Tale

Because I recall numerous times in Baldur's Gate 2 where your party would be approached while your character hid and any time you so much as transitioned a simple area you would lose hiding. You couldn't use stairs without losing it. It always kind of irked me in BG2 where no matter who the NPC initiated dialogue with he would still talk like he was talking to the main character. It's kind of awkward to see Minsc talking about being a Bhaalspawn. BG2 did not do it correctly. It may have done it in a way you consider better and I would consider it better, too. But it's a leap to say it did it correctly.

Despite Vader's claims about "the power of the Force" being so much immensely more powerful than the Death Star all we really see from the movies is droids being knocked back, lightning firing out of fingers that's almost as good as a taser, and a force choke that, while it has range, seems to only have the choking ability as a normal hand. So, I'd definitely say that force users who with a flick of their hand and barely a thought kill entire groups of people might qualify as "uber." Anyone showing significantly more power than was displayed in any of the movies could reasonably be designated so.

Why should I bother? I can just stand where I am and mince the idiot involved straight away. It also neuters my favourite class, which is the rogue. Why the hell am I going to come out of shadows and stand in front of some moron (who wants to kill me) when I'm at the advantage striking first anyway? It's just plain stupid and ridiculous. I really don't see why just doing things like BG2 did is so wrong. Edit: I have decided that if I buy the game, I will call my character Brave Sir Robin, in mockery of this. No matter how skillful a person is at hiding, there is nobody who can open a heavily watched door and waltz into a room without being noticed barring some major obscurement on the side of the watcher. The hide skill in D&D is not actually your character turning invisible, but an abstract of using concealment and timing and all sorts of other activities related to being unnoticed. However, many of these activities are just plain nonreasonable in several situations. Namely when there's nothing to hide behind and people are trying hard to pay attention. So, it's not unreasonable to script an NPC to notice a completely unobscured individual in the open regardless of his hide skill anymore than it is to expect that same hiding character to be able to get away with that. I do however agree with the base complaint about being forced into a specific range. And that perhaps if you could get another character to initiate dialogue that would be a reasonable distraction to use for bringing the hiding character into the room unnoticed.

Unless you're resting a controller on your belly, front or back shouldn't make a significant difference.

Did nobody catch my regression to the mean comment? Does everyone agree with the concept in this application or did it fly over some heads? I mean, I ducked and nobody threw anything. Absolutely rude.

You know that he was, once upon a time, an innovative designer, don't you? Regression to the mean. *ducks*

In before Sand.

I've played through that game twice and have never played that level the way you're supposed to. Even with fan patches that little nook behind a tree causes the werewolf to forget you exist.

It was the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Specifically, the water temple. Actually it was Thief: Deadly Shadows. On today's note, what kind of hamster costs $6,000, is purchased from a flooring company, and is assigned a job code?

You can't run fast enough from a chain gun.

You might like something I was writing not that long ago but never completed. It's about a Bounty Hunter who after a narrow brush with death takes up fishing. There's a term for when an author creates a character that essentially serves as the author's presence in a story and often helps the author play out his fantasies. I think that's what we're seeing a lot of in Star Wars EU.

Um. No. I was under the impression that that's what the competitive multiplayer modes were for... L. I was under the impression friends like to make friendly jabs once in a while. It makes life interesting. And funny. It's like stealing your best friend's girlfriend. She's not really your type, but you just wanted to see the look on his face when he catches you two sleeping together. And after he stops trying to kill you and you stop laughing, you two can compare notes!

I can't stand any game that forces me to either: "know about encounters ahead of time to prepare for them" "min/max my characters to account for the difficulty" "grind to become powerful enough to handle the difficulty without the other problems" "find secret items to be able to handle the difficulty" Fallout was retarded about it sometimes. I would randomly encounter super mutant enemies that one-shotted my companions. The only thing that stopped them from one-shotting me was power armor I had to use a walkthrough to get. It frustrated me to the point of cheating my way through that game. I've long firmly believed that difficult does not make a game fun. I've said it a billion times over and I never hear agreement but I will say it until the day I die. Especially with regards to RPGs, a player should not be forced to take themself out of their character's perspective through reloading saves or walkthroughs, barring incredibly poor luck or particularly uncharacteristic playstyle. These are not resources available to the character being played and should not be necessary for the player controlling him. If a game wants to have particularly difficult or gimmicky encounters, it needs to ensure that both player and the character have the resources and knowledge to handle them before they pose a significant danger. RPGs have often been horrible about this. They'll throw monsters at you that require +3 weapons with no assurance that your party even has the bloody things. And if its reasonable that they do have +3 weapons, there's no reasonable assurance they can use the ones they do have.

I'm dying to see what Epic Warlock feats they have. The feats listed on the WotC site are awesome.

I never said it was MS Exclusive. I was just humorously following a broken chain of thought, relating Mass Effect to Halo and noting its exclusivity. PSU and FFXI are currently available (and fully playable) on consoles. also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest_Online_Adventures

I wasn't arguing that you won't notice it, I just misinterpreted you as saying that interesting combat animations would make up for the uninteresting combat.

My argument is that interesting combat animations won't offset the lack of challenge. I never argued that KOTOR was difficult. Looking back, I appear to have implied that choosing to focus on a the PC was a player choice entirely. However, it was developer intent in those games. Hence why it was so easy. Ease was included so a player wouldn't have to focus on others and juggle characters and abilities. Again, giving them interesting combat animations won't do anything to offset the issues that brings up.

That's probably because the Infinity engine was built as a hybrid RTS engine. Aurora was built for single (player controlled) character RPGs. It seems like it was built to be more similar to an MMO style of game with the way it is set up. This makes sense because Aurora was meant as a multiplayer engine. Obs seem to be working towards implementing cross breeding Aurora with RTS elements in their latest update and they're doing a good job considering it doesn't seem originally intended for what it's now doing. HOPEFULLY, we get some major release Strategy/RPG game that's well written and overall well designed to restart that market. Everyone seems to be going for Action/RPG hybrids of late with either a shooter action model (Mass Effect, Oblivion technically) or an MMO action model (NWN, Jade Empire). They seem to be what developers think the market wants. This isn't too surprising as there hasn't been any serious strategy innovations in ages that are overly applicable to RPGs. Even lacking innovation, I always feel strategy is a better RPG design over action. Heck, that's part of the origin of RPGs.

Did you try shooting your friend in the back during a rather tense moment?

That's a different concept than what I originally thought and I couldn't agree more. If you're going to use a system like NWN2s, IMO, it's vastly important to make the combat animations and similar as interesting to look at as possible. Either that, you make the combat hectic and challenging enough that players aren't just sitting there actively doing nothing but watching enemies/characters swing swords at one another for 30 minutes. Edit: Which, incidentally is why I don't like KotoR and why I think BG2 was such a great game. BG2 had hectic, often challenging combat and I was always doing something with my characters (actually, I will praise IWD for the same thing while I am at it). NWN2 and KotoR had lots of combat, but it was brainless and got highly repetitive (because I rarely was challenged and had to do anything in combat), which does expose the flaws in things like overly repetitive combat animations as you stated. I have to disagree. The reason BG2 was "hectic, often challenging combat" in contrast compared to NWN2 and KOTOR is because of the most popular form of party control. NWN2 and KOTOR have your party taking on their roles supposedly independently of the player character. BG2 we all took complete control. We had to set up the attacks for every single character. Something players don't seem to do so often in NWN2 and KOTOR. I really don't see how praising BG2 and IWD brings up a point about combat animations, either way.

You didn't, really. Unless you like Shenmue, in which case, you have my sympathies. Seriously, what the **** is this. That would be a controller that's still smaller than the original Xbox controller. It has a hole built in because the memory cards have a screen. That's right, they have a frackin' screen. Which was awesome, because you could get additional information and because you could play games on it. It's actually a model Nintendo has mimed a few times. Zelda Four Swords for the gamecube for example. Heck, any game that has benefits to hooking your GBA to the Gamecube mimed that. The DS took the idea to the moon and back.

My understanding is that Molyneux isn't even involved in design, anymore. His entire job consists of my sig. Sitting around spouting out nonsense like a senile old man. And by that I mean PR. Which is why I avoid Molyneux bashing. No matter how much I loathe Fable, my understanding of his involvement in the game was spouting insane ideas to developers and the media, with nobody actually making the game listening to him with any intent of going along with it.

I couldn't have dreamed it! I'm remembering more! But still not quite what game it was.

That's an intriguing hypothesis. What about Daikatana? Battlecruiser?