alanschu

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.

That's awfully vague, and pretty much just tells me you pulled the numbers from your behind. Considering how slowly you must play through your CRPGs to make this analysis (unless you absolutely power through your PnP sessions) I'm surprised you complain at all about the length. NWN must have taken you at least 50 hours.

Fair enough. But who do you think the target audience was of that game?

Then you have poor expectations. On what basis do you expect levelling to be half of that time? You can get waaaaaaaaay more done in 6 hours of CRPG time than you can ever hope for of 12 hours of PnP time.

I'm currently addicted to the game that's for sure. :D I'm playing on Noble right now, and after some relative tech parity I beat out a strong competitor, and now have most of the best cities to myself. I have my medium armor and mech inf against tanks and standard inf with tons of airplanes :D

Which is silly. Play the game for the content and the experience. I seriously wonder how you've been able to enjoy any CRPG, because as far as I'm concerned they all allow for quick level progression.

The good content that you are demanding takes tons of time. I would suspect that adding an additional 15 hours of well thought out "roleplaying content" (whatever the hell that entails) would seriously add months to the game development time, if not more. I am quite confident you weren't thinking about 15 hours of crap gameplay, which could be done relatively quickly. The Engine and rules being programmed already won't affect things as much as you may like, because the game is designed (i.e. the story and all that stuff) concurrently with the engine. All it means is that the graphics programmers can either add more stuff, or have nothing to do on this project and move on.

Shooting for 30 hours? What the hell kind of campaign is that? I estimate that for hardcore players this number will be much less, as it always is. I estimate that I will be able to finish the game with all the side quests in about 15 hours. (my formula is almost always the minimum hours according to the developer divided by two) What the **** is going on with games nowadays? Why arent game developers focusing on creating large worlds with a lot of interesting sidequests and characters that gamers can immerse themselves in instead of these short displays of advanced graphics? Why the hell do they all cater to the ****ing attention disorder crowd? That even the corpse of those partially responsible for fallout and torment is making a 15 hour dungeon romp is disturbing indeed. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's probably because the games themselves take much more $$$ per hour of gameplay than they ever used to. If you don't like it, don't play.

Hehe, it's always great when your coach publicly tells the world that you suck.

I grew up on the Mac and always have a soft spot for it in my heart. But I do find this funny considering the comparisons Apple always made were compared to the Pentium processor. What will Steve Jobs compare to now during his keynote speech?

It's on PPV which I don't get

I noticed that....why on Earth was the net empty in a tie game?

Thanks for the heads up. That's a bit disappointing. I suppose I could always load up Combat Mission again