WorstUsernameEver

Could be good, but let's be honest : what sets Mass Effect universe apart? Let's just hope they won't decide to do an Alpha Protocol movie if the game is successful...

Even when I was a 17 years old guy, something like the God Of War 3 video would have made me laugh so hard I'd almost die. It has to be a parody. That said, he goes a bit far when he basically complains about an alternate costume, and he completely misses the point when he argues that video games is a storytelling medium. No, it's not. Arguably some games have their primary focus in telling a (hopefully interactive) story, but most don't, so it's not like you can complain about the fact that there are a lot of alien-invasion story. Take Gears of War as an example : the plot there is clearly made just to give you an objective, though the developers of course will argue that there is some very deep interaction and bla bla, but they just didn't care about the plot, they wanted to give the players a fast-paced action-y, visceral experience. As for gamers being douche.. that's absolutely true, but unfortunately that's true about most people you meet on the net, so I'm not sure about why he's so surprised about the 'l0l!11ONE! N00B!1ONE1!' guys on World Of Warcraft. Especially WoW actually, since more people always means there will be more human sized ass holes. Note that it's true that being a gamer isn't considered cool but.. come on.. even if it isn't what's the problem?

I'm honestly not seeing how you could turn Mass Effect into a decent film, but I hope they surprise me.

You can always opt for the Flamer Pistol, amirite? Or some home-made low power crap, or a specially damaged Energy Pistol. It's not like this isn't a Scavenger World. same rationale worked for big guns. *shrug* HA! Good Fun! I can understand your rationale grom, but havin' played Fallout 3 with FWE, and with FOOK (not as much as FWE considering that IMHO that mod sucks as an overhaul and has no quality control and internal consistency) I can sympathize with Sawyer's concern about confusing players about what skill is used by certain weapons. Of two guns that looked very similar, one used small guns and the other big guns, and even with the low-tier big guns placed in the game, small guns ended up being a much more convenient choice, simply because the weapons that fit that category are the overwhelming majority of weapons in the game. While the weapon categorization proposed by Josh is far from perfect as far as the logic goes, I believe it's clearer to the player (maybe with the exception of the flamer's fuel weapon, but as long as they state that clearly in the skill description I think they're fine) than the original, and now that Fallout has a larger fanbase, that's pretty important, especially considering that it looks like in Fallout : New Vegas weapon skills will be important, so you could unknowingly gimp yourself by using the wrong weapon (and yeah, the skill used by the weapon will be shown in the UI, but some people won't look, trust me).

Namco Bandai to distribute The Witcher 2 in Europe and Asia.

It's not just 'grouping' weapons, is 'different character builds', which in turns mean a character will be better with some weapons than another character. Simple enough, and part of the appeal of rpgs to me. Truth be told, I just don't think it would fit the game.

Never played Arcanum (I will buy it from GoG sooner or later), but I was just trying to clarify my point, not trying to put words into your mouth, so sorry if I came across as condescending or something like that, it absolutely wasn't my intention.

I find this to be a double edged sword. A game like Arcanum forced you to specialize to an extent that I didn't like it. I think Jack of All Trades should be just as viable as full on specialization. This would mean that at the end game, there are still doors that do not require 100% lockpicking to be picked sort of stuff, and so on. To simplify the example: Make it so that you aren't penalized for not going full guns or full lockpicking, with half guns half lockpicking still being suitable. You can't do everything that a full one way can do, but you can do the other skill at a proficient enough level that it lends you certain advantages over a fully specialized character. I'm a bit worried that AP will also require too much specialization as well. The point is, in Fallout 3 EVERY character ended up a jack of all trades by the time you reached level 20. That's what I meant when I said that the system will push you into specializing : if you can either be GOOD at something or 'ok' at everything it's ok, if you end being GOOD at everything by the end, no matter how much you try to gimp your character.. that's the epitome of bad design for a character development system in an RPG imho.

Sensible enough for me. Balanced & fun gameplay always trump 'BWAAAAH IT BURNS THINGS WHY IS A ENERGY WEAPON?! MAKES NO SENSE!!!'. For me at least.

.. lol. Thinking about it, I have one question : is weapons that use flamer fuel as energy weapons a definitive thing, and what's the reasoning behind it?

... and look to whom he's answering.

Explodes? Check. Uses energy ammo? Check failed. So I guess it's an explosive. Seriously, though, as Sawer already said, it's not made to make sense realism-wise but rather to categorize weapons easily and generally improve game balance. EDIT : The YK-weapons were re-introduced in Fallout 3 by a mod.. I think it was EVE but I may be wrong. With incredibly cool visuals to boot, too!..... that means I'm in favor of seeing them again, anyway. ANOTHER EDIT : Flamers are under energy weapons apparently. So Sawyer said.

It's not just Bethesda's forums to be honest, there's quite a lot of people on No Mutants Allowed and Duck and Cover that didn't like the choice. And to be fair, the people on Bethesda forums have different opinions, they're not a hive mind intent on deprecating rebalancing. Anyway, I'm interested now in hearing about how points will be distributed in Fallout : New Vegas. Sawyer is making it sound like the game will push you into specializing instead of the jack of all trades approach of Fallout 3, and that's definitely a good thing (at least from my point of view.. some will hate the thing, since they probably didn't like the character development aspect of the game and played it as an action-adventure). There also people on NMA that don't mind the change, even some of the vets. Of course, what I was trying to imply isn't that NMAers are idiots that dislike change, but that the discontent about the decision is not present only in the Beths forums.

Personally I think it's a matter of perception, and personally I was referring to the crowd of old-schoolers who doesn't like the new, more action-rpgy/streamlined games (granted, while I like them I think all audiences should be catered too, and games with 'old' design decisions have been quite succesful), but if you ask what is my perception of it.. well I'd call an rpg 'hardcore' if it's stat-based, has a complex character development & combat system that emphasizes strategy, planning and character's skills instead of player's skills.

Holy ****!

Uhm.. yeah Starwars, I posted it on the other page.

Not only we have Vegas almost unharmed, but we have factions like the NCR and the Gun Runners that are actually making new guns and have probably got their hands on some way to build some low-end energy weapons. And Fallout 3 was full of laser pistols, the first I remember finding was in the Super Duper Mart, so quite early in the game, and there were TWO to boot. Granted, the ammo was scarce, especially if you compare it with the availability of normal 10mm ammo and the likes of it, but still you could find energy weapons quite early.

It's not just Bethesda's forums to be honest, there's quite a lot of people on No Mutants Allowed and Duck and Cover that didn't like the choice. And to be fair, the people on Bethesda forums have different opinions, they're not a hive mind intent on deprecating rebalancing. Anyway, I'm interested now in hearing about how points will be distributed in Fallout : New Vegas. Sawyer is making it sound like the game will push you into specializing instead of the jack of all trades approach of Fallout 3, and that's definitely a good thing (at least from my point of view.. some will hate the thing, since they probably didn't like the character development aspect of the game and played it as an action-adventure).

There are already low end energy weapons in Fallout 3, like the laser pistol, so my guess is that we'll be seeing similar weapons, maybe 'civilian' models, you can use for run & gun tactics and similar. By the way, I hope item descriptions will make a comeback.

Good to hear, he did a very good job on MotB and SoZ I'd say.

To be honest there still hasn't been much rage, anyway here's the link: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topi...o/page__st__120 BTW, I like the changes, though I hope the penalty for not meeting the strength requirements is big and not just a little bit of sway. It would be even better if there's some granularity : you don't meet the requirements for 1 point? sway. you don't meet the requirements because you need 5 strength and you have 1? SO MUCH SWAY. Or rate of fire.. by the way is that really the right wording for a melee weapon?

I'm copying this from Bethesda's forums, straight from J.E. Sawyer's mouth (well.. fingers technically): Gun chat. In 1997, I played the original Fallout. Like the games that followed it, Fallout had Small Guns, Big Guns, and Energy Weapons. In F1, the gun skills were designed for phased obsolescence. If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons. Ultimately, it came down to three weapons: the minigun, rocket launcher, and flamer. Large, with heavy ammo, and either burst or AoE only. In Fallout 3, the list of Big Guns was expanded to include the fat man, rock-it launcher, and gatling laser. In most situations, these weapons were all still at least mid-power at their weakest. In talking to people in person and online, and in reading online commentary, I found that people were also still unclear on what marked the clear division between Small Guns and Big Guns (and even Energy Weapons, in the case of the Gatling Laser). Certainly the UI could be improved to help with this (something we have already done for F:NV), but it conceptually was a sticking point. When I was looking at Big Guns for F:NV, I considered that the list of weapons was small compared to any other weapon category and several of the weapons arguably belonged (or at least could be easily categorized) elsewhere. Moving the Big Guns to different weapon skills and dissolving the Big Guns skill would allow weapons like the minigun to remain as a powerful top tier weapon without needing to invent low-tier "Big Guns" that might further confuse the dividing line. Coming up with a wide power spectrum of Guns, Energy Weapons, and Explosives would not be hard at all. Since our skill point economy is more frugal (I'll delve into this another time) and since we do have Strength requirements on weapons (resulting in increased sway for firearms and a decreased rate of fire for melee/unarmed), where you invest your skill points and SPECIAL points is still pretty important. A fully upgraded minigun wielded by a character with high Guns and high Strength cuts down rooms of people like a scythe, even at relatively long range. In the hands of an unskilled, low Strength character, it sprays a lot of bullets all over the place. The exact categorization of weapons in F:NV isn't rooted in the logic of transferable skills from real life, but it's arguable they never were previously, either (missile launcher/flamer/minigun, for example). The categorizations have more to do with being clear and consistent with definitions. It follows this basic pattern: * Does it explode? It's an Explosive. * Does it use Small Energy Cells, Microfusion Cells, or other energy ammo? It's an Energy Weapon. * Does it use conventional bullets of some flavor as ammo? It's a Gun. So while it's accurate to say that Big Guns no longer exists as a category, it's not accurate to say that Big Guns and Small Guns were combined. The weapons in Big Guns were divided among the other weapon skills. I know not everyone will be happy with this re-organization, but those are the reasons for the change. I hope the reasons are clear, even if you disagree with the decision. Thanks.

SoZ had a couple of bugs relating the economy system, but yeah, never had much trouble with it. To be fair, I didn't have much trouble with MotB and OC too (yeah, even the OC), so I'm probably just lucky.

Hot, but still not as hot as it could be. Which is good, since I still have exams this month.

As far as I know the characters he and Annie did are still in the game, though of course, the story changed so their role probably changed a bit, and their dialogue was written by someone else (Chris Avellone and maybe someone else I don't know too?) so the tone will probably be a bit different, no matter how true they wanted to be to the characters. Avellone is an awesome writer too and I'm digging what I saw of Alpha Protocol's dialogues so I really can't complain. Now back to the Vampire games... well of course I'd like an rpg based on it, and actually I think that the new setting would suit Mitsoda's writing much more than Vampire : The Masquerade, but I don't know how they could translate the ruleset in a decent manner for a CRPG, and I don't see any sign that indicates that White Wolf is interested, sadly. =/