Tigranes

Heh. A lot (but not all) of the negativity online about FO3 *is* pointless, just like how a lot of the positivity (but not all) is mindless. The thing is, when someone is bitter or negative, everybody always asks, "why are you so bitter? stop being so bitter." Maybe that question could also be directed at the people/things/events that made them bitter in the first place? Or does the fact that they are bitter disqualify them from any such consideration? It's like watching someone punch your friend twenty times, then you ask your friend, why are you so angry? Stop being so angry. I mean, it's probably a good idea for your friend to calm down (if the puncher is built like an elephant on steroids), but telling him he's a moron and he has no reason to be angry... well, it'll probably get you punched and bitter, too. There's plenty of reason for people to be provisionally disappointed/bitter and certain wary and pessimistic about the title. After Oblivion, their refusal to show more than baout 2 lines of dialogue and real C&C is certainly worrying, especially cast against all the PR stunts with giant army of BOS and the ridiculous 50USD plastic pipboy clocks. The stunted animations, the 'sweet lulz' emphasis of VATS and the Rock-It-Launcher (as well as som eothers, anybody remember those psychic guns and the other one?) are plenty cause for worry, if you don't like to see bad games get a lot of hype (it's not good for anybody) and if you dont like to see your favourite franchise miss the chance to come good. Someone could do a Volo (or was it Sand) impersonation and say "if you dont like something just stop talking about it or thinking about it and IT WILL GO AWAY" but well... some people can choose to just do that, other people want to be more involved, if only platonically, in the progress of the field of games... and how can you blame them for that? I will say that I don't like to see 60 "O GOD BETHESDA SUCKS" posts every time new info comes out, either. But if not all 60 are substantiated... I'd say at least some of them are. I recall lot more favourable reactions when the news wasn't so bad.

Well, if that works, good enough for me. I'm really not a code-person and unfortunately won't be able to invest too much time on that side of things for a while. Glad to have it running somewhat smoothly now though, presenting it to my class tomorrow, though that's not really that big a deal. Gonna see if I can stick to my bi-daily schedule, should finish that casualisation discussion next week.

Heh. For classes I'd probably point at BG's verison of AD&D (never played it pnp); for classless, Fallout's SPECIAL (or Arcanum system, if somebody spent 20 years fixing all the balance issues). I have to agree with MC that all those prestige classes, coupled with endless cross-customisability, in NWN2/MOTB really was a pain. I like planning my characters and thinking about how to optimise them or develop a particular specialisation, but if you want a system that does that, then what's important is ensuring that there are visible and significant benefits to all this system-gaming. In MOTB, you stit there levelling a character all day and you end up with +4 BAB as opposed to +3 BAB, or I don't know, +1 to save vs. death when there is a jellyfish in the room eating coconuts and singing Michael Jackson. In the end I just chose whatever 'felt' right with my imagination of the character - except all those mazes of prerequisites and pre-pre-requisites really screws you over that way (if I hadn't looked at the manual, I wouldn't have even known MOTB had epic spells). I really enjoyed playing AD&D IE RPGs with kits, mainly because I didn't dual-class, I didn't sit there planning and thinking too hard about all the numbers behind the scenes - I still don't really know how some of them work exactly. I just knew I wanted X character to do certain things and have certain cool abilities that corresponded to what I imagined about him/her, and then picked what seemed right... and generally, you would get somwhere close, and you would get visible and significant effects fairly regularly. Which leads me to why I like classes... theres real fun about replayability because the game cuts off some gameplay options/moves/whatever from you when you are a specific class; and tactically it creates more fun set pieces as well (you know, oh crap the cleric just got beholder-ray'd, how many potions do we have? As opposed to... well we have this guy with War Priest prestige class, or all of us put a few points into Doctor skill remember...). You can still do this with well-made classless systems of course, but I find it harder to discipline yourself into making those categories - and classes also come with clear aesthetic styles. Theres always something missing, for me, when you create a 'class' of your own in a classless system.

Planescape: Torment, the dialogue putting the crazy incarnation to rest was beautiful. Oh, weep out of hate? I thought we were being all sensitive and stuff here. Anyway, I usually enjoy all the games I try, since I do so mcuh research before buying one (yeah, too poor). I can only think of Medieval: Total War 2... so much potential, so much good, but a few hours in I realised that I had a lot more fun with MTW1 and half the game was just Rome: Total War reskinned.

Nothing wrong with unkillable children. Not really important, its a non-issue that feels like a problem because of all the hoopla. What AI? We've hardly seen it in action and it was doing stupid things even in trailers. Bethesda seems to have added some new individual 'features' (such as cowering in fear), but whether they actually synthesise into a good experience will be more important.... and well, look at Oblivion.

Yes, but KOTOR and JE were built for that, in terms of underlying stats, animations, perspective, game balance, everything. And even then KOTOR was quite simply boring, and the only way JE could try and alleviate that was by... well, integrating 'action rpg' elements. Still. Its just another story altogether when you're asking a completely different type of gameplay to work like that. You *could* put autoaim in Halo, but it wouldn't really have a point, would it?

1. In a technical sense, isometric can only exist in 2D. Whip is very much correct. 2. The player can't tell and doesn't care, though, if 3D iso is 'fake'. They only care about the perspective's effect on the way they game.

I'm a huge tactical turn-based RPG fan and I wouldn't want to play AP like that, though. Some sort of bastardised option where everything else int he game is geared towards action RPG play but suddenly aiming is sticky and theres one algorithm rolling hit dice. That's like saying please give us a toggle to make us have to aim in Baldur's Gate or NWN. It wouldn't make any sense, and it wouldn't be fun, either. I can see AP becoming quite boring and jarring if you walked around like that.

I'm sure its harder for Team Gizka to have to keep pushing back their own internal release dates (or realise it's been years) than anyone else. It might be the first time some of them are involved in such an expansive mod project, and it's difficult for anybody to get estimates, schedules and deadlines right on their first try with a particular type of project. And I don't know about Team Gizka, but with mods... well sometimes someone has a baby, someone falls out, someone does a lot of work but turns out to be a pile of poo, etc. For a lot mods, generally, when something takes this long, there are three possibilities: One, the project has been suspended and started up again for various such reasons; Two, the team decided to redo the mod halfway through, to incorporate the new skills and techniques they learnt during the way; Three, the mod became a lot larger than they first anticipated, either for the desire to add new content or, in this case, perhaps, the bugs were bigger than they could have known. I don't know if any of those are true with Team Gizka since, I suspect like many people, I respect them and anticipate their work, but can't exactly follow their progress blow-by-blow. Whatever it is I hope they have the resilience and planning to come through and I hope when it does, the community rewards them for their hard work.

York is a fairly large English locale. You guys have 'Paris' somewhere in the centrals, though, so it's not that bad.

Turn-based, yes. Isometric? Isometric is all over the place. Turn-based is a sensible (if, for some of us, sad) decision based on the economy... isometric might be, but its primarily a stylistic call.

As a humanities graduate myself, I feel compelled to post the following:

Fair enough, but 1) doesn't make sense to me at all. Uh... I mean, what. Is that supposed to be a 'feature'? Sounds like horrible justification at the moment, though maybe I just don't get it. Oh. So that's the reason we empathise with females? Actually, that's probably a YES in some cases...

Clearly, Market Research Company A told them that PC sales were on the rise.

The CMS is drupal, but the skin is built from the ground up with CSS. I should probably have gone with something easier and more pre-made, but I'm a sucker for total control. 1600 resolution huh? Yeah, I didn't accoutn for people with such high resolutions. I touched it up a bit more today and made it a bit more readable. Another post, this time concerning pelvic hyperdrives. Wanted to find a nice picture of a pimp fashion rapper to go with Thorton, but kept finding hardcore pornography, as you tend to do.

Well... nobody played IWD for the complex dialogue with companions. It doesn't mean that the main story itself will be throwaway though.

Uh, Moatilla: That would be the difference in my head. But it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea to get a big name, either. As you say, look at Ron Perlman, etc.

The advantage of getting less expensive actors might be that they can hire him for more hours, and actually get him to understand the script, the story and the setting properly - I think most of the bad or 'off' VA comes from the fact that they can only afford to hire the guy for an hour inside a studio, and he just gets thrust into the rec room with a piece of paper and they tell him, 'read'. I mean, Patrick Stewart...

Thanks for the teaser Colrom, definitely going on my to-read list then. Probably after thesis, meaning October, though.

Hey guys. Definitely taking on board feedback I've heard here and elsewhere about being too messy and hard to read, etc: it's a consequence of both me having to rush things and my ineptitude at CSS getting in the way of better solutions. I now have someone who actually knows that stuff helping me polish it up, so it should look more professional in a few days. Hah, would you know, that's actually my friends. Yeah, I agree. In Part 2 I want to talk about those 'hardcore gamers' that are everywhere - and you know, it's complicated. Some hardcore gamers call other hardcore gamers casual, or they just dont see themselves as part of the same group - and as you say, there are 'casual' gamers for the most 'hardcore' of games. But to what extent does the industry/gamers themselves realise it? Anyway, I've heavily edited that casualisation post - I realised that it was way too 'academic' and dull, and not really something I would read, either. That's what happens when you write your blog inbetween your thesis and your presentation. Oy-vey. Check it out again. Thanks for all the feedback, it's really important to me, no matter how harsh they might be. (Mainly because I'm so harsh myself. )

I resent that newc, I'm not ashamed of my japanese schoolgirlness. FFXII gambits are essentially conditional scripts. As you progress through the game, you use points to buy new conditions - you set things like "If Health < 50%, use Health Potion", or "Attack Nearest Enemy", "Attack Enemy with Highest HP". Gambits can be turned on or off; gambits can be prioritised, so that higher priority gambits override or fire first. I can't remember anymore but I think there were also different gambit 'groups' to use in different circumstances? Not clear on that though. In terms of gameplay, it made FFXII very easy and very passive for me - with the right gambits you could essentially sit there and watch your entire party go through efficient motions to wipe out most enemies. This is of course related to balance issues (if things like immunities, special attacks were more varied and the enemy AI was intelligent, the same gambit scheme wouldn't work so well on everyone), but yeah. The advantage, I suppose, was that compared to NWN2, it was a lot less stressful and very painless: once you got the hang of it, you were very rarely seriously inconvenienced by the gambits, and they didn't do anything too stupid. There is no friendly fire in FF12 of course, and the spell/saves/etc system are a *lot* simpler, so it's much easier for the AI not to screw up. With a system like D&D (I dont know about 4th ed).... well, its a tough ask. (Oh, and its probably a bit different from Gromnir's 'plays', in that the gambits are individual and don't really work together. You just make them work together yourself. I think there are also options like Heal Other when Other's HP < 50%.)

Dunno whether it's good 50's stuff or not, but talking deathclaws were pretty odd in FO2. It didn't make me go 'urgh', though - I thought it was discreet enough (or as discreet tlaking critters can be). Maybe talking centaurs this time!

Cool beans is Volo, or Sand, isn't it? Anyway, still looks pretty horrible and messy due to my complete incompetence with web design/coding. Getting some help to make it suck less, though. Meanwhile, go nuts telling me how bad it is, before I fix things.

Sounds interesting - just checked it out on amazon. What kind of writing is it? Historical fictional narrative? History-book style?

Heh, not a bad cover. And the funniest thing with Stand Your Ground, for me, is that when you have PC selected and say stand your ground, then later you switch to Neeshka, the SYG never applied to the PC, so the PC ends up following Neeshka around. Not to mention it's hard to know how long SYG lasts, and sometimes it just seems to turn off.