Wrath of Dagon

How about elaborating on why you found KOTOR fun and addictive? What made KOTOR a better experience than all other RPGs you ever played? Mostly I loved the quest design. Not only did they fit into the story, you learned an awful lot about KOTOR universe from doing them. Also characters, dialog and writing in general.

@Moatilliata: I gave you my example. If you disagree with it, that's not my problem, but simply indicates your lack of understanding of what makes a good game. All you counterarguments to why the Bastila quest was good were irrelevant btw.

Because I played both, and that's the judgment I made. While I was playing KOTOR, I couldn't believe how fun and addictive it was. While I was playing ME, I couldn't believe Bioware would make something that amateurish and mediocre, sometimes downright atrocious.

May be it was boring to you, but it was the best gameplay ever to me. If you didn't like ME, then what's your point? That you hate all Bioware games? Fine. I gave the quote as the proof that in pursuing graphics whores, Bioware was not able to create any good content. Having a giant empty area you try to fill up with little dialogs at the very end of development because that's all resources will allow you to do is not the proper way to design a compelling game IMO.

I haven't played BG, so I can't compare, but KOTOR is a great game. I don't have a list of requirements for a game, it's either a quality game or it's not.

Find Liara mission is you go on this very barren and uninteresting planet and fight through a bunch of Geth. OK, you don't like KOTOR, I get it. A cinematic shooter like ME is much more appealing to you. ME as an RPG still sucks though.

So what, it was required, but it was still a quest. Name one good quest in ME, aside from those I already named.

To find Bastila, you had to find the crashed pod, go through the sewers, hook up with Mission and Zaalbar, get involved with the two gangs, side with one, fight the Rancor, go through the gang compound, steal the prototype engine, win the race, win the fight at the end, and be subjected to Bastila's snooty dialog, in addition to a bunch of other stuff I don't remember at the moment. If that kind of gameplay is equivalent for you to a 2 second dog killing spree, then we exist in two different universes and there's not point in discussing anything.

@Moatillata: OK, then read the quote I added above. The Varren quest is while you're in some tunnels, you turn into a square with a bunch of debris and a pack of Varren attack you. You shoot them all in a couple of seconds, and the quest is done. Do you really need me to recount everything you have to do to find Bastila? I've done that a few times already on other forums, so I don't really feel like it again. @Deadly: Yes, genius will do that to you.

Any quest in KOTOR is vastly superior to any quest in ME, with the exception of "I remember me" and the interview. If you want a very uneven match up, compare quest(s) to find Bastila on Taris to the quest to kill the Varren (wild dog) leader on Feros. But feel free to come up with a more fair match up.

Examples of what?

Opinions are fun aren't they. Yes they are when they're correct, and mine always are.

Do you realize how broken and insipid ME quests are? KOTOR was made on hardware that was at least 8x less powerful, yet it's a masterpiece.

This is how Vince designs RPG's: This is how Bioware designs RPG's:

No, it means that there are actually multiple paths through the game, which are cognizant of your skill set. Here's Vince's interview with J.E. Sawyer btw: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=444.0

ask WoD lol edit: this is to say as part of Iron Tower forums he must know many good links to interviews and stuff See this: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=231.0

@Xard I would argue that making action RPG combat as complex as Ninja Gaiden's would also dominate the focus. Comparing difficult action RPG's and difficult rules based RPG's is not valid, since playing RPG's is a more intellectual pursuit, and requiring terrific reflexes and lightning thinking would simply exclude most RPG players. You'll notice that both Aliens and AP have shooter combat, which is already a lot more accessible than NG type combat. What it comes down to for me combat in an RPG is just not that important, unless it completely bores me. That's why my 2 favorite games are still KOTOR's, even if almost no one would play those games just for the combat.

That's exactly why people accept piss-poor RPG's. Everyone concentrates on mechanics instead of content. The rest of your post is too meandering for me to attempt to answer it, please state your points more concisely.

So did I. In an RPG you make choices, and you have to be able to finish the game with any of the choices, unlike an action game where every choice is always available. So it's not a button masher, and I disagree that those were poorly implemented. May be it's true if you compare it to NG, but that's supposed to be a pinnacle of action games, so the comparison is a bit unfair. In JE, the enemies are there for you to kill. In NG, the enemies are there to kill you. If you provided combat of that complexity in an RPG, most people wouldn't be able to finish the game. If you just make it very easy to compensate, it becomes a boring button masher, so JE solution of simplifying combat yet still keeping it challenging on high difficulty is a better solution. Then play action games, RPG's are about picking a specific path. And I did have to vary my tactics during different encounters, so I don't see that complaint as valid. ME has some more interesting (and very difficult) battles up front, but then it does degenerate as you say. It's still a decent shooter IMO, but doesn't compare to the best out there. If the battles are a little different depending on your skills, you wouldn't even notice most likely. That is in fact the idea, but because of game balancing issues, that never makes that much of a difference. You really need to provide different paths for different skill sets, but that's not what designers like Bioware and Obsidian do. Hopefully that will change with AP. Totally disagree. If I want great combat, I'll play an action game. RPG's main focus should be on things other than combat, although having good combat certainly helps. The fact that most players and even designers can't see the horrible design flaws in Mass Effect is really making me despair of whether a good mainstream RPG will ever be made again.

I think it's primarily the job of the art designer to come up with how a character looks, although of course it has to fit into the story and writers would have to have some input.

Yes, they haven't been repeating, after KOTOR they've been getting progressively worse. Sorry, couldn't resist. Worse how? Mind you I haven't played JE (seemed like more action than roleplaying for my taste) nor ME (too much DRM, had nothing to do with the qualities of the game). Is it just because they haven't done any more SW games? SW? Lolz, SW is a kiddy muppet show, not in KOTOR though. In JE, they started rushing, either to release while Xbox was still a viable platform, or for financial reasons. As a result they filled Imperial City with low quality filler or KOTOR retreads. With ME it was much, much worse. They got hold of a broken engine, and spend most of their time just trying to get the damn thing to work. Then at the very end they tried to come up with some simplistic filler to pad out the game. What made things worse is they were too short of memory on 360 to do almost any content, even though 360 has 8 times more memory than the Xbox, and the frame rate was so low they were severely restricted in what they could add. That's what happens when you try to pander to graphics whores.

Yes, they haven't been repeating, after KOTOR they've been getting progressively worse. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Well, I didn't notice all those problems being that serious, not enough to spoil my fun anyway. I don't play a lot of fighting/action type games either. I played Soul Calibur a little, and you can either memorize and practice the combos, or button mash. Neither of those would be desirable for an RPG IMO. Edit: I'm not putting up any strawmen. Xard mentioned Ninja Gaiden, Tekken, and DOA. My point was that VF was simplified a lot for Shenmue, to the point where it was on the level of Jade combat.

Virtua Fighter is a fighting game, not an action game. Among fighting games, it also has some of the most absurdly extensive move sets. I don't think I'd suggest that a game outside of the fighting game genre should have as much variety as Virtua Fighter -- it would dominate the focus. OK, so that was my point. My other points were Jade implemented action combat well, and Ninja Gaiden is way too difficult for the average RPG player.

Yes, you'd literally sell tens of copies. But feel free to invest your millions to find out, no one else seems to be willing to.