roshan: You mean, in a game with difficult combat, a rough average of combat time cannot be calculated? You could not say whether the 'combat pace' in Difficult Game X is higher or lower than in Difficult Game Y? Or are you constructing a strawman in which Josh means by 'overall combat pacing' a restrictive and dumbed down definition like 'nobody should take more than 1 minute per battle'? Or that Josh believes combat pacing must be calculated to such a fine degree with such reliabiility that combat cannot help but be monotonous? Either way, you make some random inferences, and they are truly that - random.
How does the stamina/health system allow you to successfully complete
that battle more easily, since the unconscious party member is for all practical purposes dead? Perhaps if 'awakening' the unconscious is easier than reviving a dead player (e.g. through a rod of resurrection or Raise Life spell), but we don't know that. A single battle is thus not made any easier to 'complete'. What about the long term? It depends on whether the costs of health attrition through multiple KO's, partially mitigated by the ease/difficulty of health healing in PE, is balanced right. In conclusion: here is again a meaningless inference.
I'm sure I haven't read everything Josh has said on PE, but from what I've read, and from what you quote, what I see is you see something, your eyeballs bulge, and you make up some shaky overinterpretation.
As Hormalakh says, I think with the information we currently have, the main concern with the 'no-miss' design is that it errs too far in removing randomness and thus, in fact, risks making combat more monotonous. I remain skeptical about the decision. As I said elsewhere, it's actually less intuitive, and with no clear benefit.
