thesisko

Also, such a game would drown in a sea of similar-looking browser games whereas a reasonably priced and marketed downloadable title would be a fairly unique offering. I highly doubt that "IWD3 the Facebook-game" would be more profitable than IWD3 for $20 on Steam. But instead we get atrocious offerings such as "D&D Daggerdale".

And I've never seen a F2P or mobile game that is anything like the IE games or ToEE. I'd think a publisher who is interested in a F2P/mobile game would ask for something casual/social that could be monetized with in-game purchases.

Why is that? Paradox publishes a lot of niche titles without going free-to-play or mobile. You seem to believe that focus on tactical combat in an RPG is something gamers would begrudgingly accept only if it was a free/mobile game. Or is that what most publishers believe because "RPG" has become synonymous with cinematic "choose-your-adventure"?

Oh yeah, CoD XII: Modernest Medal of Warfare has such a good story compared to Planescape Torment.

Changed his mind about what? Gamers able to handle character creation in 2008 but not in 2011?

Right. In my opinion NV and AP are both simple games that require little more understanding than "Follow quest compass" and "Point and shoot gun", whereas earlier Black Isle RPG's usually required you to understand a variety of abilities and tactics in order to progress. Hence, in my opinion, AP and NV are a lot less complex.

How do two mainstream console games beg to differ that Obsidian isn't interested in making complex tactical RPG's like Icewind Dale or Storm of Zehir? Note: I like and own both those games, just saying they aren't exactly complex tactical RPG's.

No. Obsidian's CEO thinks that a simple action RPG that doesn't need character creation potentially sells more copies than a more complex tactical RPG (and he's probably correct). However, he's expressing it in a way that makes it sound like he thinks that gamers used to love character generation but now can't stand it. Completely ignoring the fact that one group (IWD buyers) were a few hundred thousand PC RPG fans while the other is a few million console gamers who just want a random action game. There are plenty of modern PC games that are far more complicated than IWD, but Obsidian obviously isn't interested in making a complex PC game. Saying it's impossible is insulting to those companies and to the gamers who like that type of games.

What's the matter? I don't know about you, but in my high-school class (1996-1999) I was the only one playing PC RPG's. Some guys had played Duke Nukem and Quake, but most of my classmates either didn't game at all, or had a Nintendo/Playstation. That not niche according to you? Maybe where you grew up everyone was playing Wizardry on a PC?

man, you don't have a clue... there were no "niches" 15 years ago. "in the past", hah, that's a good one Really? Niche game 1997 Mainstream game 1996 (9 million sold) Niche game 2000 Mainstream game 2000 (6 million sold) Mainstream game 2000 (9 million sold) Niche game 2006 Mainstream game 2006 (5 million sold) Niche game 2009 Mainstream game 2010 (5 million sold) Your point was? Claiming that there were no niche games 15 years ago is ignorant. PC gaming in itself was (and is) a niche and PC RPG's were even more niche. What do you think sold most, Quake or Fallout? The Sims or Icewind Dale? New Vegas or Risen? Storm of Zehir or Mass Effect 2? Obsidian (or rather, the publishers they approach) aren't interested in making niche titles anymore, they want to sell millions of copies, just like Diablo 2, The Sims, Oblivion or other mainstream titles...whether they are from 1996 or 2011.

More like last 2.5 years. Niche market are no longer desirable for Obsidian Entertainment you mean. They are still just as viable as they were before. I wish Feargus had just that simpler games sell more copies rather than claim that "modern gamers" don't like complexity. I'm willing to bet that the number of gamers who want a deep experience is the same or larger now than it was a decade ago. There's just a bigger group of gamers that like simple games and Obsidian is trying to cater to them, whereas in the past, they were making niche RPG's for gamers who wanted a more complex experience. It's not evolution, and those gamers who liked NWN2 and its expansions haven't collectively developed ADD or died off in the past 3 years. Oh, and how come can handle complex character creation but RPG players can't?

Still, it seemed like a shift in Obsidian's attitude. Initially you were saying that a lot of people found the OC to be hard and wanted to tone down the difficulty in the expansion. Personally, I think the general lack of tactical challenges in the OC was a mistake. For someone like me, who was new to D&D the low difficulty combined with the lack of variety in the encounters caused me to lose interest in the combat system rather than try to learn it. The level of challenge in the OC might have been appropriate to players who weren't interested in the combat to begin with, but those should be catered to with an appropriate and forgiving difficulty setting. Personally, I would have appreciated a separate "New to D&D" option that provided a simplified character creation and cut down on the number of spells and feats during levelup to a handpicked list appropriate for your chosen class, along with stronger tutorial elements. Concentrating on fewer skills and designing encounters to encourage their use by slowly ramping up the tactical complexity would have been both exiting and rewarding for new players. If the party wipes during a hard encounter, the game shouldn't ask "Do you wish to lower the difficulty" but "Would you like some tactical suggestions?" There is a tendency in modern games, even complex ones, to primarily cater to someone who wishes to ignore their complexity, but offer little for someone who wishes to learn it.

A raise in overall challenge level really doesn't have anything to do with epic levels. They obviously went from wanting to decrease the challenge to actually increase it, both tactically and from a resource management perspective (by adding the spirit meter mechanic). I found NWN2's combat to be tedious and boring, but it would be interesting to know why Obsidian initially planned to make MotB even less challenging.

Early on, Sawyer clearly stated that it was going to be easier than NWN2. A few months later in the development cycle, he states that he was bored playing through the initial tuning and that the final tuning is a lot more challenging and interesting than NWN2. Sounds like a changed approach to me.

I'm curious what caused this radical shift in combat design from May to September (going from "easier than NWN2" to "more challenging than NWN2" Was it a change in philosophy (assume the typical player is interested in the combat system and provide a challenge vs. assume the typical player isn't very interested in learning the combat system)? I'm very glad this happened, but I'd like to know how it came about!

I found the difficulty appropriate in hardcore mode, but I felt that consumables and ammo should have been more scarce. Does the engine support varying the spawn rates across normal/hardcore? For me, this was a major issue in the main game - once you leave the starting areas the wealth of food and ammo available trivializes the "needs" portion of hardcore mode, making it more of a chore than a feature (since you'll always have food and water in your inventory). Perhaps it would also make sense of your needs would increase with certain stats/skills, like a high strength character should require more food. Anyway, I hope you can continue to use hardcore mode to incorporate some of your more "punishing" ideas in future DLC

Hi Chris, Just want to say I'm greatly enjoying Dead Money so far. One thing I'd like for future DLC's is more scaling difficulty for hardcore mode. It would be neat if hardcore mode made ammo, food and water more scarce...as it is now I'm practically swimming in food and ammo even though I'm using a mod that greatly increases the rate of hunger/thirst. Also, I must say I'm very disappointed in reviews that complain about the collar and poison cloud mechanics, I really like what they add and haven't died once because of them (though I did die to some grenade traps). Keep up the good work and don't be afraid to make hardcore mode even harder in future DLC, I think most people who play on that setting really do want to be challenged!

I know why companies want people to pre-order, I don't understand what type of RPG players want free(or bought) stuff....for me finding and upgrading gear is a big part of the fun. Do you think the majority of RPG gamers prefer to be given/buy stuff?

I'm hoping so too, which reinforces my belief that publishers are evil and I'm glad Obsidian is relatively independent. As far as I know, none of their NWN2 games had this stuff. I'm totally OK with DLC as lite-expansions though, looking forward to Dead Money coming to the PC.

I've been curious about this for a while - which type of RPG gamers actually wants powerful items given to them at the start of the game? Because it seems like it's supposed to be some kind of incentive to either preorder (buying the game before you've read reviews) or pay extra (DLC or collector's edition etc.) I mean, I thought that for most people upgrading your items was part of the fun in playing an RPG. And surely it upsets the difficulty tuning if you start the game with more powerful items than are otherwise available? Do people who want these items find the game too hard on Easy? If so, then the solution should be to introduce another, even easier difficulty setting...not sell extra items. Or are there really many people who find upgrading your stuff just tedious and want to have one set of

Hey, Just bought this game and immediately noticed that the sound is only output in stereo. Totally kills the immersion for me, and I'm left wondering how a game released in 2010 has no surround sound support. I found a post suggesting to use Creative's ALchemy software, however this isn't an option for me since I'm using onboard sound. If ALchemy does work, this suggests the game uses the DirectSound3D API that was made obsolete 4 years ago...if that's true then it's really shameful.