Imbrium

As much as I've always wanted to play the new Ninja Gaiden games, and I want to get a PS3 and I will get Ninja Gaiden Black for sure, I can't stand that developer guy. I watched some special on G4 with him, and he was just such a pompous ass about how he fighting games had more depth and robust features than the others. He felt he was achieving some "true" fighting genre. Like he was some savior to the fighting game genre. After that, I avoided his work like the plague, but now I'm able to get over it and play the NG games. As far as I am concerned, Smash Bros is about as close to perfect as a fighting game needs to be Of course, I love my SC2/3 and Tekken games. I couldn't master Virtua Figther, but I still enjoy it.

I said a GW-like game. GW is set up pretty decently in all honesty. The major problem with GWs is the experience new players get when they join. 50% of the GW players are cheap jerks, and they mostly just hang around the early zones showing off, acting tough and cool. The "real" players are busy actually doing instances or PvPing, and are part of elite groups that don't deal with the scrubs. I have some issues with GW, by my main point in my argument was that it shouldn't be a "large persistent word" but more a collection of missions in instances-like places.

Deus Ex was a Divinely Inspired game, it is outside of normal game development conventions Well honestly, Shadowrun is a game about coop play. You need a team, your suppose to be with a team. I hope they keep it as a Coop game, turning it into a "mini-MMO". Kinda like GW, where you create squads with people you meet, run missions, etc, but not a giant game world with grinding . Kinda like the new Left 4 Dead game, where your expected to run with other players. Theres a lot of innovations to be done with more coop games, now that Broadband is had by almost any gamer these days. I don't want a Shadowrun singleplayer RPG now after reading his article, and thinking about the table-top RPG of it.

If you get over the "OMG no RPG elements!" reaction, what he is saying I can really dig. He wants to refine the combat system. The best way to stress test a combat system is to force a large number of players to just fight to the death over and over, watch the results, listen to the community, then make adjustments. Then with the next installment (Expansion or sequel) he would make said minor changes to the combat system, and now he can focus on adding another good solid amount of game play (ala adding hacking and the Matrix). Instead of Making one game with a bunch of lackluster and mediocre features, and trying to improve them all with each expansion sequel. I mean, in reality, he is giving gamers what they want. So many gamers complain that a game will take on too many features, and do them all poorly. A lot of people point fingers to Oblivion, claiming its lock picking system is broken, stealth is only half-done, combat is dull after a while, persuasion system broke, etc. I don't agree, but it works for this example. This way, he can focus on one major game aspect at a time, and evolve the game. You can't have you cake and eat it too. This argument is specifically aimed at games that include multiple game play styles and elements. Not singularly focused games like Thief, or a pure FPS, namely, applying to a lot of RPGs coming out these days. Expecting a game to promise a bazillion features and deliver the first time around is not going to happen. If you want a game with Tons of features *done well*, then this is the way to do that. Evolving it from one iteration to the next.

This is really cool. I wish I could contribute, but I'm just starting to get a handle on Java (CS major, just entered sophomore year). I'm fiddling with learning how to mod Arcanum as an exercise, but I don't thing I'm anywhere near ready to help with such an intsenive project. I'll be keeping an eye on it, and when I enter my C++ classes (next semester) and if this thing is still going on, I'd be glad to try what I can do to help. untill then, Kudos to you and the team.

Final Fantasy 6, 7, and 8 are pretty good blends of "traditional" fantasy and sci-fi elements, although the combat can be a little bland at times. They are a little closer to what I want, but too many JRPGs are 1) pretty 2) full of pointless grinding and/or pointless "item transmutation" that doesn't really add much to gameplay or story. Many of them are also terribly translated, and they almost never allow for Japanese voiceover options, forcing me listen to terrible english dubs.

But this requires a high degree of player skill, which basically means the game is an action game, not an RPG anymore. At best, its an RPG which excludes RPG fans who aren't into or good at action games. It doesn't require a "high" amount of player skill at all IMO. Just look at Oblivion. I have plenty of friends who aren't action gamers that still play the game obsessively. Another great thing about such a progression is that it slowly introduces the player to the different fighting mechanics while they played, so new players don't get overwhelmed. It is all about meeting that "balance" point between requiring player skill and character skill. In my mind, it's more rewarding to feel like I've swung the sword, than just having a dice-roll generator telling me I hit or missed. At that point, I might as well be playing Progress Quest.

I think this highlights the real issue. If by fantasy you mean the fantastical then yes anything from the imagination is fantasy. However, I think it's valid to narrow it down. I guess when I think of fiction it is '...imagine a world governed by X instead of Y' For science fiction X replaces Y by virtue of some scientific advance like cheap fusion power or true AI. Thus some new X becomes pre-eminent. It is science fiction because typically we can bring to the transformation the first stirring of how the science will work. Mechanics, ethics, etc etc. For romantic fiction (at present) X is the power of love over Y, the power of necessity. The young couple overcome boundaries of class, gum disease, etc etc because of some irrational force. This requires the changing of the world at large. Trains must leave at the correct times, restaurants must not leave you with dysentery, and a thousand human frailties must suspend their incidence. In like vein, fantasy is not fantasy because of elves and goblins. It is fantasy because X is the human imagination, unfettered by science or practicality, fudging the rules of reality, Y. People can shape the universe by willpower/wearing a dress alone. New species and cultures spring up at a whim, for their mere curiosity value. If I'm writing scifi and i want the sun to disappear I have to comme up with some scientific explanation of how it might. If I'm writing fantasy I can just say "The sun's name is Steve and he gets bored and wanders off" I'm aware elves do not make fantasy, but it seems like "fantasy" games these days do not sell unless they are elves and dwarves. Look at the success of WoW, EQ, and Vanguard over Eve online. Oblivion and Dark Messiah over um....well not many non-Medieval Europe fantasy games to compare it to. How many popular Sci-Fi genres games sell well that are not Star Wars or Star Trek based? Not many at all. Why must a game be one or the other? Why can't there be a game that incorporates the best of both worlds. Or takes the RPG genre to a whole new setting. Like a Neil Gaiman one.

Anyone here familiar with the works of Neil Gaiman? If so, thats really close to the kinds of games I would like to play in. Neil Gaiman paints beautiful imaginative worlds where gods and mortals and supernatural all blend together.

I don't know if it is by preference or by just being the most popular thing out there, but so many gamers seem to equate the word Fantasy with "Tolkien-style elves/dwarves/magic" In the words of Orson Scott Card "Fantasy has trees and elves, Sci-Fi has rivets." Of course, in the interview he is saying this, he is ranting about how geeks/fantasy fans as a whole have this idea of elves being fantasy, and treating anything else as a form of Science fiction, not "real" fantasy. Science Fiction is a genre of Fantasy. Dwarves and Elves fit under a fantastical Medieval Europe kind of fantasy. To better make my point, Most romantic comedy movies ARE fantasy. Those kinds of situations do not realistically happen. My old DM wouldn't let me play a psychic in his games because he "didn't like science fiction in his fantasy". Then when 3.0 came out, I wasn't allowed to play a monk "because they Eastern stuff don't belong in fantasy". In my travels as a gamer, I've met many more D&D DMs and players that also hated psychics and monks, and didn't allow them in their games. I want a game that truly breaks down the barriers of Fantasy. A game that incorporates all realms of Fantasy in it. Arcanum was close, very close. I want Blade Runner meets Arthurian legend and Greek gods thrown in too. True fantasy as I've been calling it when ranting to my friends lately. None of them really care though, and I get this impression from other gamers I meet and talk to. I'm not saying its wrong to like just "Medieval Europe" or "Science Fiction" genres, but I wish there would be a great game developer that would break down the barriers, and create a dynamic and fluid game that incorporated the best of both worlds, because I feel there is a lot of potential there. Until then, I'm gonna keep playing Arcanum every 6 months to remind me that it can work, and hold on to my dream that one day, there will be another. edit: Bah, late night ranting doesn't lend itself well to perfect spelling.

I feel Oblivion gets a lot of undue criticism because of it's hype and fame. I thing Oblivion got a lot of things "right" as far as mixing action and stats. Sure, it's not 100% perfect, but I still feel its a very engaging game, if your into sandbox games. I will say with "traditional" CRPG games, as long as the game is linear enough, it is pretty easy to balance difficulty. A party of level 5 characters need X level 4-6 monsters. Oblivion tried having scaled monsters, which broke many players immersion, and leave any feeling of progression almost the window. I think future action-RPG hybrid games are going to run into this issue, and something never going to be completely solved. How do you balance action mechanics, and enemy difficulty/AI when you have a stat-driven progression. How difficult do you need to make enemies for the player to truly feel challenge? The DMC series meets a pretty good balance of stats and action. Most the time, you are buying new moves, not more numbers to you existing moves. Every move has pros and cons. Just because you have new moves doesn't mean much without the knowledge of when and where to apply it. I haven't had a chance to play Dark Messiah, but it looks pretty good on paper. Buy abilities that add to your utility more than just "bigger numbers" all the time. EVE online also does a great job of balancing combat mechanics and skills. Skill increase your "utility" (being able to equip more >kinds< of weapons) but your damage output is bottlenecked by you ship. A given ship my only be able to have 3 weapons, and carry only so much weight. So having bigger guns will decrease your cargo size/and how many other combat-helping modules you can have on board. I think that is the best way to handle having Stats/Skills in an action-RPG hybrid. Skills should increase your utility, but your still bottlenecked by your paper doll. Having skills that give different functionality, not just higher numbers. What I mean (just pulling stuff out of my hat) A sword skill in most games: Level 1: crap damage level 2: moderate damage level 3: good damage level 4 great damage I propose Level 1: equip a sword level 2: be able to parry with sword level 3: be able to disarm opponents level 4: every attack "bleeds" opponent. that way, you feel real progression with your skills. Not unlike getting Expert/Master/Grandmaster ranks in the old Might and Magic games.

I think Arcanum did a pretty good job of placing serious issues within its game story. More prominent if you did side-quest and read the various books lying around the game. Granted not on the scale your talking about, but I felt there were enough in the game to warrant it a rather profound stance on serious issues. I think a real problem with making a game that deals with such issues is what do you do in the game? At what point do you break the barrier between playing a game, and watching a discourse on morality and ethics, and just end up getting depressed? Can the main character change the story? If so how? Does the main character become some Superman-esqe hero running around fixing things? Or do you play some twisted corrupt guy making things worse? Playing the guy in the middle would probably mean you wouldn't have much impact on the story. When returns to my first point, how does gaming in such a situation not turn into a discourse on morality/ethics. I certainly enjoy more interesting themes in video games. I loved it in Arcanum, but it was something in the background, and you don't really deal with it much in the main plot. Some side-quest dealt with them, sure. A whole 'nother issue is what genre of game would you do this with? an RPG? Would too much combat detract from the seriousness of the game? etc. I'm not trying to dog on ya, but just food for thought. I really dig what you're saying.