Aristes

Along with everything else that doesn't make sense. The music in Fallout 3 was great. Even if it's not a conventional radio station, I want more tunes, man! I think a radio station in the basin would be great, but outlying areas are going to be screwed by the mountains. Maybe music tapes interspersed with informational VO work? I dunno, but don't let the 'reality' take away good features. Fixing up your own car and driving circles around 'tribals' riding around on bramin is no less immersion breaking.

I can't talk about F:NV's content or mechanics yet. I can talk about game content and mechanics in general and explain my own preferences as a player and the thought processes behind game development design decisions. But please, everyone, stop extrapolating this information into conclusions about F:NV. I'm sorry, but it is infuriating. I'm not designing this game according to my personal preferences as a player (which are actually pretty wide), nor does any specific design methodology automatically apply to the work we are doing on this project. It's cool, bro. I just wish I had a wolfish grin icon.

The comment about Bloodlines worries me. Of course, I could infer anything from the comment because it doesn't really say anything specific about NV. However, when I aim my weapon at the bad guy and start dishing out the heat, will my relfexes be more than incidently important. Moreover, let's say I want to use a less legitimate style of combat and go into VATS mode. If I have a 95% chance of scoring a torso shot from 5 feet away, does that mean I will always hit because it would be silly to miss? Of course, I know from experience that folks can miss you even at relatively close range. I have had someone shoot at me with a rifle and miss where I would have expected someone to hit. Maybe not off by 45 degrees, but you get my point.* I just want to have some clarity where you stand when it comes to PC skill/player reflexes. I know some player reflexes must be involved. After all, combat is in real-time, so the player will have to shoulder some of the burden no matter what. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that you should shrug and say it looks silly to miss close opponents and so we're going to treat this like an FPS. Hey, I've been the odd man out before. I just want to verify where the design is going so I can start complaining about it at the earliest convenience. *The only thing you can infer from this is that I'm a big wimp who will run from someone shooting at me.

Hell, I've been here less than a year and I have probably a thousand post between here and the other forums.

Here I was thinking that we were all Obsidian VIPs. I guess I was wrong.

You would rather have a system in an RPG that relies on player reflexes more than character skills? Brilliant move. You hear sound of distant howls? Those are players who are going to pollory your game. Good luck with that. Character skill should trump player reflexes in an RPG. ...And I've played my share of FPSes, so it's not like I have a hard time running and gunning either. In fact, it's very easy to exploit movement in Oblivion to win combat, especially as a mage or ranged PC. That doesn't mean it's good. I can see the benefit of balancing out the skills in the early game. Fair enough. You can probably improve the game without drawing undue attention. However, the farther you move from character skills, the less of an improvement. Yeah, you might not have liked Fallout 3. Good. I did and I don't want some sort of Frankensteinish monster that tries to use mechanical gymnastics to make my weapon skills useful. Weapon reloading speed? Good God, bro! You don't actually shoot better or do more damage, but you can reload that puppy in a jiff! Of course, none of this addresses the real problem with skills in the first place. I guess it'll all balance out. I'll have six skills at 100 by the end of the game but none of them will really be useful anyhow. CG, you're nuts on this issue.

Ahh, now I understand. So you don't want folks to front load their mad weapon skills for balance reasons. Makes a bit more sense, then.

Yeah, that sounds like a way to go. If you penalize folks for using VATS, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot. As for the ideas regarding the skill impact on accuracy/damage, why change it at all? It sounds like a lot of work for something that won't matter to the vast majority of gamers. Retooling VATS might be worth it, but if they make VATS unusable, they might as well remove it from the game. I'm not a VATS fan, but that certainly doesn't seem worth it. The skill points problem has much more obvious impact on gameplay and balancing. Personally, they could by and large keep combat the same. Sure, in principle I think ranged attacks should use stats for accuracy with minor bumps for damage. In practice, they'd either have to make the changes so minor that the end user would neither notice nor care or make the changes so significant that folks who've gone through the original game and the DLC will be irritated. I don't think it's worth it in either case. Great general theory from folks who want to show off their mad modding skilz though.

It's too bad the gameplay mechanics thread is dead because these questions are more suited for that one. Not that I really care about keeping the threads tidy, just sayin'. I was hoping for getting answers in this thread that I simply don't think the devs will answer yet, such as locations we'll be able to visit and some of the underlying political storyline. I would also like to know how many significant factions we'll face. All of that is probably a long way off from discussion, although there really isn't a huge amount of time left and I'm somewhat hopeful that Obsidian might want to showcase some of their artwork that gives clues about locations. I think enterix made the point earlier that concept art isn't likely to change at this point. As far as mechanics goes, I'd like to know if we can expect to max out virtually all of our skills by the end of the game. I enjoyed Fallout 3. Immensely. However, VATS irritated me, which was fine because I could simply avoid using it. On the other hand, maxing the majority of skills by the time you reach the level cap is crazy. ...And the argument that the player can simply choose not to use the skill points awarded to him as a way to artificially rectify the problem is ridiculous on its face and I've always despised similar arguments for other games as well. If you want a harder game, you should be able to toggle the difficulty. Saying I should be forced to download a mod in order to fix a problem is likewise ridiculous. Unlike a lot of forum monkeys, I'm probably more akin a casual gamer chimp who rarely installs a mod, if ever. I know I rarely used mods for Morrowind and never installed a mod for Oblivion on two runs. I have yet to purchase any DLC for Fallout 3, even being a big fan. For my purposes, I don't really care if the solution is to include more (reasonable) skills or increase the point max. I would probably prefer to see a higher skill ceiling that allows more options and variation in player choice along with a slight increase skill point allotment at each level. That means that players will still be able to max enough skills to specialize without be able to master all trades. Unless you want to inflate the significance of books, however, you can't just reduce the number of points and keep the max at 100. That would be the solution I'd like the least.

For my part, I skulk around both the AP forum and FO threads. I just tend to prefer to talk Fallout because it seems so much more open. AP does look like it can carry the day for an initial foray into an FPS title. Either game certainly looks better than SoZ, on which I passed.

Sorry to have missed the discussion on morality. I think there should be gameplay rewards sprinkled in there for players of every stripe, from the wretched to the saintly. However, Purkake is right, story driven rewards are a viable alternative in many cases to gameplay rewards. Let's face it, there is a good reason that most folks in real life are neither as good as they'd like nor as evil as they're tempted. It sucks. So, give some gameplay rewards, but also make it a tough choice. It should be hard in a computer game to be either extreme. Secondly, games more and more show that folks who really want to follow either the strictest of good or evil paths are willing to forgo gameplay rewards to do so. I agree with Gftd that removing every gameplay reward is not the way to go. Taking control away from the player is likewise stupid. The consequence should follow each decision. Of course, because of the screwed up alignment rules in DnD, forcing the paladin PC to make certain dialogue choices is perfectly appropriate in the technical sense, but stupid from an RPG standpoint.

I haven't heard of those games, so I don't know if you're being facetious or not. Were those good games? I mean, I don't like the Star Trek setting in particular, but I don't turn my nose at a good game either.

Hey, Hurley did an article for that site. Right on, dude! No chance in hell I will be able to switch to WoD online, but I'm still curious. I might even try it for a month or two just to sight-see.

I like vritually everything. On my recent play list, I have everything from rap, heavy metal, rock, soft rock, country, trans-siberian orchestra, oldies ranging from 300 to 20 years ago. I have new stuff from 20 years ago to this year. Like Gorth (since I'm only a figment of his imagination anyhow) I've got Gregorian Chant, Fleetwood Mac, Joan Jet, Pink Floyd, etc. on my play list. Like Gorth said, trying to narrow it down to a 'favorite' selection doesn't make senese. I like too many things at too many times.

Funny. I use this thread to try new stuff. Wasn't all that impressed with the Gamma Ray song, but that might just be my mood at the time. Boys of Summer -- Don Henley

No, seriously, mums the word. I don't know about this twitter business. Sounds new fangled. I do know that it would be cool to hear more about the design!

Yeah. I usually balk at literally saying other members are lying.

Nice to meet you, Fenstermaker. Now get to cracking! ...And give the skinny on something, damn it!

Haha, you're an old bastard, aren't you?! I went to my nieces kingergarten 'graduation' recently. It was cool. I mean, if my niece hadn't been in it I would have been pretty bored, but it was still cool.

Rebellion in Dreamland -- Gamma Ray

The first one was funny but the second one never loaded. Maybe my internet connection.

The problem with the two snippets is that Wrathie posted them as examples of the great writing. If you took them as just two snippets of the writing in the game, they're fairly middle of the road. Writing in CRPGs is generally bad anyhow. And Wrath is right when he says that some great games, such as PS:T, have patches of less than stellar writing. However, I'm willing to give the writing a break because that's what I generally end up doing for other games. I applaud the person who envisioned and created AoD. It's really great to have someone put his money where his mouth is. On the other hand, if you're going to put your money where your mouth is, you're going to face detractors. Even large commercial projects face criticism. The larger your claims, the more criticism you will face and the more criticism you should face. You should face more scrutiny. It's certainly better than making fantastic claims and having no discussion at all. You can't have it both ways. Either you should be judged as a viable alternative to commercial developers, in which case every aspect of your product is fair game for comparison, or you should be applauded for coming out with a great little indie game and nothing more. Once you tout your game as a viable competitor on the scene, you should be subject to every sort of criticism that faces other products of the same type.

I don't know. Star Trek is pretty conventional in how it approaches conflict. Sure, it can be didactic, but members of the federation still have petty jealousies and rivalries and the like. Sure, they're played out on a smaller scale while the larger scale touts society as the pinnacle of urbanity. Nevertheless, no matter what Star Fleet says, there are still murderers and thieves and the like abounding.

GD, I worry about you sometimes, bro.