alanschu

Hahaha, what an elitist. Maybe it's you that's the bad DM. Sounds like you're the one that enjoys axing your players anyways

I think this sums up your understanding pretty well. If you don't know, try creating some modules with the toolset. You'll find out how easy it is to break stuff once you have a few hundred scripts trying to relate your dialogue together in a coherent fashion. Furthermore, trying to create FIFTEEN HOURS worth of this stuff is enormous. I can spend well over an hour in the toolset myself making a pretty neat dialogue tree that lasts about 20 seconds for the user while playing. It becomes worse as you incorporate non-linearity. Not only do I add RP options for Class 1, but Class 2,3,4,5 etc. So if you want 15 hours of RP fluff, then the branching factor begins to explode the work that has to be done exponentially.

Detecting sarcasm is a tricky thing to do when it's just written words. So sorry for missing that. And the level progression in BG was anything but quick. I think it took me something like 60 hours to complete (it's been a long time) and throughout that my character gained something like 8 levels. Add another 20 or so hours for the expansion and 1-2 levels for that. Unless you were being sarcastic again. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Except that I found that I hit the level cap long before I hit the endgame. It's easy to be a low level campaign when you artificially restrict the player. Odd that Hades doesn't seem to mind that bending of the rules though. But they broke it with BG2, and especially TOB, when levels started getting handed out (and phat lewt) like they were going out of style.

Hahahaha. My first time playing through, it was late at night. When I came up to it, I said screw it and went to bed and played through it at 9 AM. I toughed it out at midnight this time :D

Well, I suppose one could argue that just having the topic lets the player fill in in his mind the words that are actually spoken. You could just as easily criticize a game like Fallout because none of the dialogue options are geared very well to what my character would actually say. At least if you're looking at it from an RP perspective.

The fans of the Ultima series (particularly Ultima 7) agree wholeheartedly with you.

I'm playing through Bloodlines again, and I must say I still love the haunted house level. I just finished playing it and I still got the heebie-jeebies at points during it. I'm going through as a female Malkavian, that will likely be specializing in Dementation (of course), as well as my usual h4x0ring, and probably firearms (the Kill-o-matic is just too much fun). I do have Auspex, so I'll probably level that up a bit, and leave points out of wits and perception and just use Auspex when I really need to. I'm just about to attack the Sabbat warehouse. I've always been rather stealthy in there, but maybe it's time for me to unleash some fury....though I've always meant to play through as a Brujah, so I'll probably wait for that go around before I massacre everyone.

Don't be disrespecting Gator!

I got the impression from my Special Relativity teacher (Doug Gingrich) that it's a misnomer to say that time "slows down." Due to travelling at a fast speed, with the relationship between space and time, time affects the person at a different rate. Theoretically, travelling at the speed of light puts you in stasis, but it's still not "time travel," it's relativity.

Right, because CRPGs have always mirrored the PnP experience On the plus side, given your indication of WotC levelling guidelines, sounds like Obsidian is likely being conservative. Your strict adherence to the rules is your failing. Funny thing is that you cite Baldur's Gate as a game that did a good job. What? No complaining about a hardcap in the game? Last I checked AD&D didn't have a hard cap of 89k experience

I played with a permanent alliance in an AI game. Though I imagine it's not quite the same.

Who says you haven't. A proper time traveler would know which period he or she would go to and dress and act properly for that period of history he or she is visiting. We could be living in an alternate time line as we speak where the original time line 60 million people died in the Nazi death camps where a time traveler went back in time and change history that only 6 million people met their end at the death camps instead. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Because if travelling back in time was possible, you'd have virutally an infinite amount of time in the future (given the few billion or so years until the Sun starts doing its thing). The probability of just one person coming back with substantial proof that they are from the future is basically the limit of x, as x approaches 1. You wouldn't be getting just 1 or 2 people coming back in time.

Depends on your definition of an encounter. I usually hit that level in my PnP group. As for dungeonneering I treat a single dungeon level as one enocunter. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What's your definition of an encounter? Or perhaps more importantly, what's WotC's definition of an encounter, since we're going by their definition.

In other words, you can't define yet? The reason why I asked, is because it's different for every person. Your answer is just a cop out, since being vague prevents annoying things like "reality" interrupting your trirade. If I assume your definition was to in some way entail a ton of dialogue options depending on your character (I find RP distinctions are most easily demonstrated here), and other ways, then you are still grossly underestimating the time required to add 15 hours...unless you want it shallow, simple, and untested. Fair enough. But the cost per hour of gameplay will still far exceed any of the long games you have before. In fact, I bet that the cost per gameplay of an additional 15 hours in a game like NWN2 will in fact exceed the cost per gameplay of the first few hours of Baldur's Gate. Having said that, my "cost" wasn't including things such as licences or anything...just development time. It's also "easy" to say that the increase in cost is not significant. All you have to do is hire more designers, and perhaps artists. This overlooks that minute detail that labour is the largest cost....so I can't see how it's insignificant. No.....it's cost. I guarantee you that if Obsidian could afford to spend more money on RP options, they would. Developers ALWAYS want to add more stuff into their games....always (yes, I mean that in the absolute, 100% of the time, not in any way an exaggeration). The cost reflection also comes in with respect to revenue. Sure there's a diminishing cost per hour since those "cheap" designers and artists can do the work. But there's also diminishing returns on the sales as well.

I could play the beta if I wanted :D

Actually it is one of WotC's guidelines that a character should level on average every 14 encounters. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sounds like we level up much too slowly in most D&D CRPG games then.

I've yet to play the game online. My roommate didn't seem all that interested unfortunately.

No, but I am stuck on a balance between rules mechanics and story design. Both need to compliment each other in a balance in order to make a great CRPG. Saying damn the rules, you have an action game and not a CRPG. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Where does it state how long character progression should take in the rules? I'm pretty sure that NWN2 will still be rolling D20s, adjusting for ability scores, and all that other fun stuff that is actually stated in the core rules. I'm surprised you aren't pissed because they reduced the experience you get from killing a monster.

Not sure what that has to do with what I said. I was talking about specifically increasing the length of the game by 15 hours merely by adding "RP" content...which you still haven't defined. I'm not ignoring anything...you're just misreading what you said. I know that all they need is more designer hours. You make it sound like hiring designers and artists is a cheap thing to do though. All in all, I find your entire post spoken from an understandably naive perspective. Content, in all of its forms, costs money. The cost of creating content today, in all of it's forms, has been increasing (with the cost of an individual sale being relatively static). I was never talking about creating new graphics and whatnot.

That's actually an interesting perspective

You don't "slow down" time. Time and space are related. The consequences of acheiving higher velocities would likely be that, to an outside observer (but not to yourself) you'd appear to live longer. As to whether or not it is possible.....I'd say it's not possible because we'd likely have met someone from the future otherwise.

I'm not sure if you read my reply to this, but I doubt that an extra 15 hours of complex, intricate, roleplaying content (please define this term for me too) would take antyhing less than months of additional programming time. Regardless of the state of the engine.

Why would they do that when it seems the people that buy the games don't seem to want it? Unless you're saying they'd sell more games if they stuck true to it.....which I would doubt. You're too stuck on rules, and it hinders your ability to enjoy games. I feel sorry for you actually.

Then they shouldn't even bother using the Dungeons and Dragons rules and name in the first place. They should just make an action game like Demonstone instead. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeesh People like the D&D environment, and in particular the setting. Blame the fact that it's been so prevalent in computer gaming, books, etc. Clearly Wizards of the Coast have no problems with the rate of progression.