cronicler

Frag Colonial Marines buddy, It's colonial civilian rescue services turned into colonial militia turned into confederate outlaws turned into salvage outfit turned into a mercenary outfit or bust! (Wanna help me with fleshing out a little story I am working on?)

Yes it does Hellkitty. There is not one dialogue option where you can rage to your dad for leaving you or any option to refuse his tasks / tell him to go take a hike.

Starcraft 2. Ignore whatever the game turns out to be. Have you seen that editor('s videos and so on) ? That piece of tool is going to be a nerdgasm Wait sorry this was not the wishlist !

/Shoo will you. Go and debate story in its own thread! Anyway back on topic, there are lots of areas Obsidian will have to tweak, overhaul, fix or ultimately build from ground up. Skills & Stats Abilities (Perks need overhaul, traits should come back, backgrounds would be nice, decent and logical reward perks would be nice "ability to skin animals, ability to do this or that etc) Combat calculations need to be overhauled (Stats, Skills and To Hit bugs primarily.) Ranged Combat "feeling" needs to be adressed. At the moment it feels empty and bland (most of the time and most of the weapons feel plastic toys that pew pew) Meele and Unarmed need fixing badly. Compared to games like Riddick the whole close quarters action feel wooden. Some more combat options like cover (personally I would prefer Call of Juarez version than Gers of War weirdness), tactical view (Nothing grand, just a pause key that allows you a somewhat TPP to birdeye wiev to watch your surroundings and maybe give order to your henchman Brother in Arms or Mass Effect stle: Go there; Hold there, shoot this etc) Existing Crafting and Repair sytems needs to be recycled and build from ground up Obsidian style. A system between to SoZ and Kotor 2 would be very nice (You can take apart weapons and items for "generic spare parts" (Nuts and bolts etc) and specific spare parts (Stock, trigger, barrel, rails, whatever. It would be very nice if you can build your own weapons using stocks and barrels you get from other guns," if you are intrested in that kind of thing". Otherwise a normal system like SoZ'S crafting book would be nice too ) Diverse Character Models would be nice. Its getting boring to see every male with same body and different head. Even peglegs, hook arms, some tall(er) and some short(er) body model mods would be enough. Weapon Models and Weapon Types need some adjustments. It would be grand if we could craft our own weapon ingame using different stocks, muzzles, triggers etc... The minigames need to be tweaked (skill only means if you can access it or not atm. sweet spots and hacks are really irrelevant due to games being too easy) and some new ones would be good too (at lest disguised as other kinds of locks and so on) Pipboy needs a serious fix bot in mechanics department and ingame departments Mechanics: I really didn't like how the whole inventory was squeezed into it. It would have felt much better if you had your Inventory and Quickslots were repsented in a more graphical way (A backpack for your main inventory and a fannypack and vestpockets for your quickslots. When you access your inv, the character kneels and shrugs the backpack off and brings it in front of him to open it etc) and Pipboy hud/interface displaying known details about the item. The devs could even have it display unknown item / error / corrupted file now and then (when you get hold of an item for the first time) and your character inputting new text on the fly by himself (with keyboard noises in the background, the char types: This fruit looks like an bright red apple but with more squishy feeling. If you have enough doctor or survival (or if you consume it ) the char adds that it is mildly poisonous etc.) The main benefit of it is being a working computer by itself. It should give you the option to hardwire it into dead computers using feeler cables on the main board (with enough repair) and hunt for... whatever. Who knows what gems could a pre war comp may have (even if its only a working part / tube that you can scavenge and sell for good buck to techno worshipping idiots) Ingame: First of all It is supposed to be a "worn" computer system of 2 or 3 parts (similar to this coupled with this part). It probably does not have much in the processor power department being a mass produced civilian model but in the wastelands it still reprsents very high to cutting edge tech for a tech savvy person. Just getting hold of a working model would be a 1000 xp point adventure for a non-vault citizen. (No i do not mean the act of getting it alone but the whole deal you get through (dungeon crawling in an abandoned old site, killing some rats, some puzzles and everything else together). Secondly; it should be a giant sign shouting: "Incredibly, stinking, filthy RICH person. Rob him before others do!" (If you openly wear it). By itself it should be enough to open some nice little quests and also cause trouble for you just be existing.

TARNATION!

I felt that Vats was another missed / poorly constructed opportunity. I know a lot of people are getting really tired of slow-mo / time stop / adrenaline rush abilities in the games but I think with (a lot of) tweaks, it can be a good tool for the player. The first thing that is immidiately weird is the lack of Meele and Unarmed combat styles in Vats. If reliable interrupt and lockdown effects for these styles can be implemented, It would be nice to hit one guys weapon arm to disable him, unbalance the second one (tackle, leg sweep, push whatever) and finally bash the third targets head or face in in a fighting game combo style. This would also make these styles fun to play. For gunning, I always thought of Vats as a pistolero style showdown when you are using a pistol (Single hand, Duelist stance, 6 to 14 bullets worth of pain) but to achieve such effect the deadliness of weapons need to be increased. A lot. When you are going Vats in rifle, it reminded me of a soldier leaning a bit ahead, going ironsights (or reflex or whatever the rifle has) and servicing targets in very quick succession. I don't think Vats is unfixable. With proper animations, an overhauled targeting and positioning (and eliminating slow-mo and less damage aspects) it is quite a nice tool. (And you shouldn't be able to target someone behind your back and 100m away....)

I don't think Main Skills with sub-specilization skills is the way to go but thats mainly for the departure from the original concepts. Anyway here is a (mainly Alternity ripped) Skill list. Each level, you get (Int-x) Skillpoints that you can put to your "main" skills: Marksmanship Personal Defence Technology Social Survival Each point put into the major skill increases the baseline for sub skills and adds to the skill pool for subspecilization; ie you all 5 points into the Marksman then all your shooting skills get better: Marksmanship: -Pistols: Base skill 5/6 Marksman -Shotguns: Base Skill 4/5 Marksman -SMGs: Base Skill X/X Marksman and so on -Rifles (Regular Hunting Rifles) -Assault Rifles (Smaller Caliber Military Rifles) -Heavy Rifles (Laser, Plasma, Anti Material Sniper etc) -Machine Guns Each point spent on marksman skill also gives you X points to spend on subskills. you can add these points directly to the (sub)skill or spend them to buy weapon specisalation perks (Ie Pistolero: Decreases AP cost, Firing time increases accuracy for pistols 7Points.) But this kind of system would be a really big departure from the main concept. I don't think we can stick with the original concept and make it better (other than creating low level heavy and energy weapons, reintroducing non-explosive throwing weapons and such). Still I would like to stick with the original concept....

That adaptive AI crap really killed HW2. It was a really good game with a lot of potential but like most or nearly all of the other Relic titles it was left out in the cold without support. I know that the idea behind the system is solid but it really needed a lot of tweaking to work as a precision instrument (create a capturable ship side mission here if the player has a marine frig, create another patrol here if the player has 2 battleships, create a friendly ship (MIA) reinforcement if player doesn't have X class etc) instead of a blunt approach (Create 4x Player ships here, 1x here and here...) that robs a lot of fun from the game...

It is not "that" bad as an FPS but... sigh no need to sugarcoat it I guess; Yes it is that bad as an FPS of 2006. Maybe if it was a 2002 game I could be more gentle but it is a modern game that is worthless. Also they somehow managed to get rid of all those little bits that gave the game it's unique flavor and make it a brown shooter with ultra dumb AI.

To give a rough count, from best to worst it goes something like Desperados 1 (Superb story and presentation), Helldorado (Nice and Modern Gameplay) ,Desperados 2, Robin Hood (Nice story but too much bland fillers) and Chicago (So so). For Commandos, my choice is 3, 2, 1, 1exp but that's more to the game interface etc than the actual game. A lot of people would put 3 to the end. (The Exp is deadly hard btw. That's why I hate it. And finished it perfectly )

Spellbound Studios has made a lot of games in the RTS-Puzzle genre: Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge Helldorado Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood Chicago 1930 Pyro Studios (Eidos): Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty Commandos 2: Men of Courage Commandos 3: Destination Berlin EDIT PS: The more I think about it, the more games I remember liking: Tiberium Sun, Warhammer Games, Mhth games, Hell even the Earth series and MechCommander were a lot of fun... PPS: Oh damn. I totally forgot to mention the DUNGEON KEEPER!

A Lot. I don't think I can give a single answer Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (I am a sucker for RTS puzzles) Homeword and Cata (Epic) Ground Control and Dark Conspiracy (Had tons of fun as Major Sarah Parker's orderly/commo guy . Miss Deacon Jarred. ) World in Conflict and Soviet Assault (Too bad the IP is sacrificed) UFO Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight (What? I like shotgunning the world free from aliens ) Nexus: The Jupiter Incident (A total of 3 missons out of 30 at Jupiter. ) Shogun: Total War (European wars may be better. But Shogun has a diffrent place) Company of Heroes (Sherman vs Tiger is better than Landrider vs Fireprism.)

Forum is gone nuts again Anyway, on Tabletop We (I and some of my player and storyteller/gamemaster/dumgeonmaster/whatever pals) had tried to make the system a bit more... plausible? workable? less irrational? The best we could come up with (stealing a lot from gurps) was classifying the combat skills under pistols, rifles and exotics (With a host of subskills like exotic weapons: flamethrower, Exotic weapon bow etc). To further balance the whole issue we generally used "exotic weapon skill= 4/5 of rifle or pistol skill, where appropirate (like ew:crossbow uses 4/5 rifle score as base and ew:flaregun uses 4/5 pistols as base etc) and generally winged it for the truly exotic or unrelated things like bows and slings. This method is actually pretty solid in execution but then again, it is a real strong departure from the fallout system. I don't think Obsidian will go for such (or similar) a rebuilding of basic skill parameters. Then again, with the totally useless/irrelevant skill system we/obsidian inherits from the Fallout 3, They might be able to wing such a departure (Wonder if Bethesda has any say in these game mechanics issues?)

I wonder if "locking" some of the skills and abilities at the start of the game would be a good suggestion. At the start you don't have access to Big Guns or Energy Weapons. (Not crossed out but totally absent from your skilldex). After you get your hands on some actual hardware for the first time, your skill opens but in order to be able to put skillpoints into it you need to have a good understanding of science (energy weapons) or spend some time using the (big) gun (100 * (11-int) bullets fired to be able to put 1 skillpoint into it?). Maybe you can skip some of that by being instructed by experts. Similarly, at the start of the game you are just a brawler who only knows that heavier punch = more hurt / have the "finesse" to use tire iron or wrench. Later as you use other stuff and get taught by other guys, you unlock "new" moves that interrupt the other guy (unarmed) or allow you to use that knife for silent kills instead of swishing it around like an idiot. Then again this might be a totally needless complication for the average gamer...

Well Tastes and Colours cannot be argued over

Maybe we can have some LMG's like Steyr (I know it is not a different weapon than the steyr aug, just a heavier and longer barrel and 42 bullet magazine) that use assault rifle ammo and heavy caliber anti material rifles (.50 BMG, 14.5 mm, maybe even a 20mm monster that is actually classified as "cannon"). You can even add some WW2 era anti tank rifle or two into the game as secrets. That way the player would have access to a big gun (Steyr Lmg, SAW) around the time he gets access to the assault rifles. And the AM rifles could be an aswer to the Heavy weapon for long range problem. As player gets better small guns you can also up the big guns too... For the first part of the game, (From Pistols and Pipe rifles to real weapons) why not give the player a... low tech crossbow (that uses either your HG or SG skill, which is higher) or an ancient WW2 era AT rifle? I know it is a bit strech but you can say that it takes pure muscle to **** the crossbow and the AT rifle (while deadly) has a really slow rate of fire. (Thou the second suggestion depends on player being able to craft his own ammo somehow and the time between pistol / double barreled shotgun to modern assault rifles and SMGs be long enough to be meaningful)

Does anyone have any ideas on making big guns a viable alternative? As it stands now, you can prettymuch do the whole game with small guns (FO1, 2 ,3) or be stuck in called in sometimes guy (FoTactics) Big guns just eat too much ammo and are generally overkill. (If the game is balanced in a decent loot/resource rate) Maybe give it some boost by adding its modifiers to fixed guns (that could be present in some defence missions like guns fixed on a settlement wall or vehicle, deployable MGs for general use etc.) Or maybe move the heavy caliber sniper cannons into HG skill. Any ideas?

Enterix: If I had the power to have a game created, I would have liked to have a game that is a mix of Halflife (2, 3 / Episodes whatever) and Riddick with fear grade enemies. and a little bit of sand box sprinkled on top (Call of Juarez, Gun and the like's sandbox style) Riddick excelled at areas that are weak in HL (The feeling of guns, the meele, the health system, first usable and fun stealth since Thief) while Halflife was a much better composed and executed game. (Both games did have their a bit too long a bit too boring sections). Fear on the other other hand offers excellent enemy action (despite rest of the game being a snooze fest ). Also I would prefer Fear 1 grade commandos instead of Fear 2's idiots. On top of them I would like to sprinkle some sandbox parts to earn some cash, get upgrades, fool around and genenrally have some unrelated fun between mission chains. Also I wouldn't say no to some stats and upgrades somewhere between CoD and SS2 (much more closer to CoD thou. SS2 would slow down the shooter parts ) And some kind of Inventory. (I really hated eating everything as soon as I found them in Bioshock...)

No chance. You need a new Comp.

Holy ****! I had Heard of the D but I hadn't even bothered to look for as I thought what could they make of such a broad story... That does look real nice to burn some free time. I'm suprised

KingofSquid, On the late game content (Outlands and Northrend (60+)) you are going to experience slow downs due to graphical overloads. For the end game, if you are willing you might be able to wing it with a cleaned and optimised system on 1gig. ram and 8600 or better card (Sorry don't know the Ati equvalents) and a free connection of 1Mbit. The better your system is, the better the game will look and play (As you will be able to open magic and envirolment effects ) If you are a student on a low budget, WoW is one of the cheapest entertainment avenues out there but other than that it is becoming a lot boring for the long time players.

very good is about 8 on my personal scale (1 to 10). After very good comes near perfect and almost perfect. There can never be perfectness but some games can come as close to it as the tech allows like Grim Fandango. 1-Valuesoft game 2-Bad Game 3-Still a bad game but you might enjoy it if you are extremely fond of the genre 4-Has Problems 5-Decent 6-Decent to Good 7-Good 8-Very Good 9-Near Perfect 10-Almost Perfect

I know this will freak her out () but I'm with Crashgirl on this one. Sure the game was a cut or two above all of its present rivals but it was just a good to very good game. It had its high points and it had its boring and idiotic moments (Can we have some squad controls on par with Freedom Fighters in this decade please? And while at there, can we have some guns that are not fisher price pew pew plastic pieces?) but overall it was an enjoyable and fun game. The expansions were even more polished than the original game but I think Valve is about at the limit of "things that can be done with only in game story and gameplay". I don't think they can create more creative parts without adding some parts from different genres, be it Racing, Rpg (Skills or Inventory) or Simulation (Mech and Plane and Tank and whatnot)

Purkake if you have time, read the link I gave last page. Now this essay is mainly focused on the "Writing" Profession but I think thesimilarities between literature and gaming "sales" is easy to see. You only need to switch "destroy it" to "loose control of it to the publisher" (Will link article about Al Lowe's views and Leasure Suit Larry's rape here) to imagine it I'm sorry Purkake, but are you honestly expecting revenue from "people" who only pirate games? The games are precious becouse they are hard to reach and uneconomically expensive for the most of the world but this is not the point. You aren't going to be able to sell that damn game to those people anyway. Your main market is Western (USA, EU inc Russia), Oriental and (Relatively) Rich people from the rest of the world. I am not against reasionable precautions that allow the creator to earn from his creations and at the same time makes the game avialable after it is "unprofitable" for retail. Anything heavier than download and play schemes (D2Drive, Steam etc) is actually on the border of being unconstututional. (Which is funny as I am not a US Citizen but this whole damn mess' solution is based on US and EU markets )

I am quite puzzled. How many of the Drm Defenders are USA Citizens? As DRM can be seen in direct violation of community's access to created material DRM is a tool that allows the middleman publishers to gain control of created material and hide it from that use / access of the population when it becomes "unprofitable". Just think of how many games are lost and forgotten as they are lost in legal limbo. Or worse yet, how they are resurrected to milk some more cash (without any additions to original content) DRM (As it stands and used now) is not a tool to protect the creators' "Right" to earn living from his works. It is a leash and it is in the hands of 3rd parties.