Llyranor

Look at this game: http://www.facesofwargame.com Nothing like a conventional RTS. No resource gathering, just pure warfare. Tanks that feel like real tanks. More emphasis on small-squad tactics (you have squad control of ~12 dudes in total) than a bigger RTS scale. Did I mention a COOP MODE?

Of course, uninteractive and adynamic storytelling is the best way to tell a story and immerse the reader. It's people in the industry who can't see the potential of the medium itself as a storytelling tool that drive it to stagnancy. 'lol id rather read a book' 'lol lets make the same old story again but with bigger monsters' 'lol gaming conventions, let's add dungeons and random encounters that detract from storytelling because id rather read a book' Innovation in storytelling in the medium has been virtually inexistent. LOL GAMES R 4 KIDS ROFLTUNASANDWICH GAMEPLAY isn't helping.

CoH's mp is still 'secret', but apparently it'll be 'special' and take advantage of the WW2 era to make something 'unique'. Nothing has really been released, though. The similarities to DoW will be its fast pace (which you can also see by looking at game footage), and the resource system. Basically, how resources work in DoW is that, you have to control strategic points to gain resources, so it's a 'Capture The Flag'-esque type of gameplay, which allows for very dynamic mp (you have to constantly push for more strategic points, and so does the enemy).

<3 large scale warfare. We'll see how they implement sieges as well. My top priority is mp, though, so no mp campaign is pretty disappointing. We'll have to see how Warhammer: Mark of Chaos will implement mp.

http://www.totalwar.com/community/medieval2.htm Enhanced Multiplayer Battles New multiplayer battle modes will ease the player

When I want actual gameplay, I stay away from RPGs.

Alternatively, LilacSoul's Script Generator has been a very good tool for making NWscript on the fly. Plot in your specifics and get your simple scripts done for you. http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=other.Detail&id=625

I like the style of these guys. Definitely something to consider. http://norrsken.peppesbodega.nu/files/larp.jpg Though, if you think their costumes are a bit primitive, you can opt for this. http://www.anthromaker.de/catcoon/larp/Kchierath_zq44.jpg

It's a MYSTARY :ph34r:

Or bathe.

EVER.

Once you go broadband, you can never go back. EVER.

I downloaded the BG2 demo back in the dialup days. 600 meg goodness.

Wow indeed. The author should never ever be writing any dialogue or try to make anything remotely resembling a story ever again, though.

RP, click on the menu, and skip the crappy prologue.

The dialogue was pointless crap. Only the fight mattered. Very nice.

No. Repeat after me: oink oink.

Oink oink http://www.nwn2wiki.org/Warlock

Might turn out good, but I'm not too impressed with their claims that they'll revolutionize the genre with old concepts.

Actually, I'm busy for the next week On the other hand, that's what the Xfire network is for. We have a couple of others that play Civ4 as well. Speaking of which, we haven't been playing enough Civ4 together. But let's not get off-topic. Which we haven't already. In other news, EaW with coop would have been cooler.

Civ4 coop

2 players sharing one side could have been implemented, if the devs actually thought that coop would be important.

My bad, then. In any case, 1v1 is what killed it, not the turn-based aspect in itself (which would have led to a 1v1 only system - which it is, so it's all moot). AI in RTS is very important. AI should be what's doing the micromanagement. The player should be doing the strategizing. Otherwise, I'm better off playing an action game. The design philosophy behind future are what's promising. Supreme Commander's "Tanks are very very slow" and "Maps are very very large" by design makes it so that fast-clicking won't really save the day, but long-term planning and bigger strategies will. Same with Sins of a Solar Empire. The fact that it takes a capital ship around 70 secs to get from a planetary near-surface to far-orbit given the sheer size of space (thus, you need this long to go to "hyperspace", or retreat) means that planning ahead is much more important than fast-clicking. Let's look at some of that game's facts: "Star - 50,000m Planet - 15,000m Capital ship - 500m Fighter - 20m The distance from the atmosphere to the far orbit is on the order of 40,000m. A single solar system is on the order of 8,000,000 m from end to end. The distance between the 2 closest solar systems is around 250,000,000 m."

Hopefully Obs won't go the way of Troika. On last count, KOTOR2 sold past the million mark, and NWN2 is bound to sell well as well. I wouldn't be too worried.

The galactic map would have interested me, if it weren't turn-based (similar to the Total War series, it seems). Counter-intuitive, perhaps, but when you take into consideration that the only mp mode that will allow it is 1v1, it holds zero appeal to me. MP Skirmish by itself is just about every other RTS ever released. I'm a coop player, whether it's against other players or AI. Hopefully, Sins of a Solar Empire will be what EaW *could* have been. A RT4X game, where you manage an empire in real-time, acting as both emperor and fleet commander (or multiple fleet commanders at once, since it's all in real-time and you can have multiple battles going on at once). Automation and good AI is the way of the future, as opposed to current micromanagement - granted that the AI must be actually good, of course. When grand-scale strategy is more important than dancing your units or clicking on memorized order patterns, I'm in.