alanschu

I actually never really got to play Civ II as I was a kid and couldn't afford it I did play the crap out of the demo I had though I did really enjoy the original though, even if I did hate the fact that the sailors in the tririemes for the CPU were miracle rowers. I could have sworn that the AI still received extra units and whatnot on higher difficulty levels in the original Civ however. I certainly don't remember it being tactically smarter, just that when it attacked it somehow had 400 unirts in 20 turns! :D

I did ask if it was legal, given all the discussion about whether or not someone could be "left on the road" if he didn't have insurance. I knew that the guy was hypothetical, I was just confirming whether or not it was in fact illegal to do so.

There was nothing to discuss. In fact it sounds like you contradict yourself at times in your rant.

I never said this happens. It was stated in this thread, as part of a discussion that you were taking part of. Not as something that happens, but as an idea. In fact, it was you that mentioned the idea. I'm sure it was an exaggeration, but I was putting in my two cents.

Emergency medical treatment is what I was talking about. I bring it up since people were discussing checking someone's insurance after a bad car crash and "leaving them on the side of the road" if they didn't have insurance.

Were you hoping for an open-ended game still Karka? Perhaps you start out as a lowly underling pirate and work your way up? Or would you prefer a game with a more strict story line? How would you make it RPGish?

Isn't it against the law in the U.S. (I pick the U.S. because they always have the hoopla about their healthcare system and whatnot) to deny medical service to a patient that needs it for money (i.e. insurance) reasons?

I fail to see where the rules comes into effect for why FR:DS was a flop. You don't need a D&D ruleset to play in a D&D setting IMO. A setting is a setting, and if someone made an RPG that was unequivocally the best, most diverse and open ended RPG with a tight story and tons of roleplaying options and variety, I wouldn't chastize it if it didn't strictly adhere to the D&D rules. If the game's fun, it's fun.

I don't consider the cheating in Civ 3 to be any worse than the cheating in the other civ games. I remember removing the fog of war and watching Triremes of the other nations in the middle of the Atlantic exploring the world. On hard difficulties you got more easily penalized for unhappy citizens, and they would start with more guys as well too IIRC. That's usually what difficulty levels consist of in 4X games. The only way for them to have appropriate scaling levels of logic would be to, as far as I can see, set up giant neural nets of testers playing the game in smart and dumb ways so that you have a suficient databank of "smart" and "dumb" strategies for the AI to incorporate at various difficulty levels. You could simplify it to simply levels of aggressiveness and whatnot, but if you want them to play on an equal playing field as you, you'll still be able to exploit it. Because if the AI is going hardcore for expansionism and building military units, then you know he's NOT worrying about city improvements or anything, and therefore won't be at much of an advantage. What sort of "logical" differences would people realistically like to see in a 4X game for various difficulty levels? Would you like the AI to just not expand on the easy difficulties or something?

Fixed!

I'm rather glad many of the D&D setting games don't specifically adhere to the D&D rules. It makes for a less tedious game, and opens them up to other markets. I see no reason why a game set in a D&D setting must adhere to the D&D rules. I don't recall Drizzt rolling any d20s in his books.

Apparently people are quick to forget that Bioware had to redo the dialogue in KOTOR. It was mentioned in roshan's other thread I believe, where originally they had a limit on the amount of words due to voice acting, but then had that limit removed when Lucasarts realized the dialogue was stupid as a result.

Very nice. Now, did you need to find an ascii converter? EDIT: It's actually: you know it!!! As a part of the simulation, I still award you 10 TOMBS points however.

The AI cheated in the previous Civ games too though. Why only chastize Civ 3 for it?

0111 1001 0110 1111 0111 0101 0010 0000 0110 1011 0110 1110 0110 1111 0111 0111 0010 0000 0110 1001 0111 0100 0010 0001 0010 0001 0010 0001 Seriously, TOMBS points to anyone that knows what I said :D

The only Ultima that I played prior to VI was IV. While I enjoyed it, I was used to the Ultima experience of the later games (particularly VII) so it wasn't really what I expected. I tried playing Ultima I but didn't particularly enjoy it.

I would suspect that MS ponied up most of the lolly.

NEVER!

But these same suits pay their market analysts big bux to determine the cost effectiveness of their solutions. If no one was listening to in game dialogue and just skipping it past, then there'd be no point in wasting the money on voice talent.

But think of the millions of dollars that go to DEA officials that try to combat the evils of marijuana!?!?

I guess console gaming will be your cup of tea now that you'd jumped ship. They're well known for their 50+ hour games

No. But you keep clamouring about how the games aren't like PS:T, Fallout, and whatnot. And the reason why Sin City's artistic design works is because all movies ARE in colour. You can still just as well have the "only key people talk" artistic style, as your coveted Sin City example does just that (although I'd prefer Schindler's List). You're really stretching things if you are trying to claim that Sin City is living in the past because of its artistic style of utilizing black and white. Never mind the graphic novel references To restate, whether or not Voice Overs are here to stay, has no bearing on whether or not games like Fallout or PS:T will be made again. But hey, you're the one that things that secondary characters have voice overs so that we know what they sound like. If a game needs a talking head to let you know that you're coming up to a main character, then I think that that is BAD design. Let the game content tell me it's a main character, don't tip me off by letting me know it's a main character before I've even spoken to the person. I don't need to be held by the hand. Do people play their DVDs with mute and subtitles on?

The typical decision is something like "We have 100,000 left in our budget. We can screen 50,000 men for testicular cancer, with a projected result of saving 500 lives. Or we can send one little girl with a rare brain disorder to California for a treatment which has a 10% chance of letting her live 20 years." Government is full of decisions like this. There is no room for philosophical nicety or time for endless debate. The spotlight goes on you and you have to choose. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not sure what you're trying to say here, at least with respect to my post you quoted.

Yeah, I got a good chuckle when I read that.

That's nice. Since you put it so eloquently though: "Exceptions prove the rule." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It was a balance to your sweeping generalisation, not a new proposition to establish the contra position. I was pointing out the flaw in your all-encompassing statement about how you listened to them all (with the concommitant implication that "most people listen to most of them"). Sure the background comments in Deus Ex are good. But think how bad they'd be if they weren't done right. Quality: good. Crap: bad. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Of course. The same goes for writing. Reading a crappy line of dialogue doesn't make it any better than hearing the crappy line of dialogue. I could imagine how it would be if the lines sucked...but why? They didn't! I mean, imagine Game Y if it had sucked! Quality: good Crap: bad applies to everything. I also made my assertion that most people do listen to them since voice acting is not going away. If most people skipped them, then developers and publishers wouldn't add them in! Fortunately KOTOR's wasn't bad. At the same time, I hear many people (not including myself) that love the voice acting in the original Resident Evil. I've never made an assertion that voice acting automatically makes a game better regardless. I want everything to be done quality wise, and considering you already pointed out in a different thread how cheap voice acting is with respect to the total picture of game development, there's no reason why more lines cannot be voiced. Is it a deal breaker? No. A good game is still a good game. A bad game with all the quality voice acting, and minute attention to detail graphically is still a bad game. A good game with those though becomes a great game. Half-Life 2 is a game where I would have been content with the same, emotionless stares with the simple moving mouth for dialogue, much like the original Half-Life. It was a good game. But all the little details going into the characters, that ultimately are just fluff and not necessary to the game itself, contribute to the greater entertainment value of the game and make for ultimately a more entertaining experience. If the game had sucked I wouldn't have cared how realistically the faces were. Fluff doesn't make crap games good, but it does make good games great. Since you like to play the imagination game, imagine System Shock 2 in Source (or Doom 3, or any modern engine). Seeing the drone with the pipe wrench casting off a beautiful shadow down the long corridor while you were out in the open without a weapon of your own would only add to the creepiness of the game. Furthermore, imagine System Shock 2 without the voice overs. I imagine reading those diary logs would have been just as thrilling of an experience. I think a lot of the claims people make about not caring about graphics or sound or voice quality are in a position to make easy assertations because they know that things aren't like that anymore. How many people would jump out of their seats for the ultimate in revolutionary gaming that was mute, and looked like this: That's a screenshot of Ultima IV, and even Ender will vouch that I had never played the game before recently, and I was still able to play through it based on being a huge fan of VI and VII, and hearing how quality IV was. I enjoyed the game, but I know that there's many people that haven't played the game that would not be able to get past the interface nor the graphics. If KOTOR 3 came out looking like that, even if it was the bestest game ever I doubt 1% of the people on these boards that apparently love RPGs so much would even give it a second look. As for Roshan, I think he's living in the past. Considering games like Planescape: Torment don't make the required money for developers to stay in business, then I doubt we'd see one like it again anyways. Imagine if Planescape: Torment did have quality full voice overs though...... I'd also suspect there'd be much less Bastila fans if she wasn't voiced by Jennifer Hale. People staring blankly at a screen while you read a line of dialogue don't illicit that type of emotion. Many of the lines by the romance characters in Baldur's Gate 2 are also voiced, and I don't think it's a coincidence.