Tale

I just found out that Goals are limited to scene in Shadowrun Returns. I... don't even know how... why... This completely kills the ability to do any goal that transitions scenes without micromanaging every step. I mean, you don't really have to micro, but their journal will just be empty if you don't. Or the alternative is that I can just copy the broad goal into each scene and just constantly bring it up each time they load into a scene.

Games derived from the Team Fortress model beat it out rather handily. Whether that be Team Fortress itself or Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. If you break out of the Call of Duty and Halo spheres you'll find lots of that. Natural Selection has lots of playstyles. And these games actually have movement abilities, not just variations on attacks. With environments that make use of it. Still, I liked ME2's combat. I think ME3's expansion of powers kind of homogenized classes a bit outside of Vanguard, and the enemy designs did nothing to play with what differences remained. Complaints of rails usually are due to the rails being visible, not the rails existing. As in the player has lost all motivation for following the main plot and that's when they notice they're not allowed to do anything else.

Absolutely. I've observed the phenomenon in myself. One of the ME3 breakdowns talks about it as "narrative coherence." And I won't swear to it, but I think the Redlettermedia examinations of the prequel trilogy talked about it too.I think it's really simple to think of just as a breaking point. You have these little problems you're willing to forgive and overlook, even without thinking, but they start building up. And either they build up too greatly and start encroaching on the parts you enjoy or this one big thing comes out and it just breaks. And everything you forgave before, you go back and stop forgiving. Humans are funny things because of stuff like this. It's a combination of reinforcement and attrition. And now that I've ranted about this phenomenon that's only interesting to people like me, I guess I need to find a point to make out of this. No matter how much I crucify Dragon Age 2, no matter how much I gather people up to hand out pitchforks and torches, no matter how much I complain about cameos, references, recharacterization, and small world, no matter how much I talk about how the plot seems badly formed and justified... it is still better than Mass Effect 3.

People didn't complaint about Hawke's personal story. Or at least, that wasn't the meat of most complaints I heard. They complained that the entire last act was on rails and the bad guys dropped philosophical differences for pure crazy. People actually liked the Qunari plot. But the personal plot was just a narrative McGuffin. Something you followed to get hooked into the real plots. I mean, the personal story stops being relevant even halfway into the game. Of the three major plot threads, two of them were save the world. And one of those fails simply because the city of Kirkwall is full of crazy people.

I wouldn't be surprised if "importing" simply doesn't exist (because there's no shortage of bugs). I suppose we could allow people to import their game states to the Keep (I haven't read the article yet), but the idea is to use this to set your "import state." Just put in a good word for me with the people choosing beta testers. *nudge* *nudge*

Should be an issue for everyone. Not just for importing, it lets you check out alternate content you don't have imports for. And it can help you overcome import bugs.

What seems disingenuous to me is people acting like they know how or why particular parts of a game were produced. A piece of content decently cut from a game and a piece of content produced wholly separate from a game look identical to the end user. It's not bad behavior to try to alter the price of the product they sell even if they were cutting parts to sell later, assuming they're not being deceptive. If they produce a game and cut it into 20 parts to sell to you later, the only real concern is if any of those given parts is worth buying at the asking price. If they're being genuinely deceptive that's a real problem. Telling you things are included that are not. But that's not what you're accusing them of.

Just saw the gameplay video. The environment interactivity is wonderful. Didn't look like there was much filler combat.

Butthurt is on the list of things I would never say. Aside from referential such as this post.

I wonder if I have ever said that. It's not on the list of things I would never say. But I'm not sure I would understand the reasoning behind saying it. Self-reflection moment.

I couldn't get into Stolen Throne myself. Put it down halfway into the second chapter. Which makes it not the worst book I've tried to read, that honor goes to Hearts in Atlantis from Stephen King. Formerly a big Stephen King fan, that book put me off reading for 2 years... Still, he seems to have found an audience. A number (being vague as I haven't done the studies, forgive me) of people enjoyed his work, including one or two people here that I've talked to. So, he has found an audience. Which, large or small, is at least appreciable.

I now eagerly anticipate PAX to be filled with information on reactivity, specializations, post-alpha combat videos, a humble post-mortem of Dragon Age 2, and a proud declaration that Gaider has taken up wearing only the most festive of hats.

Nothing about specializations. I think there's talk about specializations finally having reactivity, but it's sometimes hard to distinguish information from speculation this early on.

It was either this or romances. Give us some yet unrevealed information and we can talk about that instead.

Are you familiar with Sturgeon's response to that same claim about science fiction?

I've always been told to know your audience. Write what you know, write what you like, yes, but also be aware of what the market is currently interested, be aware if you're writing for young adults, and if you write for just yourself, then you're liable to have an audience of one. How do you know if everyone will enjoy it if you were only writing for yourself? I really don't know how to parse "ripping good tale that everyone enjoys" in a way that has meaning to me, I'm sorry. Unless we're talking about going for LCD and making a tale full of explosions. Because everyone loves explosions. That's like a call to Michael Bay. Which is fine, but it doesn't balance wider appreciation against something meaningful or interesting.

Yes? I feel like that's a trick question, but I'm not seeing it. Plenty of books have been written for what you may consider stupid people. And while there's a moral objection to writing that way to take advantage, there's a long and proud tradition of writing that way under the label of philosophy, self-help, spirituality, or metaphysics. Even conspiracy theories. In their own subjects? Probably. That's why you focus on some other thing that you might know more than they about. You teach the historian a bit about astronomy or the astronomer about history.

Why am I the only one that makes fun of the popular usage of "lore?" I went through that list just hoping it would be there. So alone. What's the popular usage of "lore"? I like making fun of the word "immersion" myself. Ye olde story.

Why am I the only one that makes fun of the popular usage of "lore?" I went through that list just hoping it would be there. So alone.

Does the new position come with a fancy hat?

There's never enough time! Between my writing, mod making, and gaming, I haven't enough time for reading! That does sound great though, I think I'll throw it up on my Amazon wishlist.

It feels good. Do you know the last time my logic in mods actually ended up working? I have three significant load states for the first map of my pack. The PC either loads at the bed, which is the state the pack starts at. The PC can load at the front door if entering that way. The PC can lastly load in the basement via the garage. It required 4 triggers and an event, but it works without a hitch. I think I can cut that down to just 3 triggers, but I wanted to play with events. Edit: And three triggers, no event, no problem.

I think all has been said that needs to be on the topic. It's getting into bickering and some personal attacks. Let's call it a day.

I'd be very surprised if the Maker had anything to do with the Black City, or even existed in the setting at all.

Back to Shadowrun Returns. I'm working on the travel system and quest tracking. Quest tracking is a necessity of the other. I'm making a quick travel system, so I have to track discovered areas. And since I'm allowing the player to move non-linear, I have to track important information (like quest state) so that the map doesn't completely reset whenever the player enters it subsequent times. And I have to track origin/intended destination so that a player loading into Seattle ends up by the door of the building he just left instead of at some generic spawnpoint. The conversation system works as a wonderful notepad to help me remember my flags.