alanschu

Neither have you. You're just guessing. I'm basing my statements on the trends that have existed, and continue to exist, in gaming. Because your points are baseless conjecture. They are what you THINK is happening. But you had no problems counting the few thousand of them that you have just recently met.... I'm curious, how on Earth do you plan on encountering people that don't play the game online to begin with? (and it's not deductive reasoning at all, because you cannot verify whether or not your premises are actually truth) But people don't need to play video games to experience companionship, acknowledgement, or to interact with others. You're making an assumption that the majority of people that buy video games fit your category of "gamer" which you just gave. Believe it or not, a lot of plain jane average people buy video games. The type that play maybe a few hours a week. I doubt the type of gamer that is narcissistic and wants to prove how powerful they are make up more than a rather insignificant amount of the total gaming populace. Deductive Reasoning based on unverified assumptions is not useful. You're making blind suppositions based on what you THINK the world of gaming is actually like. You talk about the "gaming community" as if it is made up of people vastly different than everyday people.

Heh, I didn't even consider people that pirated the game. Though I suspect the game companies don't care as much about them.

I made no such statement. In fact, I don't even know what you are talking about here. Wow. A few thousand. Out of the millions of copies of the game sold. It is? Based on what? No it doesn't. All your story said was a few thousand (assuming you're even remotely correct in your estimate of a few thousand). Neverwinter Nights is a game that has sold million. It's one of the better selling games of all time. Well, there's ONE person. Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean anything. And unfortunately, it leads people to 'commonsense' conclusions. (for the record, using common sense in any sort of empirical analysis trying to describe something will literally get you laughed at in any academic circle. It's pretty much useless, because it is frequently wrong).

So basically, you're numbers are purely built up on suppositions and assumptions on how you THINK the world is. And while polls only question a sample of the community, there's no way you can say whether or not that sample is an accurate reflection of their customer base. Given that this type of research isn't just randomly polling people on their website or something, but actual market research, lends a bit more to its credibility. This is the type of research done to assess the marketplace, where big errors can result in the loss of millions of dollars. It's in Bioware's best interests to make sure that the information reflected in their research is accurate, in order to fully maximize it. It's not just some random poll. How would you know that people 'usually' do? While polls/research may not be accurate, your personal experiences and 'commonsense' notions of how things should be are infinitely less accurate.

It seems people are buying into the misrepresentation that is internet message boards, and thinking that they are accurate representations of how the entire market is.

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Hardly seems fitting that you accuse him of not having evidence, when you're speculating yourself. Why would most people buy it for the OC? Because it was a Bioware D&D game, and they had a reputation for making good D&D games. In fact, the majority of people that bought Neverwinter Nights only dabbled briefly in the Multiplayer world. It wasn't uncommon for people to do nothing but play the OC. There was a reason why HotU was designed explicitly only for single player. The multiplayer for it was simply "play at your own risk." It may work, it may not. They didn't design it for MP usage, and didn't support the MP of the HotU campaign. The reason why they did this is because the majority of their consumer base did not play these campaigns in multiplayer. They were played primarily in single player, and came to the conclusion that the majority of the fanbase would be more satisfied if they focused on the single player aspect of the HotU campaign. THESE VIEWS ARE SUPPORTED BY THE MARKET RESEARCH DONE BY BIOWARE THEMSELVES. The millions you saw playing online were likely different iterations of the same people! As for SoulThief's claim that it takes longer to cast something, then that is clearly because he just isn't willing to learn the exceptionally simple UI that is the quickcast menu. I mean, you hit 'F' select your spell, and pick a target. I'm not sure how it can be more simple. Unless you prefer right clicking to bring up the radial menu, selecting spells, then the spell level, then the spell. Most of his gripes about the UI (of which there are indeed issues) seems to simply be that it's not the exact same as NWN user interface.

Wow. I only saw one. I guess I need to check things out more closely on my second playthrough!

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That hardly seems like a concern for you, since you commented that you allowed the game to give you more than the standard number of NPC party members anyways.

If you want to argue semantics, the character in the game isn't you either. This can be demonstrated by the rather tiny amount of options you have to actually play this character. I wanted to do lots of different stuff, but since that character isn't me (I live in Edmonton, Canada, not West Harbour Faerun). In CRPG gaming, the character can never truly be you. It's always a designers character. If you want to nitpick even more, all that character truly is, is a bunch of 1's and 0's stored in memory, and displayed in likely 32-bit colour on a computer monitor. The character doesn't actually exist, and hence can't be you And I think a quadruple post should be enough for this thread. Moving on.

I'm not sure how he made fools out of anyone. Shandra is a good character, and I'm not really sure why you'd snicker. I thought she was an interesting character, and still do.

You would think that Obsidian would have learned this lesson from the complaints about K2 forcing lame characters to do a quest or be in your group. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Or maybe those complaints weren't as numerous as you would like to think they are. If people were really that adamant about forced party members in an RPG, they probably wouldn't have added them.

Good luck with that. Anyone know where I can find this?

Well, the idea is that with your satellite TV, you can get NHL Centre Ice. I think it's crap too. I hate seeing the 'Off Air' on the other Sportsnet stations I get. If it wasn't included in the package, I'd drop everything but Sportsnet West, since there's no reason for me to watch anything on a different Sportsnet Channel. The only reason why I would consider getting them is so that I could watch different hockey games, but they don't let me do that.

How much profit should they be making then? Making games isn't cheap, and if your game busts, you lose lots of money. Yeah, a game like WOW could probably charge less (not that it charges a whole lot), but why would they? They have millions of people playing right now, that find it perfectly okay to pay what they currently charge, so I see no reason why they should stop. I think you're out of luck. I doubt I'd do any differently than any of those companies if I was in their shoes.

Except that this doesn't follow the logic of the D&D universe, where it's possible to "hide" in plain sight of someone. Or be hidden in the middle of a flat tarmac in the middle of the sun. Heck, you can not-so-magically disappear from the view of someone while fighting them.

What?

That would definitely seem to be the case, given that these types of games went away from that formula, and don't seem to be going back any time soon.

Poor Volo. You should know that it's not uncommon for people to not bother commenting on things they like. It's the stuff that pisses people off that makes them vocal. This is undisputable.

Ah, I have had that happen before. However, if you feel like exploiting bugs that allow companions revive because you lure away the combatants, then I don't really see what there is to address. And people certainly were suggesting that they'd rather run back to the temple. Go back and read Pop's post. The issue was not about people reviving during a fight, but people reviving period, so I'm also not sure how I wouldn't be addressing the issue, when you seem to have confused the issue. You mentioned the revival of people during fights as an annotation to your complaint about reviving in general.

Perhaps. Don't place too high of expectations on the chap though. He's been through a lot, but he's still willing to try and find ways to contribute to your cause.

Your party members should not be reviving during fights. I have never seen that happen, unless my Cleric casts a resurrection spell on them or something. I disagree about it not lending itself to fun. I had a blast playing through the OC. And I don't find it to be a big break in the immersion. At least not any more of a break compared to running back to a temple to revive the person.

Perhaps I am not libertarian, because I do not feel that foreign aid should be stopped, particularly in the moment of a disaster.