Kasoroth

Most likely none of them. I got a PS2 about 6 to 12 months after it was released because I hadn't really had any consoles since the original Gameboy, and figured I'd at least give the newer consoles a try. Right now, I own 2 games for it (one of which was a gift), I have rented one game once, and have played a few games that friends brought over to my house. I have never finished any games on it. Other than that, the PS2 has served as merely an over-priced DVD player. The first (and only) game that I bought for the PS2 was Final Fantasy X, because I had enjoyed the Final Fantasy Legend games on Gameboy back when they were first released in the U.S. I was quite disappointed that despite graphical and cinematic advances, the gameplay hadn't really gotten better since the 8-bit days. While PC RPGs had advanced from the limited character interaction of the original Bard's Tale and SSI Gold box games to the Fallout series, PS:T, and the BG Series, it seemed like the "flagship" of console RPGs had remained stagnant. Since then, I've tried a few other console RPGs that I liked better, and would even consider buying if I was at the store and knew that I'd have a bunch of free time in the near future (both of these conditions are pretty rare, and they come into alignment once, maybe twice a year), and there were no PC games out that I wanted, but none of them really got my interest in the way that my favorite PC games do. I've never visited the forums of their developers (if they even have any), or looked for news about upcoming releases from those developers. The last console game that I can remember actually waiting for and anticipating was Final Fantasy Legend II for Gameboy. - Kasoroth

I can see merits on both sides of this debate, and I think that the best option is somewhere in the middle. The major issues as I see it are as follows: 1) In general, there is no "game world" reason to assume that the party is some kind of hive mind, so it is more natural for the player to play the role of a character rather than the role of a group. While some people might be capable of playing multiple independent characters simultaneously, I think that many more end up "playing" the other characters as tactical extensions of the main character, or simply playing the whole party as a single tactical entity rather than as characters in a story. 2) AI that can act in a somewhat intelligent fashion is difficult but not impossible to make, but an AI that can effectively communicate with the player to plan tactics (and/or strategy) is still probably not possible. 3) Even a really good AI could be a bad thing if it doesn't have a way of communicating with the player to plan tactics for a battle. Imagine a party of 6 characters, 1 PC with 5 NPCs. If the AI was good enough to be at all competitive with a human player, then the player becomes largely unnecessary in battle because 5 good AIs would not be that much worse than 5 good AIs and an average human player. The ideal solution to this problem, in my opinion, would be one that clearly reflected that the player is playing a character, not a hive mind, but still allowed the player (who is assumed to be playing the leader of the group) to make the tactical choices that make battles interesting and fun to play, rather than something that you just watch, or a struggle to keep moronic NPCs from getting themselves killed. I was playing BG2 again recently and this reminded me of the morale system that the BG games used for NPC party members. Having party members panic when they're badly injured was an interesting idea, but I think the main flaw with the BG2 implementation is that it was too oversimplified. Rather than simply having "morale failure" I would suggest some kind of leadership/trust system. When a new party member joins your party, their initial trust might depend on the character, the situation in which they're joining, and your charisma/leadership score. If combats go badly (the NPC takes severe damage or dies, or other party members take severe damage or die), the NPC's trust will decrease, but a high leadership score would reduce the loss. As the party gains combat experience, the NPCs' trust will increase, and a high leadership score would improve this increase. There might be conversation options before some major battles to inspire your NPCs so that they really believe in the value of the cause (this could require leadership checks, and include options for both "noble" and "selfish" inspiration, depending on the nature of your party), and the trust penalties for injuries in that battle would be reduced or eliminated, so that the trust you've built up doesn't necessarily get thrown away as soon as you face a really tough boss fight that leaves you almost dead but victorious over a great foe. Once this system is in place, they can have not just morale failures as in BG, but also leadership failures. These leadership failures would not cause the NPC to run around in a blind panic, they would still fight to the best of the AI's ability, but they would essentially be operating on their own with only the AI's extremely limited capacity for group tactics. Some characters would have a more independent personality, and would require much higher trust values to keep under control in a stressful situation, while others would be more cooperative. With this system the game would play very differently depending on your leadership score and which NPCs you have in your party. If you keep the same group through the whole game, and you manage your tactics well so they don't get beat up too badly, even a character with low leadership might eventually gain the trust of even the most unruly characters, while a charismatic but inept leader who gathers a different group for every adventure might never really gain their trust. This could add some interesting strategic elements to the game if certain NPCs were better suited to certain parts of the game, and you had to make a choice between keeping the members you have, who trust you, or switching some of them out for others with appropriately specialized skill sets who might not be as trusting and cooperative. This system would allow the various NPCs to show their own personalities in combat, while still giving the player tactical control of the battle. It's just that the tactical control would be limited in an attempt to reflect that the player is playing the leader of a group, not the hive mind of a collective entity. It's not a perfect simulation of leading a party of adventurers, but it's the best approximation of it that I can think of give the technology that's available. - Kasoroth

Cost isn't the issue. the issue is annoyance. Even if someone gave me a DVD drive free it wouldn't be worth my time to crack my case and install the drive. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> BG2 is 4 CDs. In the time it takes me to switch CD's during the install of that one game I could just about have a DVD drive installed. If you consider the fact that with a single DVD you can put it in, start the installation and walk away, while with multiple CDs you need to stay nearby or check periodically to see if it needs another disk, I'm quite sure I could install a DVD-ROM drive and BG2 off 1 DVD faster than I could install BG2 from 4 CDs. If you add up the CD switching time of several games, your argument about DVD not being worth the time just doesn't hold up. Also, if cost isn't the issue, you could pay a bit more to get an external USB DVD-ROM drive. If you're too lazy to plug in a USB cable, that's pretty sad. It seems more likely that the real issue is an irrational stubbornness that makes you resist a technical advance that you don't really care about. If you were buying a new computer, and a DVD-ROM would cost $10 more than a CD-ROM, would you choose CD or DVD? What if the price difference was $5? What if they were the same price? Would it be worth keeping the extra $5 or $10 to get an inferior drive? I was glad when game developers switched from stacks of floppies to single CDs, and I'll be glad when they finally switch from stacks of CDs to single DVDs. Personally I think they all should have simply done it about 3 years ago, and by now anyone who wanted to play games would have a DVD drive. CDs could then be happily left behind and forgotten. - Kasoroth

So? You still can have a 386 with a voodoo card, right? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, that depends. My 386 system (an AMD 40 MHz Am386DX that was faster than any Intel 80386) only had ISA slots on the motherboard. I'm not sure if any 386 motherboards were ever made with PCI (or even VLB) slots. I also highly doubt that there were ever any Voodoo cards made for ISA bus (although I could be wrong), since the ISA bus was too slow to really make it worth it, and it was obsolete before 3D accelerated graphics were used in games. - Kasoroth

Yeah, I was always happy when the computer drew higher cards than me in the first few draws, so I could see where it stopped before deciding for myself. Pazaak was definitely the best of the three mini-games in KotOR. I think it would be interesting if certain NPCs would react differently if you had played Pazaak with them a bunch of times. If you're looking for information, they might not want to talk to a complete stranger, but if you were hanging out at the cantina playing Pazaak with them the night before, they might be more friendly. On the other hand, if you beat them every time and left them without enough money to pay their bar tab, they might be a bit irritated. -Kasoroth

I don't mind having a large variety of items, but the items should be kept to a relatively low power level. In particular, I think that items that boost primary stats should be kept to an absolute minimum (like +2 at the most, with no stacking for multiple items of the same stat) or even eliminated completely. Stat allocation is one of the major things that distinguish one character from another, and if you can just equip a bunch of items when you need a higher intelligence, dexterity, etc for a particular situation, it reduces and/or negates the significance of the choices you made during character creation. -Kasoroth

I think that 10 is a good number. There are a few things that I would like though: 1) We should have the option to kick NPCs out of the party or kill them. If the game is allowing both a dark and light path, there will probably need to be some NPCs on both sides, and it would be nice to have the option of opposing those we disagree with, rather than inviting them into our party. If the character is really absolutely necessary to the plot, they could maybe flee if attacked and show up later as a non-party NPC, but it would be better to avoid this by writing a plot that can handle the NPC death without being totally messed up. 2) Avoid killing party NPCs with "plot damage" (for example: killing them off in cutscenes, or other situations that are totally outside of the player's control). Having a particular enemy attack a particular NPC first in combat would be OK. To go along with this, I'm assuming that the NPC "death" system will work similarly to in KotOR, where NPCs don't actually die. I think it would be interesting if they added a "death blow" action that enemies could perform, which would kill an unconscious character for real, but most enemies would only do it if there were no active characters to threaten them. This would mean that if you send a character into combat alone, or if you run away after they've been knocked out, the enemies might actually kill them, but normally you don't have to worry about party members dying from an unlucky critical hit or something. There could then be particular enemies who are scripted to attempt killing blows against particular NPCs even if there are other party members still up and fighting. I think this would be a much better alternative to a "cinematic killing" in a cutscene. As noted in point 1, this would require that the plot is written to allow for the possibility that an NPC might or might not die. 3) There should be more opportunities in the game for non-combat oriented characters to be useful. If the game is very combat oriented, people will tend to choose which characters to take with them based on combat ability rather than personality. If there is a better balance of ways to accomplish goals, then non-combat NPCs are a more viable option. -Kasoroth

If it just gave you the option to customize the menus and remove things you never use, that would be fine. There are some things that I would probably remove just because they're worthless. What I dislike is Windows changing menus around automatically based on what options I use most frequently. If a frequently used command is buried somewhere in the middle of a 20 option menu, I'll learn quite quickly where it is, and the large menu won't bother me, as long as it's always in the same place. If a menu only shows 5 or 6 commands, but they're not always the same, or not in the same places, it's a lot slower to find the common ones than if they just showed them all and kept it consistent. -Kasoroth

I like this much better than a radial menu. I generally prefer sub menus to open up to the right of the previous level, with the first submenu choice directly to the right, with other sub menu choices below that one. I read books left to right, top to bottom, and I like my menus to be the same way. Also, I think that the order of the menu options should be user configurable, so you can put commonly used ones first. Some things I would absolutely NOT want (but Microsoft seems to love in their newer versions of Windows) are: 1) Menus that don't show you all the choices right away, and make you click a "show full menu" arrow at the bottom of the menu. That's always the first thing I turn off when I install Windows. Does anyone actually like that "feature" of Windows? 2) Menus that automatically rearrange their order to put most commonly used options first. I like being able to rearrange menus myself, I hate it when the computer decides to do it for me. For me, knowing where in the menu the choice I want is without even needing to look is much more useful than having a common choice near the top. For commonly used commands, even ones buried at the bottom of a menu, I'll instinctively move my mouse to the right spot before I even look at the actual menu options. If the computer has suddenly decided to put something different in that spot, it will cause a whole lot more confusion and hesitation than if I had to look for the option in a totally unfamiliar menu. -Kasoroth

I don't think that D&D is the best RPG rule set around (in fact I like SPECIAL better), I like it a lot better than the console games that I've seen. All the console games I've played have had absurd hit point and damage inflation, where characters can do thousands of points of damage and barely injure their opponent. I don't really see what the fascination with big numbers is. Personally, I think D&D has too much improvement in characters, at least the way it's implemented in most computer games, which often go from level 1 to level 15 or more within a single, often relatively short game. It seems to me like people seem to have a very short attention span and want to be constantly leveling up their characters. For me, I'd perfer that the game focus on doing stuff, and have level gaining just be something that happens along the way, not a primary focus of the game itself. I like to have a chance to get used to my character at a particular level for at least a few hours before I gain another one. The whole resting to rememorize spells rule of D&D was originally created to make spellcasters conserve their spells, but since most computer games don't have time limits (although Fallout 1 did), and a lot of games will let you rest just about anywhere, including the middle of the enemy fortress you're in the process of assaulting, the original purpose of the rule has been nullified, and it has become merely an annoyance that requires players to rest every few combats to get their spells back. The first time I played Baldur's Gate 2, I only rested once in chapters 1 and 2 combined, and spent most of the time with low hit points, not many spells left, and penalties for being tired. I played it as if the party was actually trying to rescue Imoen as quickly as possible. There isn't really a time limit in the game, so I could have rested as much as I wanted, done tons of side quests, gained a bunch of levels, and gone into each new area with full hit points and spells, but th egame wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. The disappointing thing about that game was that all the interesting resource management had to be self-imposed, and didn't really make a difference in the game. It would have been much better if the game had acknowledged my attempt at haste in some way, perhaps by messing up Irenicus' evil plans in some fairly minor way at least. Some people don't like needing to manage their resources and conserve spells and potions, other people do. There are plenty of console style games available on consoles, and way too few "PC-style" RPGs being made these days, and I'd like to see more games that require a bit of resource conservation. -Kasoroth

I think that the distinction between a premade character and a player-made character is not nearly as blak and white as some people seem to think. Most games have at least some elements predetermined, while some are almost completely predetermined, but there are a lot of games that fall somewhere in between. I think it's important to look at the different elements that make up a character and consider which elements can be predetermined without annoying players, and which elements can't. Some of these elements are related invarious ways, so they can not be entirely separated from each other, but I think some form of classification is useful here. I would break the elements of a character up into a few fairly broad categories: 1) Stats. This is all the stuff that relates to game mechanics, including Str, Dex, etc, and also things such as race, class, and alignment. 2) Appearance. This includes the actual on-screen appearance of the the PC (unless it's a strictly 1st person game where you can never see the PC), as well as any situations where NPCs comment on your appearance, or are influenced by your appearance. Choice of appearance is sometimes limited by choice (or lack thereof) of race and sex. 3) Sex. I hope I don't need to explain how this can be an important element of a character's identity. 4) Personality. This includes the character's motivations, moral beliefs, general outlook on life, and preferred ways of dealing with situations. It can be related to alignment, and also to race (in terms of different cultures), but it is separate from these. 5) History. This is what the character has done before the game starts. Personally, the most important element that I want to control as a player is personality. It's nice to have a choice of stats, appearance, and sex, but not really important for me to enjoy a game, so I won't go into any more discussion about those for now. Control of a character's history is not inherently important to me, because the nature of computer games is that the more control of the character's history you give to the player, the less meaning the history has within the context of the game. The difficulty comes from the fact that (except for some unusual cases, such as amnesia) a character's personality is generally shaped largely by their history. If all games used these unusual cases as a device to explain a PC's disconnection between history and personality, I think it would get repetitive quite quickly. The alternatives seem to be: 1) Predefine both the history and the personality. This technique seems to be the preferred method in the Final Fantasy games. I don't really like this method much, because it limits the player's control basically to the mechanical aspects of gameplay, such as combat, while the actual story and "roleplaying" is done automatically with little player choice in how it occurs. Combat for the sake of combat doesn't really interest me, so it becomes just an annoying interruption from the story. I'd much rather read a book or watch a movie than play this sort of game, that way I can read or watch the story without interruptions. 2) Leave the history intentionally blank. IWD did this. One limitation here is that there is no common background that can be referred to by NPCs. Sure, the player can make up a background, and the game might even provide a place to type it in, but it doesn't actually do anything. 3) A compromise, where the character history is given some constraints, but otherwise left intentionally vague. Fallout and the BG games took this method, although BG had more constraints, some of which were not revealed until later, potentially causing logical inconsistencies with details that the player made up. In general I tend to prefer this method. As for how I'd rate different games in terms of character freedom: Fallout Series: 1) Stats: A lot of freedom here, although race was restricted to human only. 2) Appearance: Not really much choice here in terms of actual on-screen appearance, although based on NPC reactions it was implied that higher charisma gave you a more attractive appearance. 3) Sex: Yes, you could choose. 4) Personality: Yes, you could decide your character's personality, and there were quite a few relatively meaningful ways to express you character's personality in the game and have NPCs react to you, and reach differnt end results. 5) History: A few constraints, but mostly left up to player's imagination with no impact on the actual game. BG Series: 1) Stats: A lot of freedom here, but some of the choices caused logical inconsistencies in the plot (elves who are way too young to be adventuring, rangers and barbarians who had never left the sheltered citadel of candlekeep, etc) 2) Appearance: You choose a portrait, your on-screen character appearance is determined by race and class, with no independent choice except for colors. No in-game effect of appearance that I know of. 3) Sex: Yes, you could choose. 4) Personality: Left mostly up to player imagination. There were some dialogue options for "good vs. evil" but it generally ended up with the same result. Your character's personality generally seemed to make the least amount of difference at the most important points in the story. 5) History: You have to be a Bhaalspawn raised in the sheltered environment of Candlekeep with no knowledge of your heritage, but aside from that constraint, the history is left mostly up to the player's imagination. PS:T 1) Stats: Somewhat limited. You can change your ability scores, and later in the game you can change you class, but you're stuck being a human. 2) Appearance: No choice really. You're a scarred, zombified guy. 3) You have to be male. 4) Personality: Yes, you could decide your character's personality, and there were quite a few relatively meaningful ways to express you character's personality in the game and have NPCs react to you, and reach differnt end results. 5) History: Predefined. One of the main themes in the game is discovering who you were, so this was necessary. Amnesia is used to allow the game to define who you were, while still letting the player define who you are. IWD Series: 1) Stats: Lots of choice. 2) Appearance: You choose a portrait, your on-screen character appearance is determined by race and class, with no independent choice except for colors. No in-game effect of appearance that I know of. 3) Sex: Yes, you could choose. 4) Personality: Left mostly up to player imagination. There were some dialogue options for "good vs. evil" but it generally ended up with the same result. 5) History: Left blank, other than that you went to Icewind Dale. You could type in a history, but it had no effect on the game. Since one of the most important parts of a CRPG, in my opinion, is being able to define my character's personality in a way that the game can respond to, Fallout and PS:T are ranked significantly ahead of BG and IWD on my list of favorite games. While it may be difficult (or even impossible) to make games that focus on the PC's history without either resorting to amnesia or some other gimmick or forcing a specific personality on the PC (like the FF games), that does not mean that games have to be hack and slash combat oriented games like IWD. For me the best parts of Torment were the interactions with the NPCs (both party members and non-party members), and this can be done quite well without relying on the character's history. In fact, I would much rather have NPCs respond to things I do in the game rather than things I did before the game. Although the Nameless One's story was quite interesting, it was not what makes me rank Torment as my favorite game of all time. It was the well developed NPCs with believable motivations that I liked. In Torment many of them were connected to TNO's past in some way, but this was not necessary. Some, like Nordom, Annah, and Fall-From-Grace had very little, if any, connection to TNO's past. -Kasoroth

I think the battle with Malak on the Leviathan is a great example of what NOT to do in an RPG. First of all, the game cheats so that you can't kill Malak, and then uses cut scenes to force a particular outcome so the player has no control over the situation. Here's what I think they should have done in that situation: 1) Make Malak a lot tougher there. He was a complete pushover if not for the cutscene "victory". 2) Have Bastila help you fight Malak by the rules, while you are still in control of your character, and shout for you to run while she fights. Maybe even have her close and seal a door if she manages to get herself and Malak into a different room from you. If you want to stick around and try to fight Malak there, and you stick too close for Bastila to lock you out with a door, you should have that option, but it should be a damn near impossible fight that you're not actually expected to be able to win. If you do manage to win, you can kill Malak there, and save yourself the trouble of needing to board the Star Forge later. You just go disable the field that crashes ships, the Republic fleet comes, and Bastila uses her battle meditation to help the fleet destroy the Star Forge. That would have been much better in my opinion, because it allows you to play your character the way you want, to the limit of your abilities. Scripted events that allow NPCs to "cheat" to ensure a particular outcome of a battle should be avoided whenever possible. The game should instead be designed to properly react to any outcome. -Kasoroth

I think KotOR's combat was not all that great (although they did a pretty good job with the combat animations), but that didn't prevent me from liking the game. Actually, many of my favorite games didn't really have great combat: Ultima 7: Combat wasn't really all that great. No control of NPC party members, so your tactical choices were pretty limited. Ultima Underworld: Combat wasn't really all that great. 3 different types of attacks. Single PC, no party members. It was hard to switch your active spell in the middle of combat. Fallout: Combat was not too bad, but nothing all that special either. Get small gun skill very high, get sniper rifle, aim at eyes, win. OR Get lots of action points and perks that let you shoot fast, get turbo plasma rifle, unload 4 times as much ammo as your opponents, win. Planescape: Torment: Combat wasn't really all that great. Very few spellcasting enemies. Get high Con, get good AC, let the Nameless One charge in first so everyone attacks him, win, let TNO regenerate. While a good combat system is nice, and it allows players to exercise the tactical part of their brain, I don't think combat necessarily has to be good to fulfil its purpose. Combat should be there as an obstacle to a particular course of action. The problem with very linear games (like IWD2) is that there is only one path, and you have to follow it. They can't put in an obstacle that some characters (or parties) can't get past, or the game would become impossible. In a non-linear game, you can (and should, in my opinion) include encounters that are simply too high level for the PC at the level that the player is likely to first encounter them. They should not necessarily be violently hostile unless the player provokes it. Metzger and his slaver gang in Fallout 2 are a good example. When I first met him, I wanted to kill him, but I was too low level, so I had to bargain with him to free Vic. I came back later with power armor and a gauss rifle and put a bullet hole right beween his eyes. Sometimes it's fun to try to fight something that's too powerful, and through luck, good tactics, and a bunch of reloads actually win the fight. Other times it's fun to go back to people who pushed you around at low level and blow them away. A linear game doesn't give you this option, which is probably why I generally prefer non-linear games. -Kasoroth