Tale

Will I get to take out someone important with me?

Iranian, Uranium... coincidence? I don't think the US would go for it. But, maybe it'd be worth a shot. After all, I fully support the god given right to fuse.

Oh, so you mean it would only be capable of being made into a dirty bomb? Good idea telling the internets. What a perfectly good waste of Uranium! It's not easy to come by. Heck, they're out of stock of the good stuff right now: http://www.unitednuclear.com/ultra.htm I wouldn't want to have to be uranium-less for long!

That would be tomorrow. Today is day 7, but the post doesn't work on Sundays, so tomorrow would be the 7th working day for them. Ahhh, FU--- wait, past life?

And you never bothered to show where it's right. I explained my opinion that it's arbitrary and near meaningless. A +6 conveys nothing except "you did better than +5, but not as good as +7." Non-verbal is actually clearer on the difference between effects. Numbers have no meanings that we can relate to. Non-verbals include action and have meanings we can relate to. The way a woman looks at you can be more expressive of whether or not she'll sleep with you than a chart of 1-100, unless 100 is the only mark of any relational value. We use the numbers we do for stats because they are inherited from dice rolls. And most people have no bloody clue what they mean. Stat points aren't clear. You can hear about this from many other players of NWN2 who aren't familiar with D&D. They have no idea what stats to pick. Because they can't relate to the values and have no idea what they mean except that one value is arbitrarily better than the value below it. They were intended to show you the universality of some manners of non-verbal. Which attests to their clarity. My original point was that I thought the numbers, in the current implementation of the system, give negative feedback which invalidates choices. What I'm arguing now is actually aside from that. That problem can still exist with what I'm pushing for now. If you give a player a choice and make one choice have solely negative results and another choice have solely positive results, it's probably advisable to not shout out "HEY PLAYER, I'M ****ING YOU!" In those cases, it might be better as a surprise. Otherwise, it's just reload time and the choice has no real meaning. For a choice to have meaning, he either needs to expect equal outcomes or he should be prevented from sidestepping adverse outcomes. You don't have to give him equal outcomes, depending what your design goals are. If you want to design something to teach, entertain, or test. If you want to teach, you make negative choices but give a chance to redo. If you want to entertain, you make all choices equally meaningful in different, but entertaining, ways. If you want to test, you make sure they're completely committed before you let them know if they were right or wrong. A game should try to be relatively seamless. You don't want to make the player drop out of the game too overly. You can't avoid it in many ways, such as load screens, but many other ways you can avoid it. You don't want the player to identify that he can improve his experience with the game by saving-reloading. Which is what the OP's situation was demonstrating that people do in KOTOR and NWN2. He's come to identify saving before conversations then reloading when they don't go a verifiably good way with improving his experience. So, he's being taught to play the game in a manner than breaks those seams. You want the player to be satisfied with his choices so he doesn't engage in this behavior. I think you were the one to type somewhere that some feedback is better than no feedback. I can't agree. No feedback is often preferable to feedback that is exclusively negative. Unless you're trying to teach people something. Which in this case would either be teaching them "don't play the game" or "save-reload around conversations." It will be more clear. And it will have more understandable meaning other than "something bad" or "something good." If it seems arbitrary, it's not clear.

I can't buy Uranium that dangerous! Only stuff I can buy is okay to handle with your bare hands. Just don't wear it or handle it for extensive periods of time. Also make sure to wash your hands after handling to ensure you don't digest or inhale flakes.

Except, I'm not. Applied to gaming, we have Bethesda's Oblivion with it's Speechcraft system which utilizes facial body language to indicate worst/bad/good/best choices and VALVe's Half-Life 2 series of games where character personalities are more than transparent through body language (especially Alyx). Most people seem to think Speechcraft too easy in Oblivion. And it lends tons of credit. Then we have the studies. Ekman & Friesen (1972; 1984; 1994) have identified 6 emotions that are identifiable with facial expressions. These are transparent enough that they're recognizeable across cultures (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002). I wish I could remember the name of another guy who has done studies on body language. The eye roll is another universal symbol. It stands for contempt. "It works" is no excuse for lack of examining alternate systems. Especially when there is a desire for change as shown in this thread. Games aren't all about function. If you look at the posts here, you see people interested in the form. Form which can be applied functionally. It adds to the characters, which is especially important for anyone who wants to consider "immersion." Do we need to get into a games as art debate, perhaps?

People are naturally incredibly adept at recognizing patterns and getting information from body language. And further, it's also an important part of game design to teach players. These two things actually work incredibly well in practice. Teaching how to recognize cues. Games teach their systems to the players all of the time. Natural systems are the easiest among them. You seem resistant to the idea because you think some people just won't recognize it. But, you have little basis for this beyond speculation. There's no way to tell if people will recognize it, be able to learn it, or at least a particular implementation of it without testing. To simply throw an idea something aside because you don't know if it'll work and you just assume it won't is silly. If anything, numbers are counterintuitive to players. They're worse feedback. A +6 is genuinely meaningless to someone who's not already familiar with it. They won't know there's meaning to it beyond "oh, I did something good!" The effects are completely unknown. A smile and a pat on the shoulder convey a lot more recognizable information to most people than +6. And if that smile exists in a later conversation, they understand permanence. If that smile changes, they'll recognize mutability.

Day 6: Still not arrived. Anyone have experience with USUK mail?

You speak as if the concept is foreign. When the idea of characters responding differently because of previous interactions, and their own moods as a result of these previous interactions, is quite natural. There's no reason people wouldn't understand the system except simply it not having been utilized significantly previously. In fact, quite a number of people constantly make jokes about a system such as has been described not existing. It's like knowing that you can look up and down in an FPS. It's not something that was always around, but that doesn't mean it's hard to grasp when it is implemented.

This announcement does not mention MMO. It's reasonable that it's KOTOR, but jumping to it being an MMO is senseless. They've had that up for longer than a few days, since 2006 if I recall correctly. http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/press_...6_03_15_Austin/ What is new though, is the "new next gen game" item on their games list. Which is distinctly seperate on that list from the MMO.

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The question in regards to Lucasarts is if it is even an MMO AT ALL. Not what brand of MMO it is. This would only apply if you've seen or heard anything. You've seen nothing and the only thing you've heard is a rumor from a non-reputable source. If it looks like nothing and you heard it's a duck from a drunken hobo, it might be a duck, but it also might be a tubesock.

God willing!

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=48210 http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=48249

I've bought it. I just have yet to receive it.

Get the 120.

Can you store porn on a 360?

Unless you're paying for it.

I looked at it a bit yesterday, seems to be primarily multiplayer focused. Can't say I'm too keen on that.

For the record: There's already a hollywood celebrity in the very video that Wals posted.

What's the purpose of this cull? Edit: Apparently it's a hunt. For food. Thought I'm also reading that there's a claim that it's to less competition for fish. Seems kind of reasonable. At least one species appears to be endangered in that area, but I'm curious as to the population numbers of the rest. I recently visited a Dolphinarium in Mexico. These animals are remarkably well trained. I'm surprised that we don't consider some populations to be domesticated.

What should I ask people for for Christmas? Uranium or a Chemistry Set? Of course, the set might be more useful. On the other hand, real men own Uranium. Just imagine going up to a chick in a bar and saying "hey babe, I own Uranium." You'd have to beat them off with a stick.

You speak that like it's fact. It's loose speculation based upon two things: 1) Bioware has an MMO studio. 2) They want to play a new MMO. Neither of which is decisive evidence. Neither of which makes the rumor significantly above baseless. I was talking about my own personal views. I would be very surprise if Bioware's MMO doesn't have monthly fees. If it doesn't, then good. What the heck does monthly fees have to do with it? I'm not talking about monthly fees. I'm saying this game, meaning the collaboration between Lucasarts and Bioware, is not necessarily an MMO.

You speak that like it's fact. It's loose speculation based upon two things: 1) Bioware has an MMO studio. 2) They want to play a new MMO. Neither of which is decisive evidence. Neither of which makes the rumor significantly above baseless.

Day 5: Still not arrived.