StillLife

I wish I could say the same. There's always some goofball that will go rushing for their wallets to have the latest and greatest, even when in the long run, they're shooting themselves in the foot. Oh there will always be plenty of profits to be had in this business. I don't begrudge developers making money for their craft--it's why I've never even been tempted to pirate games. It's the amount of profits they think they have to scrape out of consumers that worries me. Already a standard has been accepted amongst PC users that games aren't required to work the way they should upon release, just so publshers can rush something to market too early and keep investors happy. Still, the game industry really hasn't been too terrible about it compared to most other entertainment industries, but I'd rather it get any worse either. No one should! You've already got Microsoft trying to drive up the retail prices of new games by slapping on an extra ten bucks for Xbox 360 games. Most likely Sony will realize they can get away with it and they'll follow suit. Those kind of trends, along with the one we're talking about here are things gamers need to stop being such pushovers about. It's not ok for people to try to extract more money from you while providing a less fulfilling product.

Me too. While it's perfectly reasonable that Bethesda had ample opportunity to whip this upgrade up between the time the game went gold and release, it makes me wonder if they just pulled it from the game in order to sell it as additional content. Good question. Right now, user-made mods are pretty decent advertising for games, plus they stand to increase the overall quality of the game and make it more appealing--all at no cost to the developer. If models like the one here become a big source of revenue though, to the point user-made mods may actually be cutting into a developers/publishers profits, then it does seem like there could be a possibility they'll stop allowing them.

It's a problem if they start holding things back that originally were going into the retail version to charge for them online though. As a consumer, I think the idea is friggin terrible. I don't care whether it's good for making higher profits for the companies involved or not. Games are expensive enough already without pulling some garbage like charging cash for armor for your horsies in a video game. My guess is Microsoft needed to provide developers more incentive to create online content for their Xbox games, in order to make Xbox Live seem more viable. After all, why would developers want to make free content for games just to help Microsoft sell Live accounts? So they made the stupid Marketplace where developers could charge for additional "content". This example is just an omen of that crummy model trickling down to PC users. Next some jack-ass developer will get the idea to start charging for patches that fix bugs and make the game more stable. So yeah, even though no one is forcing you to buy this upgrade, initial business models like what's happening here will likely lead to trends that will only end up hurting the consumer and the industry IMO.

I'm not talking about the outcome of the plot or how many different endings there are to it, though multiple endings usually are a nice feature in comparison to one set ending. My point was that games shouldn't necessarily have a story/plot as their main focus, aside from the one you make with your character. Does playing a game only have a purpose if there's a beginning and an end? No. Those rules do apply to things like movies and books, but not video games. How is it pointless if you're wandering around doing stuff? That's supposed to be where the entertainment part comes in. Do you play games for entertainment, or soley because you want to witness a half-baked story unfold? You're wrong with your last statement as well: MMORPGs due to their nature have a plethora of negatives holding them down. MMORPG developers almost always seem to focus on how to keep the player paying, rather than just providing a fun experience in which they can play out the role of a character utilizing the mechanics of the game. It would be great if someone would break that trend, but it may never happen as long as subscription fees are involved.

They aren't sidequests if you have to do them to advance the story. They are part of the game's overall, linear plot. Linear plots have already been done quite well in films and literature. Video games, unlike those mediums, have the luxury and capability of allowing the player to create their own story within the context of the gameworld. I'd like to see games, or RPGs at least, advance more in that direction and get way from static stories all together. Of course there are story-obsessed people who just want to play out key moments in a pre-determined epic tale, so it may always be necessary for games to try do both I guess. Oblivion tried, but failed to balance both appropriately with each other IMO. The fact they tried to include both is still a step in the right direction and adds to the games overall quality as far as I'm concerned though.

Those games are abundant enough as it is. They are known as Japanese RPGs. Usually they focus entirely on the main plot, which is boring for an interactive game IMO. There are these things called books that are based entirely around a main plotline too.

I'm a sidequest fiend. Sometimes I don't wanna be the savior of the world, I just wanna be a dude wandering around getting in little adventures here and there--Kung Fu style. Given a typical character of mine, I'll even gladly save cats from trees... for a small fee. I like cats, and any character I make must like cats as well after all. One of Oblivion's greatest strengths is its sidequests. While I think they dropped the ball in many areas, the developers did seem to put a good amount of craftsmanship into them. The problem is the sense of urgency your character has thrusted upon them from the moment you're dropped into the game. The threat of demons overrunning the entire world if a new emperor isn't appointed soon? That's pretty heavy stuff that would be hard for even the most apathetic of alter egos to ignore. I thought three of the finest examples of mixing a "save the world" plot with lots of sidequests were the Fallouts, and BG 2. In both of the Fallouts, you basically just stumble into the overall threat, and you only find out how severe both of them are by really looking into them, at a point when it's too late to ignore them anyway. In BG2, you're presented with not so much of a save the world plot, but a save the elves one. And really, who cares about a bunch of goofy elves anyway? The real problem was the fact Irenicus had given your whiney kid sister a nasty shiner, and tried to syphon off your godliness. Now that was worthy of a good ass kicking. Still, there wasn't too much of a sense of urgency-- revenge is a dish best served cold after all. It does feel a bit silly sometimes when you've just had an emperor die on your hands and beg you to save the world/empire, and instead my character chooses that moment to go off on an unrelated journey of self-discovery around Cyrodil. I've been writing it off as my guy(a fiercely loyal imperial legionairre btw) needing to prepare for the epic, treacherous journey a mile away. You really need lots of food, several houses, an uber horse, and God-like weapons and armor for such an arduous expenditure as talking to the bastard child of an emperor ya know? It would have solved so many problems people have with the game just to have the main plot alone require a certain power level to complete each stage of it. That way there would be less whining about leveling being pointless, and a reduced feeling that the plot really isn't quite so cataclysmic if for two months your character can wander around twiddling their thumbs and nothing bad really happens.

After playing City of Heroes, Puzzle Pirates, Eve: Online, and World of Warcraft, I'm completely burnt out on MMOGs. With the exception of Puzzle Pirates, everything else seems to be grind, grind, grind. Paying $10-15 a month to take a second job working for video game items? No thanks. The idea of having to schedule time and team up to grind dungeons with 39 monkey's in WoW was disturbing enough, I've heard raids are even bigger and more emphasized in the Everquests too. Laaaame.

The guys who are making Project Offset, or at least a couple of them, were part of the 4-man team(S2 Games) that made my favorite online competitive game ever, Savage: The Battle for Newerth. So I'm pretty interested in Offset.

Hit me. Use spoilertags if you have to (do you mean the Arena fights?) Still on the Imperial City FedEx quests, but now a vampire bit me! (is that supposed to happen already on lvl 8?) I can't see any negative stuff about being a vampire right now... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Are you sure you know what FedEx quests are? They refer to mundane quests that require you to transport objects around. Like: "Hello hero, I seem to have lost my magical spoon of smiting. Please go get it, and I will reward you upon your return." Or, "deliver this package to some d00d on the other side of the world for me plz." There aren't really any quests like that in Oblivion that I've encountered, at least not in the Imperial city. The closest I've seen is having to find evidence of wrongdoing by sneaking into and searching someone's home, then returning the evidence to the relevant person. That was only one part of the quest though. As for a mention of stolen loot earlier in this thread: Guards don't magically see it and run up to you, they only attempt to arrest you if you've been witnessed comitting a criminal act. I've had two potions I helped myself to in my inventory forever.

It's fine, don't even worry about that thread. I've done my share of bitching about Oblivion at the Codex(admitedly prior to playing it), but that's one area that the developers made a brilliant design decision. Sure you can get through at level 1 by avoiding ever resting in an inn--to officially advance your level, but why the heck would you want to? The growth of your character would be very minimal. Your skill progression would stagnate from not increasing your attributes. Having it so that enemies scale in power just ensures everything is challenging, but you also don't ever have to turn around just because you realize something is too "high level". If you can't overcome a fight, it's simply because you're not doing well enough skill-wise, or your not thinking it through enough. For example, I went on this sidequest that involved exploring the wreckage of a ship. The "end guy" was hard as hell, but I knew that it wasn't because he was too high level for me, but I simply had to play it smart and use everything in my arsenal to full effect, which after several tries, I managed to do. It's also great because there are no low level trash monsters that make areas feel pointless to trudge through. I might be mistaken about this, but it seems rewards also scale depending on your level when you complete a sidequest as well. There are also cheat codes in the game. One could argue that their mere exsistence makes the game pointless too, since you could basically breeze through it if you wanted. There's a simple solution though: don't use them, play the game the way it was meant to be played.

I approached this game with a lot of apprehension given my hatred for Morrowind, but I must say I'm greatly enjoying it so far. Currently around 15 hours in. Of all the refinements and good decisions, it's a damn shame they kept the linear, archaic dialogue system though. It still greatly hinders the entire experience IMO and really keeps the game from feeling like an RPG to me. On the positive side, at least it's not as tedious and time consuming as it was in Morrowind. The consolized interface with no tool-tips is also a bit sucky, but I've gotten used to it. Why does there seem to be this persistent trend from developers where PC users just have to suck it up and deal with console interfaces, when we're using friggin keyboards--not gamepads. Don't treat us like bastard children please. NPCs still seem less interesting than even in the original Gothic, but it's still a huge improvement over Morrowind and goes a long way to make the world feel more alive. The quality of quests so far has been very impressive, by any game's standards. I love skill systems that advance with use--it was one of the more enjoyable parts of Morrowind for me. It's very well done in Oblivion. I like that NPCs often look rather different from each other, it avoids the KotOR clone syndrome. However, some of them look downright ridiculous, with grotesquely elongated heads, or impossibly rotund heads with hot-pink skin. One thing Bethesda really deserves some praise for is all the content that is in the game. I could've spent $50 and finished many of the single-player game's out there in the time I've spent on Oblivion, yet I feel like I've just scratched the surface. You definitely get your money's worth if you enjoy the game to begin with. I absolutely love the combat in Oblivion. I'm a knight and have primarily stuck to melee only, but I actually look forward to fights in the game. It's definitely the best implementation of melee combat I've seen in a first-person game. I've always thought that If you're gonna make an action-RPG, make the combat skill-based and dynamic, rather than a silly click-fest, or an automated affair. They definitely pulled that off with Oblivion. Yeah, most likely you just didn't spot it. I've had that happen several times, as they're small enough to blend into grass, often are lurking in the water, and don't make a lot of noise.

It can be done and has been done in NWN for multiplayer as previously stated, but that doesn't exactly work in the exact same fashion. I also seriously doubt oblivion would be running full AI routines for the entire world.... That would be lunacy. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah that wouldn't make sense at all. It's unlikely the NPCs in Oblivion "remember" things you have done either. Most of the processing concerning NPCs reactions to you--if the Beth devs aren't drooling idiots--would most likely take place through a checklist of sorts when you initiate a conversation with them. In otherwords, basic NPCs you run by don't have their own personal space in memory where it has everything it's learned from you stored away. When you walk by an NPC with some decision making code, it's not a whole lot different, maybe even less resource intensive than an enemy in a FPS depending on how compelex the "AI" is in either game. The behavior of enemies in Far Cry was pretty damn complex and there are lots of things going on, like areas where damage to the environment has taken place or objects that may have been knocked over, for memory to keep track of and the computer to process. NightandTheShape probably has it right I think; the only reason RPGs usually lack behind FPS in the graphics department is because a lot more goes into the other elements of them to spend too much time focusing on state of the art graphics, which is understandable, and probably preferable for people who are really looking for an RPG--not a visual orgasm. It's probably one of the reasons in recent years RPG developers have developed a fondness for using FPS engines for their RPGs, or what gets marketed as an RPG these days.

Ouch, what OS are you running?

That's probably my biggest apprehension with Oblivion, and one of the things that made me strongly dislike Morrowind. I don't understand what led Bethesda to believe the context menu dialogue system was actually a good feature, other than the fact it requires far less work than writing out dialogue trees and specific NPC responses to them. Encylopedic context menu's are not fun. They have all the entertainment and role-playing value of typing a keyword into Google or Windows help. They establish little more than an excessive vaguness for your character. I'd even actually prefer to have a character's personality predefined for me Japanese RPG style, than have them be totally devoid of personality. "They leave more room for imagination and role-playing freedom" is a poor excuse. Any game with a lack of overall content leaves more room for imagination in that case. Minesweeper could be provide the greatest role-playing possibilities of all time going by such logic. The reality is they're there because Bethesda was too lazy, or focused on other aspects to put too much effort into dialogue. Good dialogue for me, as well as opportunities to define who my character is through the game, are possibly the most important elements to an RPG for me.

Heya Obsidian people. After browsing through this thread, I have an urge to reinstall Pirates!. I'm in the process of finishing up Black & White 2. Surprisingly good game, considering the original bored me to death before I could finish it. The focus on city building for good players has been very enjoyable, though from my limited experience, the RTS aspects seem very clumsy. With my enjoyment of this and The Movies, my faith in Molyneaux and co. is being quickly restored. Also playing City of Hereos, Age of Empires 3, and Battlefield 2 here and there.

It would work good with the Source Engine. At least I thought it really brought the characters and the environments in Bloodlines to life. They would just have to do away with the retarded, pseudo-real-time combat garbage that's in the first two. And that friends, would be a good thing. Oh yeah, the Source engine is currently seeing more usage as an RPG engine than it is a shooter engine now, what with Troika and Arkane licensing it out. So comments that it's not fit for RPGs don't really seem valid.

I liked the Smiths, but never really got into Morrissey's solo stuff, seemed a bit too cheese-laden. He was the heart-throb of dramatic gay guys and teenage girls everywhere though. For anyone who has never heard him--imagine a depressed muppet.

That's pretty funny. :D Can't really blame him.

Eh, come on Volourn give Karl a break. I'm sure it's every NBA stars dream to retire with a championship ring. Jackson wouldn't be playing him if he really thought he was useless to the team anyway.

No Dega, it kind of filled in. There was a lingering scar for a long time, but its long gone. Don't worry, same will probably happen for you.

Yeah it seems some of my favorite developers as of late are European. But I guess we all have to deal with localization delays. Europeans have been dealing with them for a long time now.

I like spiders. Living in Florida, with all the annoying insects we have flying around, they are one of mans best friends. I will even go out of my way to avoid killing them. Usually if I see a spider in my apartment, I'll just scoop the little guy up with a cup and piece of paper and let 'em outside. I have had to kill several brown recluses before though. And a black widow once. I got bit by what I'm assuming was a brown recluse when I was a kid and half of my shin swelled up like a balloon and left a nasty looking sore. So I don't risk leaving the highly venomous ones be. Anyway, that sucks for you Deganawida. Just remember the spider was probably trying to mind it's business and you threatened it. They usually won't bite unless they're directly trapped by our skin somehow and will usually go out of their way to avoid us if they can, so don't hold it against em. Hope you feel better though man.

Giant Crane?... Run for your lives, I am the Giant Crane!

I haven't bothered to keep tabs on the playoffs this season. Mostly because my team--the Magic--completely sucked this year and had no shot of making it right out of the gate. The Lakers and the Pistons are probably my two least favorite teams in the NBA too, so I haven't even bothered to pay attention to the finals either. Bleh. But if I had to choose, I'm hoping the Pistons come through. I like seeing the Lakers lose and Kobe cry.