I mentioned it would be great in ME but it works great.
Talking about "sidequests" I wish the fedex quests were just more valuable trash loot, than having to actually go and give the NPC an item and listen the same lines over and over
I'm not saying things always have to be the same. I just don't find the "conflict" in this part of the game to be engaging at all.
You could have stopped right here. This is perfectly fine, this is after all a very subjective issue. But it doesn't make the story they're telling bad or wrong. Different people like different things. Deviating from the Heroes Quest isn't for you, I guess, but for some of us it's a breath of fresh air.
Fortunately there are a million and one games that stick to more traditional antagonist tropes.
I haven't got very far into the game yet so I can't talk about specifics, but generally I can't help but think that a game is really not the place for a fairly mundane motivator like poverty, at least not if the story is to be told well.
I think that a compelling story about that kind of struggle has to show that poverty is a chronic problem, so it's not going to be easy to portray well in a 25 hour video game, unlike say, betrayal/murder/being hunted/saving the world.
If Bioware managed to show the true depressing nature of poverty, for example by showing your family struggling with hunger, scraping a few pennies together begging or being unable to afford healthcare in illness, then I could see it working, but it would still require a lot of patience from the audience and I suspect that may be the limiting factor in a game that is pretty action packed.
Oh, come on.
Why don't we just make the game about teaming up with Al Gore to save the world realistically, by limiting carbon waste emissions and slowly mounting pressure on world governments via protests and letter writing campaigns to engage in nuclear arms reduction talks?
Or, we can recognize that media uses shorthand and that it's not all that necessary to show Leliandra Hawke going to bed hungry every night to know that we'd rather not be poor.
Talking about "sidequests" I wish the fedex quests were just more valuable trash loot, than having to actually go and give the NPC an item and listen the same lines over and over
I thought they were vaguely amusing, and they literally took 30 seconds or less while you were on your way to do more important things.
Yeah seriously the deliver an item quests were something you got for exploring while doing more indepth ones, and usually had to turn in a more in depth one in the area. OH SHIT THE HORROR!!!!
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I haven't got very far into the game yet so I can't talk about specifics, but generally I can't help but think that a game is really not the place for a fairly mundane motivator like poverty, at least not if the story is to be told well.
I think that a compelling story about that kind of struggle has to show that poverty is a chronic problem, so it's not going to be easy to portray well in a 25 hour video game, unlike say, betrayal/murder/being hunted/saving the world.
If Bioware managed to show the true depressing nature of poverty, for example by showing your family struggling with hunger, scraping a few pennies together begging or being unable to afford healthcare in illness, then I could see it working, but it would still require a lot of patience from the audience and I suspect that may be the limiting factor in a game that is pretty action packed.
Oh, come on.
Why don't we just make the game about teaming up with Al Gore to save the world realistically, by limiting carbon waste emissions and slowly mounting pressure on world governments via protests and letter writing campaigns to engage in nuclear arms reduction talks?
Or, we can recognize that media uses shorthand and that it's not all that necessary to show Leliandra Hawke going to bed hungry every night to know that we'd rather not be poor.
No shit, my point was that it's not easy to make the story emotionally engaging when it's about poverty (without doing the things I mentioned), compared to stories about more acute crazy happenings. LOT was saying that DAIIs poverty story was not engaging.
If you want a game that just says "this is your situation, go do this to sort it out, have fun!" then I guess that's ok, but if you play RPG's to be immersed then...oh well.
Your Al Gore point is pretty unrelated. I'm not saying you should have realistic boring things to do to get out of the bad situation, i'm saying that if you want players to be motivated to get out of a bad situation then you should do a good job making them feel how bad it is.
Yeah seriously the deliver an item quests were something you got for exploring while doing more indepth ones, and usually had to turn in a more in depth one in the area. OH SHIT THE HORROR!!!!
In future playthroughs I don't think I'm even going to give my mages damage dealing talents. Just going to dump a whole lot of shit in Entropy for CC, and maybe get Tempest with its upgrade because again...CC.
In future playthroughs I don't think I'm even going to give my mages damage dealing talents. Just going to dump a whole lot of shit in Entropy for CC, and maybe get Tempest with its upgrade because again...CC.
All them damn magic users are good for.
Once I realized how they worked and what they did I focused every ability point on either causing Stagger/Disorient/Brittle or exploiting Stagger/Disorient/Brittle.
Then I moved each of the exploit abilities to the top of the tactics page (right below Use Potion if Health is Low) and all the abilities that setup combos right below that.
Last line on every tactics page? Enemy - Any = Attack
I find it odd that they once again coded in unique items (but unusable) for our dude to pickup on his quest, only this time some items are automatically put in the Trash section of the items list.
There is no need to even LOOK at this item in your inventory anymore!! We have solved all inventory issues!! We have deemed it to be garbage, and as such, you will journey to a merchant and quickly sell that shit to clean out your inventory, to pickup more shit.
Even the damage they deal that keys off of staggered tends to become incredibly unimpressive the higher level you get.
Compared to what late game Warriors and Rogues dish out it's like why even bother?
Can you get like, a really powerful fire staff with +X% fire damage and stick the attack speed rune in there and just pew pew
That's mainly what I want to do
The most useful thing a Mage can do with their auto-attacks is get a staff called Eye of the Storm and take Force Mage as one of their specs. The increased elemental force combined with the staffs innate chance to proc for stun on hit will cause your electric damage (the elemental force proc for elec is stunning)/stun ability to occur quite often.
Even the damage they deal that keys off of staggered tends to become incredibly unimpressive the higher level you get.
Compared to what late game Warriors and Rogues dish out it's like why even bother?
Can you get like, a really powerful fire staff with +X% fire damage and stick the attack speed rune in there and just pew pew
That's mainly what I want to do
The most useful thing a Mage can do with their auto-attacks is get a staff called Eye of the Storm and take Force Mage as one of their specs. The increased elemental force combined with the staffs innate chance to proc for stun on hit will cause your electric damage (the elemental force proc for elec is stunning)/stun ability to occur quite often.
Even the damage they deal that keys off of staggered tends to become incredibly unimpressive the higher level you get.
Compared to what late game Warriors and Rogues dish out it's like why even bother?
Can you get like, a really powerful fire staff with +X% fire damage and stick the attack speed rune in there and just pew pew
That's mainly what I want to do
The most useful thing a Mage can do with their auto-attacks is get a staff called Eye of the Storm and take Force Mage as one of their specs. The increased elemental force combined with the staffs innate chance to proc for stun on hit will cause your electric damage (the elemental force proc for elec is stunning)/stun ability to occur quite often.
Mages excel at CC, buffs, and little else.
But what about for NPCs?
Dump a ton of shit into Entropy, get Tempest, use Tempest with its upgrade a lot. Watch it stunlock people.
I haven't got very far into the game yet so I can't talk about specifics, but generally I can't help but think that a game is really not the place for a fairly mundane motivator like poverty, at least not if the story is to be told well.
I think that a compelling story about that kind of struggle has to show that poverty is a chronic problem, so it's not going to be easy to portray well in a 25 hour video game, unlike say, betrayal/murder/being hunted/saving the world.
If Bioware managed to show the true depressing nature of poverty, for example by showing your family struggling with hunger, scraping a few pennies together begging or being unable to afford healthcare in illness, then I could see it working, but it would still require a lot of patience from the audience and I suspect that may be the limiting factor in a game that is pretty action packed.
Oh, come on.
Why don't we just make the game about teaming up with Al Gore to save the world realistically, by limiting carbon waste emissions and slowly mounting pressure on world governments via protests and letter writing campaigns to engage in nuclear arms reduction talks?
Or, we can recognize that media uses shorthand and that it's not all that necessary to show Leliandra Hawke going to bed hungry every night to know that we'd rather not be poor.
No shit, my point was that it's not easy to make the story emotionally engaging when it's about poverty (without doing the things I mentioned), compared to stories about more acute crazy happenings. LOT was saying that DAIIs poverty story was not engaging.
If you want a game that just says "this is your situation, go do this to sort it out, have fun!" then I guess that's ok, but if you play RPG's to be immersed then...oh well.
Your Al Gore point is pretty unrelated. I'm not saying you should have realistic boring things to do to get out of the bad situation, i'm saying that if you want players to be motivated to get out of a bad situation then you should do a good job making them feel how bad it is.
Okay, what is immersion? Is it dwelling on the minutae of an extremely un-fun situation like illness or poverty? I suppose it could be. Could you also find immersion with all that shit as a backdrop as a sort of shorthand to stage awesome adventures? I think it might just be possible.
I know what poverty is. I deal with not having a lot of money myself, all the time. I already know that it means struggling with medical bills or constant pressure around holidays. I can relate to my character just getting by already, I don't need further immersion in that. Would I rather dwell on that, or about my awesome sword-slingin' adventures with my magic little sister and friends to get out of that poverty situation? The family & friends adventure and drama situation is where I'd rather get immersed.
I think you see what I'm getting at.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
I said that mage damage was bad earlier in the thread but nobody believed me
I find it odd that they once again coded in unique items (but unusable) for our dude to pickup on his quest, only this time some items are automatically put in the Trash section of the items list.
There is no need to even LOOK at this item in your inventory anymore!! We have solved all inventory issues!! We have deemed it to be garbage, and as such, you will journey to a merchant and quickly sell that shit to clean out your inventory, to pickup more shit.
Character-driven is all well and good, but when I am given little reason to really get behind what my character is doing, and given a pretty weak and underdeveloped goal, it's hard to care about anything. They could have at least introduced some sort of major reason that I need money for ASAP that's more compelling than "your family isn't rich, so let's get rich!" Right now I am not invested in my character and what she is doing, and this is really the first time in a Bioware game I can say that.
An antagonist would be nice, too. Even something like a dude who is trying to sabatoge my efforts in order to get in on the expedition ahead of me, or a rival family that doesn't want mine to get it's honor back, or something.
You're missing the point. Like, really missing it. Hawke is a normal dude. Normal dudes try to *gasp* improve their station, get rich, live the easy life, look after the people they care about. That's what we all do. You know who has rivals? heroes and pokemon trainers.
No, I'm not missing the point. I'm saying the point makes for a dull narrative so far that is failing to make me actually interested and invested in what's going on.
I thought they went beyond the "your family isn't rich... so let's get rich" pretty well. At the start of the game you're trying to get into the city at all. There's your motivation.
Then in Act 1, you're trying not to be destitute. It's a lot deeper than "hey, let's get rich" and more of a "let's no live in the dregs of society with my uncle who's left the same damned piece of cheese on a barrel for years." The expedition is an opportunity to do just that. It's not the goal as much as the vehicle.
Humble origins... and through those dealings you start to make a difference in the city. The money quest is just a nudge to get your Hawke involved, and it does so rather well.
I though it was pretty obvious that the reason you want to get into the expedition in Act 1 was because either you or your sister is an apostate, your tenure with the Red Irons/smugglers is over (and while the respect is enough that they send a few jobs your way, I get the feeling that both sides were suprised that blows were not traded when you left) and unless you have the money and influnce to become untouchable, it is only a matter of time before the family apostate gets locked up in the Gallows and the rest of the family is arrested for harboring an illegal mage.
As I said earlier, needing money is a fine motivation for a character. But I think they just implemented it rather poorly.
I know RPG's have ingrained it in our brains that in order to get extra money you do the side quests. But you know what? The writers could have written in an engaging and coherent story line around acquiring this money rather than several disconnected sidequests.
In this story line they could have shown the actual dangers the templars/poverty are having on hawke, rather than just referring to them and sending you on fetch quests. Both the Qun and the mages showed what kinds of threats they could be. Your antagonist in act 1 was instead just kind of implied, which in my opinion is a bad way to build motivation
Man, making respec potions cost money when the entire aim of the first act is to get as much money as possible is a stupid idea. Really cuts down on how many times I can change up my party.
I haven't even headed off to the expedition and apparently I've played 31 hours according to steam. I need to stop restarting. :rotate:
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I'm not saying things always have to be the same. I just don't find the "conflict" in this part of the game to be engaging at all. Like, okay, they're poor and don't want to be poor. It's a believable motivation, but it's just not a very interesting one for me on it's own. If there was a bigger issue that was driving the need for money and/or the need to become a noble family again, beyond simply wanting it, I think it would be much better.
There's this thing they teach in writing school called "rising action." It's where you start the show, you introduce some characters and a basic conflict, and then you allow the pot to simmer for awhile before something big happens. Act I is the rising action of DA2. Not all works introduce their major villain in the first act... for example, in Dusk 'Til Dawn, the vampires don't show up until about 45 minutes into the movie, allowing character beats between the gansters and preacher's family to be set up and mean something later. Having a big conflict here seems unnecessary, given that there's huge conflicts in the next two acts.
And guess what? I don't find the "basic conflict" in the "rising action" to be interesting or engaging! I find it to be a very weak excuse to go do a bunch of sidequests.
The first part of the game was interesting enough. My hometown has been destroyed, get my family to safety! Oh shit, the city we ran to won't let us in! So now we have to work our asses off to win enough coin and favor to settle in our new home. Cool!
But then the game just skips that part completely, the problem gets solved off camera, and I'm railroaded into joining some random dwarf's get-rich-quick scheme. Could my family use the money? Sure. But it's not some desperate situation like it was before, the sense of urgency and importance is lost. That's great that there's something more meaningful coming. But we're not talking about a couple hours, here. We're talking like over ten hours of gameplay with barely any plot hooks. That's far too long, IMO.
The biggest conflict I've been given so far I didn't even get to really be a part of, and what I've been given instead just isn't doing anything for me.
Honestly if they wanted to make the first act mostly a sidequest thing then I would have liked things a lot better if you actually do this while working for the mercs or smugglers, because I would feel like my reasons for doing what I'm doing were more compelling.
I said that mage damage was bad earlier in the thread but nobody believed me
That's because we are comparing mage damage to the god kings that are 2h warriors and assassin rogues.
I wonder what total damage is like at the end of a long fight though.
I have to say that I'm disappointed with the raw damage that Mages are putting out in the later levels. Hell, I can't really say that I've managed to find one decent single target nuke in the mages arsenal yet.
I find it odd that they once again coded in unique items (but unusable) for our dude to pickup on his quest, only this time some items are automatically put in the Trash section of the items list.
There is no need to even LOOK at this item in your inventory anymore!! We have solved all inventory issues!! We have deemed it to be garbage, and as such, you will journey to a merchant and quickly sell that shit to clean out your inventory, to pickup more shit.
this is such a baffling design decision
when I saw how it worked I was just whyyyyyyyyy
It is one of the dumbest design decisions I've seen, and it's completely missing the point of loot complaints from previous games.
I mean honestly, I would have liked it more if they'd gone full ME2 and just given up on the idea of looting. The loot system isn't really very fun.
I said that mage damage was bad earlier in the thread but nobody believed me
That's because we are comparing mage damage to the god kings that are 2h warriors and assassin rogues.
I wonder what total damage is like at the end of a long fight though.
I have to say that I'm disappointed with the raw damage that Mages are putting out in the later levels. Hell, I can't really say that I've managed to find one decent single target nuke in the mages arsenal yet.
Walking Bomb.
Arguably not *really* single target, but still absurdly destructive.
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I haven't got very far into the game yet so I can't talk about specifics, but generally I can't help but think that a game is really not the place for a fairly mundane motivator like poverty, at least not if the story is to be told well.
I think that a compelling story about that kind of struggle has to show that poverty is a chronic problem, so it's not going to be easy to portray well in a 25 hour video game, unlike say, betrayal/murder/being hunted/saving the world.
If Bioware managed to show the true depressing nature of poverty, for example by showing your family struggling with hunger, scraping a few pennies together begging or being unable to afford healthcare in illness, then I could see it working, but it would still require a lot of patience from the audience and I suspect that may be the limiting factor in a game that is pretty action packed.
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Particularly if it meant making Hawke's mom poor again.
I mean people complain about unvoiced mains being kind of empty shells, but holy moly is Hawke a nothing. Probably exacerbated by being a mage in this environment that begs for commentary by a mage.
Oh on a different note: that dude who wrote about why they made a fully romanceable cast was great! I mean, finally. I never understood why they refrained from this in other games. People were all "no that makes no sense!" when I mentioned it would be great in ME but it works great.
Oh, come on.
Why don't we just make the game about teaming up with Al Gore to save the world realistically, by limiting carbon waste emissions and slowly mounting pressure on world governments via protests and letter writing campaigns to engage in nuclear arms reduction talks?
Or, we can recognize that media uses shorthand and that it's not all that necessary to show Leliandra Hawke going to bed hungry every night to know that we'd rather not be poor.
No Icewind Dale? Or NWN2? Boo-urns.
Do tell. I'm intrigued by your assertion and would like to subscribe to your newsletter to find out how they sucked, hard.
I thought they were vaguely amusing, and they literally took 30 seconds or less while you were on your way to do more important things.
pleasepaypreacher.net
aggresive hawke is worth it for this alone
Icewind Dale isn't Bioware, either.
No shit, my point was that it's not easy to make the story emotionally engaging when it's about poverty (without doing the things I mentioned), compared to stories about more acute crazy happenings. LOT was saying that DAIIs poverty story was not engaging.
If you want a game that just says "this is your situation, go do this to sort it out, have fun!" then I guess that's ok, but if you play RPG's to be immersed then...oh well.
Your Al Gore point is pretty unrelated. I'm not saying you should have realistic boring things to do to get out of the bad situation, i'm saying that if you want players to be motivated to get out of a bad situation then you should do a good job making them feel how bad it is.
But I thought streamlining was good :rotate:
All them damn magic users are good for.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Once I realized how they worked and what they did I focused every ability point on either causing Stagger/Disorient/Brittle or exploiting Stagger/Disorient/Brittle.
Then I moved each of the exploit abilities to the top of the tactics page (right below Use Potion if Health is Low) and all the abilities that setup combos right below that.
Last line on every tactics page? Enemy - Any = Attack
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Compared to what late game Warriors and Rogues dish out it's like why even bother?
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Oh my god my mind is slowly slipping away from me... who am I? Where am I? WHAT AM I?!
That's mainly what I want to do
There is no need to even LOOK at this item in your inventory anymore!! We have solved all inventory issues!! We have deemed it to be garbage, and as such, you will journey to a merchant and quickly sell that shit to clean out your inventory, to pickup more shit.
The most useful thing a Mage can do with their auto-attacks is get a staff called Eye of the Storm and take Force Mage as one of their specs. The increased elemental force combined with the staffs innate chance to proc for stun on hit will cause your electric damage (the elemental force proc for elec is stunning)/stun ability to occur quite often.
Mages excel at CC, buffs, and little else.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
But what about for NPCs?
Dump a ton of shit into Entropy, get Tempest, use Tempest with its upgrade a lot. Watch it stunlock people.
Get Heroic Aura and Haste if possible.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Okay, what is immersion? Is it dwelling on the minutae of an extremely un-fun situation like illness or poverty? I suppose it could be. Could you also find immersion with all that shit as a backdrop as a sort of shorthand to stage awesome adventures? I think it might just be possible.
I know what poverty is. I deal with not having a lot of money myself, all the time. I already know that it means struggling with medical bills or constant pressure around holidays. I can relate to my character just getting by already, I don't need further immersion in that. Would I rather dwell on that, or about my awesome sword-slingin' adventures with my magic little sister and friends to get out of that poverty situation? The family & friends adventure and drama situation is where I'd rather get immersed.
I think you see what I'm getting at.
when I saw how it worked I was just whyyyyyyyyy
I though it was pretty obvious that the reason you want to get into the expedition in Act 1 was because either you or your sister is an apostate, your tenure with the Red Irons/smugglers is over (and while the respect is enough that they send a few jobs your way, I get the feeling that both sides were suprised that blows were not traded when you left) and unless you have the money and influnce to become untouchable, it is only a matter of time before the family apostate gets locked up in the Gallows and the rest of the family is arrested for harboring an illegal mage.
That's because we are comparing mage damage to the god kings that are 2h warriors and assassin rogues.
I wonder what total damage is like at the end of a long fight though.
I know RPG's have ingrained it in our brains that in order to get extra money you do the side quests. But you know what? The writers could have written in an engaging and coherent story line around acquiring this money rather than several disconnected sidequests.
In this story line they could have shown the actual dangers the templars/poverty are having on hawke, rather than just referring to them and sending you on fetch quests. Both the Qun and the mages showed what kinds of threats they could be. Your antagonist in act 1 was instead just kind of implied, which in my opinion is a bad way to build motivation
You can usually make a fairly good equivalent.
Tactic 1 - If there is at least one enemy - skip to 3
Tactic 2 - Self:Any - Do your thing
I thought I was feeding Mother with the gold I took off dead bandits.
And there were plenty of dead bandits.
I haven't even headed off to the expedition and apparently I've played 31 hours according to steam. I need to stop restarting. :rotate:
But you still livin' in the slums, man.
You know a better title for DA2 would have been Dragon Age: Get Rich or Die Tryin'
And guess what? I don't find the "basic conflict" in the "rising action" to be interesting or engaging! I find it to be a very weak excuse to go do a bunch of sidequests.
The first part of the game was interesting enough. My hometown has been destroyed, get my family to safety! Oh shit, the city we ran to won't let us in! So now we have to work our asses off to win enough coin and favor to settle in our new home. Cool!
But then the game just skips that part completely, the problem gets solved off camera, and I'm railroaded into joining some random dwarf's get-rich-quick scheme. Could my family use the money? Sure. But it's not some desperate situation like it was before, the sense of urgency and importance is lost. That's great that there's something more meaningful coming. But we're not talking about a couple hours, here. We're talking like over ten hours of gameplay with barely any plot hooks. That's far too long, IMO.
The biggest conflict I've been given so far I didn't even get to really be a part of, and what I've been given instead just isn't doing anything for me.
Honestly if they wanted to make the first act mostly a sidequest thing then I would have liked things a lot better if you actually do this while working for the mercs or smugglers, because I would feel like my reasons for doing what I'm doing were more compelling.
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My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
It is one of the dumbest design decisions I've seen, and it's completely missing the point of loot complaints from previous games.
I mean honestly, I would have liked it more if they'd gone full ME2 and just given up on the idea of looting. The loot system isn't really very fun.
Walking Bomb.
Arguably not *really* single target, but still absurdly destructive.