Tale

As long as my creatures get to be born from eggs and implant their seeds in the chests of other creatures for a secondary stage of life, then I'll be happy. Which means Will Wright will specifically prevent my idea from being possible.

I don't think it's actually that hard to balance as long as the're willing to get into serious playtesting for refinements. I mentioned in either this thread or another the game Sin: Emergence and it's dynamic difficulty system. Yes, it was broken at release but it was fixed in the first patch and worked like a charm after that. It took into account speed through the game, ammo, accuracy, health, armor and probably other things I can't think of off the top of my head. How they popularly explain it is similar to L4D's director, it has several systems running that take into account these factors and are specially trained to alter encounters to keep the values within a specified limit. What this showed to me is that a dynamic difficulty system can work with complex variables because even though it broke, it was fixed and ultimately worked. For it to work in a learning by doing RPG, you simply mimic that system. You need systems monitoring the players progress, health, mana, time spent in combat and dynamically adjust the encounters along these variables individually. If he's moving too slow (taking too long to kill enemies), lower the HP or armor of the enemy. If he's lower in health than he should be, lower their damage. If he's killing enemies way too fast or has too much health, try reversing it. If he's killing way too many enemies without even being hit, try including more ranged or stealth detecting NPCs. This is complex and by that simple fact, it can probably be considered hard. However, it seems reasonably doable.

taken to pm

Asking if you suffer from a disease isn't an attack. It's a probe into an explanation for why you have so much trouble making relative simply connections.

If just discussing games qualifies as having anything to do with it, then you've already failed at what you said you weren't going to do. Sand says "I'm not gaming, forever." Sand also says "If ____ I won't have anything to do with it." Llyranor says "you already said you're not gaming, so you wouldn't have anything to do with it anyway" Sand says "so I can't talk about gaming?" W-hat? Sand, have you ever been diagnosed with a psychotic or dementing disorder? You have a serious inability to make connections.

He's got you there.

I just read it before I came back here. That guy has nothing on the people I work with. Parsonl (Supposed to be personal) At least two guys at this place barely can spell their own names. All of the hispanics who only know english as a second language can spell better than some of the native english speakers. Here's another: Fool oof gametot Fuel for generator. No, he's not mentally challenged, just a high school dropout.

What is that, a simulation game where you get to be an ****?

Blind chicks are cool because they don't get automatically disgusted at our pale flabby bodies.

Because Morrowind WAS AWESOME!

Mine! All others are shallow and pedantic.

Only song on this page I know. And I really shouldn't. Jump in! It's so amazing here. It's alright, there's beauty in the breakdown.

They can add awesome CGI movies.

No Bioware? Poll is as biased as I am!

What do you mean? that sounds interesting, but I'm not entirely sure what it means. In Oblivion/Morrowind, a level is gained because a certain number of major skills are increased a specific number of times. It doesn't matter what major skills at all or how much each is raised. If someone gets to level 20 off the skills sneak, alchemy, and short sword his combat ability may have gone up anywhere between 20 to 60 points. There's too much variation in what it takes to obtain a level and the benefits from a level to judge combat ability by level. Oh yeah, I totally agree. Good luck finishing the game if you spend all your time in Oblivion leveling by increasing your acrobatics and athletics and speechcraft. They'll be blotting your player character up with a mop. I got my character up by using sneak, short swords, acrobatics, and light armor. None of which is useful against the monsters that reflect melee damage back at you. I didn't have that much HP.

Free standing loot did. But container contents changed as you leveled; loot was taken from leveled lists same as Oblivion. Encounter monsters were also pulled from leveled lists. You're right though that humanoid NPCs did not level, at least most of them, that is probably a big difference right there. No more bandits in glass armor wielding Daederc warhammers. Free standing loot is important. It was removed in Oblivion and completely replaced by rusty iron. Free standing loot is important because it gives a sense of discovery and helps lend to an almost Indiana Jones style feel of adventure because that's a chance to find something ridiculously valuable at the bottom of a dungeon, something it often did. Oblivion, the only time you have a chance of finding anything valuable is later in the game. Encounter monsters were pulled from a leveled list that used a different scale than Oblivion does. Oblivion uses a harsher scale.

What do you mean? that sounds interesting, but I'm not entirely sure what it means. In Oblivion/Morrowind, a level is gained because a certain number of major skills are increased a specific number of times. It doesn't matter what major skills at all or how much each is raised. If someone gets to level 20 off the skills sneak, alchemy, and short sword his combat ability may have gone up anywhere between 20 to 60 points. There's too much variation in what it takes to obtain a level and the benefits from a level to judge combat ability by level.

They did? To my memory all encounters in BG 1 and 2 were static, level-wise. Loot as well. Its been a loig time though so perhaps I misremember. I never played ToB so my knowledge fails there. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I know for 100% fact that companion NPCs scaled for party when they first join you. But that's not really level scaling in an applicable fashion to the topic. Yeah. It's weird because it worked more or less the same way in Morrowind and Daggerfall, but it didn't seem nearly so annoying and stupid in either of those games. Morrowind had a different scale. Enemies didn't change equipment, loot stayed in dungeons. As you gained a level, the capability of the enemies scaled by a lower value than they do in Oblivion. I have to wonder if any of it has to do with their elimination of to-hit.

Baldur's Gate I, II, and ToB all have level scaling, as well. You're right that the key is implementation. Sin: Emergence used a dynamic difficulty system, which is an FPS parallel to level scaling. For some, myself included, this resulted in the game scaling up to massive numbers of incredibly tough enemes that don't drop ammo. Man, the patch that fixed it was so nice. It's problem was a bug. Oblivion's problem was that it went too far. Equipment was replaced, creatures were replaced, loot in dungeons was removed. It took level scaling too literaly, if I can use that word appropriately in context. The entire world could change drastically overnight just because you gained a level. And maybe what's worse is the learn by doing system wasn't integrated into it, only the levelling aspect was. Creatures were scaled against a level 20 character, when levels tell relatively little about combat ability in their system.

It's more akin to a scale than a barometer. Instead of measuring pressure, it measure quantity via a standardized weight system where each individual unit of care weighs exactly the same as a mallomar. Each level is a measure of three units of care. So, by my saying that my level of care has neither risen nor fallen, then I am saying that this effects me only between 0 to 2 mallomars.

You're not necessarilly alone. Besides, I can kill lots of people. Doesn't make me more powerful than them. Edit: BOOM! I'll concede that point if the Solar makes the claim.

I never recall anyone claiming that you're "the most powerful child of Bhaal." Any power from Bhaal in BG was always spoken of as potential, not current.

SO! your ability to make assertions about the success or failure of a game based solely on the merit of your opinion is negligible.

Oblivion has pretty graphics, the dialogue system sucks, level scaling is poorly done, the real time actiony combat makes range weapons next to useless, and the UI is way too consolish. The game needs major mod work done to it to even be playable at a acceptable level. Yet is still highly popular. Which means your opinion is quite a bit askew from the market.

Why would I buy a failed game? Just because you don't like what they're presenting for Fallout 3 by no means indicates it is going to fail. Did you like what they did with Oblivion? How'd that do?