Wrath of Dagon

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.

You hate button mashing hack'n'slash because it's so boring, but you enjoyed JE despite the fact that it basically tries to emulate the basic combat style of of a pure action game. Bad action games are button mashing. Good action games are pretty tactical and require more quick thinking than quick button-pressing. Action games also vary a lot in their combo structures. The Ninja Gaiden series has pretty long and complex combos that use two buttons, character state, and stick input to determine what Ryu (or Rachel) does. God of War has a pretty shallow system overall. DMC3 and DMC4 actually had reasonably shallow systems, but the ability to switch styles on the fly gave them amazing depth for "pro players". But I think most people... EVEN RPG PLAYERS... could win DMC4 on Human difficulty. A character like Nero is surprisingly easy to play at that difficulty, and they introduce his mechanics quite gradually. Of course, any/all games of any genre that attempt to have fast-paced combat should have a high framerate. Bloodlines had a good framerate, Oblivion had a good framerate. JE and ME were usually sub-25. Bad news. So a pure action game is not button mashing, that was my point. Button mashing is when you hit the same button or several at random as fast as you possibly can to maximize the damage. In Jade you actually had to think about your tactics and when to attack or dodge, although I'll admit it wasn't terribly complex it was challenging for me because I had to react fast. As far as DMC, if you say so, it has a reputation for being brutally difficult, but I don't know enough to comment one way or the other. I'll give the example of Virtua Fighter. To really play the game properly someone like me would have to practice a ton. But for Shenmue the same system was simplified so that almost anyone could get through the critical path. If it wasn't, I'd never have finished the game.

You didn't read my post very closely. Most RPG players don't want to memorize combos and moves, let alone practice them, not to mention that most of us aren't very coordinated. To add a deep fighting system to an RPG would be a disaster. I didn't notice JE AI being particular stupid, some of them were quite brutal, like the horse demons. To me the combat wasn't repetitive at all, because the situation changed and many enemies required the use of different tactics. Jade Golem was powerful but slow, and used up your chi, so I didn't feel it was overpowered, but if it was, just don't use it.

Have you ever played proper games of that type such as Ninja Gaiden, DMC or somethng a lot less extreme like, well, heck nearly any good hack&slash game in the marker or fightin game such as Tekken or DoA? I said for an RPG. I'm not very good at real fighting games, and I hate button mashing hack'n'slash because it's so boring. Obviously if they made JE like Ninja Gaiden, 90% of RPG players would never get through it.

JE combat was really good for an RPG. It combined player skill, tactics, and character stats in a meaningful way, while still being accessible. You could almost play the game just for the combat, which you can't say about most RPG's.

DA combat is rules based, not action, that's well established.

Please don't sacrifice content for graphics.

I don't think so, they're more like a force of nature, probably hellspawn would be most accurate. Complex political and social structures seem to be reserved for the playable races. Also it's been said that the Darkspawn stay as the main event through the entire game, although there's a lot more to the story than that.

Here's hoping that it's better. MotB kinda bored me a little. Yeah, I got bored with all the pointless repetitive fights and assignments you have to run for everybody. I've never seen that before. Haven't got to the masterpiece part yet.

That's right, because according to Gamespy, Mass Effect is "Roleplaying perfected", so it's now the gold standard by which all RPG's will be measured.

$15 million.

You can run Kaspersky for free on-line, takes a while though.

Because I don't know much about that game, but I assume the clearing up conspiracies part is just a weak excuse to be able to shoot Kennedy. If they were really trying to clear up cospiracies, there're are plenty of ways to do it other than actually shooting him.