Aristes

I, for one, am not thanking your sorry ass until I try the game. Then I'll thank you kindly, assuming it's good.

Well, I think it's weird, but I mostly don't care. I mean, that's not a deal breaker for me. In fact, I kind of prefer the puerile sex schtick to the overwrought romance thing. I guess the folks who like both have it best and the folks who hate both are screwed.

I dunno. I really dug the brothel of intellectual lusts in PS:T. It was kewl! ...And I don't have pimples.

I remember having like 999 Melf's Acid Arrows in NWN. I think Obsidz bug rate is overstated. I do think they had a problem, but MotB wasn't so bad. I didn't play SoZ, but I will be purchasing Alpha Protocol. That's a good test. Their own engine on a fresh game. As far as character builds, Someone should show off a good Arcane Scholar build. Not really a power build, but tons of fun.

No, he gets the pimp hat at start and adds a feather for each hooker.

It's not a big sticking point, but I agree with Gftd at any rate. Seems weird for the most part.

Are you sure that was the game? I don't care about addicted status in Fallout 3. I've recently played Fallout again and the biggest difference is the chem sign at the bottom. Yes, it affects gameplay more, but it's fairly trivial even in Fallout and Fallout 2. I've been really enjoying my runs through the original game again and I think it is superior to Fallout 3. The problem is, the things that make it superior in my mind are simply out of the question design-wise for FO:NV.

Then why make a post at all, you yutz! On the other hand, I don't mind having different churches. I don't mind the odd stereotype or two. What I mind is the same ol' cliched notion of putting in a church just so some overtight asshat can put weak arguments in the mouths of the adherents in the hopes of sounding smart when the other NPCs respond. Of course, I intend no offense to the asshats who may or may not have done this sort of design work in the past. I mean, it's so overdone that I don't really notice it all that much any more Nevertheless, a church must provide something to the people in order for it take root and spread. Most churches mix teaching and spiritualism with charitable works. Yes, they'll also use charity as a way to draw new members. So what? That poor bastard who's getting his first good meal in a week won't care that someone preaches to him while he eats and, frankly, there are plenty of folks who show up at soup kitchens who pay only lip service to belief, if even that. For the record, it's not so important that the church be the 'good guy.' ...But if you want to rise past the level of parody, you should think about what the church is doing and how it does it.

I especially liked Grim Fandango.

It always irks me when folks refer to Icewind Dale as being light on story. The story behind Icewind Dale wasn't light. They billed it as a hack and slash like Diablo, but it wasn't. What they managed to do with IWD and IWD 2 is convey a lot of background information without a lot of excess dialogue. IWD had some of the best writing of any of the IE games. Both titles did a great job with the backstory and unfolding it properly for players who didn't want to swim through text. However, if you like a strong story that doesn't intrude on gameplay every five seconds, IWD is your game and it's certainly my second favorite of the whole IE lineup. My first would be PS:T and my next would be BG2, which throws the idea of bias all to hell. Really, Diablo's backstory isn't bad. It's just not a big part of actual gameplay in terms of dialogue. As gamers, we've broken things down very strangely because we'll refer to games as not having much of a story when in fact the design team has come up with some quite elaborate stories behind the title. Blizzard doest that all the time. The story might be halfway decent, such as Diablo, or it might be a steaming, meandering river of donkey turds, such as World of Warcraft, but it doesn't lack a story. There are games that have the slightest pretense of story, and it's a shame to have IWD, with all of that excellent but subdued writing lumped in with games with lackluster or even simply bad writing. Hell, the item descriptions in IWD are better than some of the full blown intros I've seen. As far as SoZ goes, I never played it. I would rather like to think that I would have liked it but, as Pidesco says, I just got tired of overlooking the shortcomings in the NWNx engine.

I don't recall any super stims in Fallout 3. You really didn't need any considering the fact that you could simply use tons of regular stims without any drawback. I've often wondered why they didn't make stimpacks addictive. That would have solved a lot of the problem with the whole series. The only thing I can think is they tried a variety of things and finally threw in the towel and decided to implement them as we know them now.

When they called you "ol' one shot," I didn't know that was how many it took to incap your allies.

I tend to agree. From what I can tell, stimpacks haven't weighed anything in any of the games. I think putting a minor weight on them, the smallest increment, and the thinning out the supply will help. yeah, it's only stop gap because players will end up with plenty of extra stimpacks and other supplies by the endgame, especially on subsequent runs, but it would make the early to mid-game more challenging without being stupid about it. Frankly, I would be happy if they kept stimpacks exactly as they are and then cut down on the available stimpacks. In terms of impact on the fans, that's probably the easiest thing to do since they will function entirely the same and they'll simply find that they have to be a bit more conservative with use. ...That and the fact that, ol' skoolers be damned, the early game in Fallout 3 could be tough on resource management. The problem is that there are sooo many stimpacks available and that was also true of Fallout 2 as well. Fallout is a little tougher in that regard, but it's not like I'm sweating bullets over finding enough stimpacks in my current game of Fallout, and this is the first game I've had a big party with me. I'm healing the dog and two mules... er... I mean NPCs. Personally, I think stimpacks could be left completely and utterly alone and it would be just fine. Maybe the design team can work with the idea in order to make them more interesting during gameplay, but they're no more broken now than they have always been.

There are ways around that crit immunity but, yeah, it's tougher to go for an all out crit based build. On the other hand, what isn't immune to crits earns more holes than a pin-cushion. Sorry, I've been lightly lurking in this thread and I must have missed some stuff. Thank you kindly.

Why no love for arcane mages? I mean, yeah, I don't think their builds are as powerful in NWN, but it seems that they should get at least some play. All you guys are posting are melee/divine casters.

Go to the library, Gorth. Go. to. the. library!

Clearly he offends a lot of folks when he argues, but I don't call him a troll. Frankly, I don't call him anything. I think a lot of his posts are crazy, but I don't take personal offense. No matter what, GD, D_N, and I have had a pleasant conversation about state's rights and American history, and he did start this thread, so he should get some credit for that. I mean, I understand why some folks get on him a bit, but what's the difference? Either he's a troll, in which case castigating him rewards his behavior, or he's sincere, in which case he's just throwing out his opinion. I mean, I don't agree with his outlook at all, but hating other folks over politics is a mania and I refuse to do it. haha Hey, politics is for discussing. Water is for fightin' over.

Interesting article. I praise his guts, but I still think he's completely insane.

Yeah. I didn't want to speed run it, though. Plus, I think I've saved the Hub, Junktown, Shady Sands, and my own vault, so it's good by me. I also think Necropolis should be okay. Really, only the Boneyard should get the bone, and I don't care about them.

I guess animating the usage isn't limiting it, though. I mean, it effectually does because it introduces time to the equation, but it doesn't say "thou shalt only be able to use three stimpacks per battle." Animating, because I see it as essentially the same thing as heal over time, only tricky, doesn't bug me as much as what I had considered 'limiting use.' You know?

I'm closing in on the end game in Fallout. I've fixed the water problem. I've joined the BoS. I've got power armor. I found the alien blaster. I also found about 10 grand in cash on the Nuka Cola truck. I've gone to the Glow and completely gutted it of everything and killed all the robots. Really, other than story, there's no reason to do anything anymore. I have to admit, I haven't been to the boneyard yet and I still have to look up north, but I'll have that finished in a jiff. I just wish my energy weapons were higher. No biggie. I'll get at least a couple of levels between now and the toughest fights.

Limiting usage, in my opinion, is so far out from the drift of the whole series that it changes the entire idea of stimpacks. It's not just 3 that encourages stimspamming. In fact, both one and two are guilty as hell in that regard. I won't hate limiting use, but I think it would suck more than heal over time. In fact, I'm completely against it. Like I said earlier, I won't 'refuse to play the game,' but I think limiting use will suck. Item scarcity, however, is good. I imagine Obsidz will balance scarcity better at any rate. BTW: Yeah, I double posted.

If the stimpacks had been heal over time in the first place, I would have been fine. If they change now, I'll be fine also because I tend to be forgiving of things like that, but changing the rules in the middle of the game is going to irk some folks. That being said, if it's done well enough, players will adapt. This is especially true if the design team gets them used to the idea early without killing them and if combat is tooled around the idea. Fallout 3 is built to have folks rush in without a care. If FO:NV can provide more tactical combat out of the gate and get the player accustomed in time, it might be a net plus rather than minus for folks used to Fallout 3 and might also set up better tactical combat for folks who experience the Fallout 3 playstyle for the first time.

You know, even schools where bad stuff happens don't tend to be all that bad. I mean, unless you're in a district where crime is so bad they have metal detectors and armed police roaming around, which would really suck. As I recall, Hurlshot is somewhere around Gilroy, which isn't such a bad area. I used to teach, but my students were merely misbehaved as opposed to criminal. I know someone who worked in Colton Joint Unified at the Bloomington high school. haha One of his students was young enough that her husband wrote her letters to excuse her if she were ill. Talk about a screwed up situation. You'd figure that a girl old enough to marry (with parental consent) would be emancipated. Of course, this was quite a few years back, so maybe the laws have changed. Oh, and to be on topic, I have to say that cameras in schools specifically as cameras use increasing across the board. I used to play a little game while I was in England, especially London, where I'd try to make the camera and then wink at it.