[Anti-Dragon Age 2?]

Volourn, it did not. Here, let me get my fancy chart.

 

 

10 weeks > 1 month

 

please don't lie volourn

[Anti-Dragon Age 2?]

Why was the expansion canned? I thought DA2 sold enough?

 

DA2 sold so poorly EA got a lot of nasty complaints from businesses like Walmart who had to dump dozens of copies per store into the bargain bin. It sold a lot in the first week then almost nothing after that, when people found out more about the game.

 

They had a LOT of dlc planned, you can google some of the press they had around DA2's launch. They said they had a huge DLC campaign lined up. Pretty big blunder.

 

And really, it's wise. They saved some time for working on the third game, than trying to rush it out like they did DA2.

[How "retro" should the mechanics of PE be?]

Personally, I think going "retro" does not work well for presentation of computer games in general. What dev. should shoot for if they want to go "retro" is to go for some design theme and game mechanic and present it with at least the industry average in the area of presentation. Dated graphics and sound just doesn't stand up well like painting or music. So a cRPG that goes retro may want to have more detail stats and less streamline mechanic like Diablo or Mass Effect 2&3 but using 16 bits graphic is well not really advisable.

 

Old games don't usually age well, but in the case of isometric games, I think they actually age very well. Look at Starcraft, Age of Empires II, or any RTS from before 2000. They still look very beautiful today.

[Fallout 4 Obsidian Petition]

Don't even try to analyze FO3's story. None it makes any sense. Epsecially the ending.

 

Considering Bethesda made FO3, it's... okay, it's bad. The vampire thing really hurt. It was like, they didn't know what to do with the IP they had purchased. And a lot of other things really hurt. Like, I wanted a root canal I think, very briefly, during some of the dialogue and questing.

 

But FO3 was a success in spite of all that. And I think I know why.

 

The majority of people who bought FO3 had never played FO2 or FO1. Not only that, but they wouldn't have liked those games anyway. What they wanted, was a first/third person shooter sandbox game. And that's exactly what they got. It had a weird setiing that maybe clicked with them too. 1950's sense of morality vs the edgy mass murderer who listens to old songs on the radio while he hacks and slashes and jingles them jinglies

 

Fallout 1/2 may have had substance, but most consumers probably don't care about that. Since when has the average person cared about art? Most don't. Any attempt at art is a waste, publishers have shown. FO 1/2 were also too tactical, that doesn't appear to be something the average console consumer wants. So it's probably better Bethesda made it easy to max your attributes and easily get more ammo than you could ever need.

 

And the gunplay was... different enough. I mean, I can admit it's satisfying to kill things in FO3, even if most of the guns felt like cheap air pistols. Or that VATS and other mechanisms made it all feel a little awkward.

[Mature themes]

An immature theme would be something which:

 

-Blindly throws stereotypes around

-Does not dwell on any single topic too long

-Cheep thrills

-Smoke and mirror-style writing, action, and gameplay

-Gratuitous story-telling (the protagonist gets everything he wants, is always right, etc)

-Censors things from the audience that the author thinks is 'inappropriate'; thinking the audience cannot handle that discussion/material

-There's a moral to the story, it's the author's moral. You're going to sit down and listen to it.

-Characters are vehicles for a plot or a plot is just a way to get characters into gratuitous situations (in essence, the plot or the characters service only the audience and are not faithful to any kind of story or theme)

-Camera-zooms on the tight backends of characters while they talk

 

Basically, Mass Effect 2.

 

So basically, by mature themes, we mean, the opposite of everything I just wrote.

[How "retro" should the mechanics of PE be?]

It costs less than the NWN2 engine because NWN2's engine isn't strictly isometric in nature.

 

And the marketing "does not take care of itself."

 

If Obsidian is telling the truth, it will use all $4M to make this game.

 

You cannot run a business and make 0 profit.

 

In order to make profit with a product, you MUST market it. It does not market itself. That kind of thinking brought ruin to many a great company, indeed.

 

R.I.P Troika

[Kiting enemies or "How not to do AI"]

Kiting is what happens where you design AI to ONLY attack targets. Basically, they have one priority: to try and kill you.

 

When AI is designed in this way, they do not "know" how to disengage, switch targets, run away or use advanced tactics to counter your attempts to kite.

 

Kiting specifically can only happen when you have an attack with sufficient range and you can perform this attack in tandem with walking away from your opponent, either while using a ranged weapon like a bow, or while swinging a melee weapon and walking backwards (with enough reach that your opponent cannot counter attack). Kiting happens A LOT in games where movement speed differences can be large, or can be created to be large using spells that slow or hasten movement.

 

But really, kiting is the really the lack of AI, because 'intelligent' things quickly realize they aren't going anywhere by letting someone kite them. In any online game where you can kite intelligent human players, they tend to take cover and force a situation, retreat, or simply try to preserve their life against an unbeatable foe. All of these responses should be programmed into a game where kiting might be a possible strategy. At the very least, you would hope enemies would have a "survival instinct" of some kind which would imply their animal-intelligence. Not that I personally like it when all my foes cower and run in fear when I fight them - that's usually boring - but they should be more intelligent than an animal with rabies (who have suffered the degeneration of their ****ing brain).

[Two-handed weapons attack speed]

The only issue I have is that I think people enjoy the difference between fast and slow weapons. It can be fun to make a character who swings weapons ridiculously quickly or to have one that swings them ridiculously slowly.

 

We're dealing with magic, potentially. Perhaps all 'normal' two handed weapons could have smiliar base attack spee, but magical ones should permit faster or slower ones.

[How "retro" should the mechanics of PE be?]

A mechanic's age has little to do with its value.

 

Games should be designed well.

 

Most of IE's RPG mechanics are designed well, but obviously not all of them. But they're better than WOW/EQ-inspired crap we get today (aka Kingdom of Amalur or DAO).

 

Having a "top-down" view suddenly does not make your game retro. RTS cameras are such that they enable a certain kind of gameplay. The same should be said about an RPG.

 

DA2 did not have a tactical top-down view and suffered for it (how hard is it to use radial AOE spells while staring straight on at your targets? It sucks). But then again, it wasn't even designed to be a tactical game (only a few vestigial elements remain), so clearly it didn't even really need the tactical view.

 

PE, should hopefully, be very tactical. This lends itself to many kinds of mechanics and systems which are "retro" because "modern" games utilize regenerating health and idiot-proof half-baked systems that serve only to make "awesome happen".

 

Can you create new systems and camera angles and whatnot to make a tactical game? Yes! But Obsidian doesn't have the time to re-invent the wheel. Baldur's Gate and Fallout work. This isn't the time for ingenuity - the fans WANT a spiritual successor to BG that IS one. So most of the game's mechanics should be similar to BG. They should be "retro" - but Obsidian has said they are going to make changes/improvements where necessary - but we didn't ask them to make an entirely original or "modern" game here.

 

I do. It's a relic of past generations of gaming that was created that way due to technological and resource constraints. Today, we have engines and resources available to make things 3d fairly easily. Independent game makers and studios can produce 3d games with far fewer resources than they would have needed in 1999. It's not nearly as cost-prohibitive, and is generally better received by the public, so that is the direction most games go.

 

You backed the wrong proejct, I'm afraid.

 

I really don't understand the attitude of "It's not 1999." I've heard this a lot lately. You're correct that it isn't 1999, but to imply that things created back then were... wrong, is what's wrong with this industry. You can pick up a very old game and have a blast with it. Have you played Quake or Doom? How about Deus Ex? Baldur's Gate's a given.

 

Isometric design might have come about due to hardware constraints! But that does NOT make it a bad mechanic or even one we should call "retro". Isometric view enables a special kind of aesthetic, level design, and tactical experience. You've been utterly brainwashed that every game should be this first person or over-the-shoulder statespace simulator. I seriously reccomend you try some older games, back when games were experimenting with systems instead of copying each other.

 

Also, retro for me is 1970 or 1980. Maybe I'm showing my age, but 1999 wasn't that long ago. I played a lot of amazing games in 1996 or 1992. Even 1989. Retro for me is pong, blips and bloops. Not Baldur's Gate or Isometrometry.

 

It was triple A budget for a -PC- game in 2006. Since we're talking about a title that will require fewer resources/people to create than modern games, more in line with the production costs of nwn2 in 2006, I think that is a fair comparison to make.

 

My question to those of you voting for locked, isometric 2D graphics as opposed to 3D with the ability to rotate the camera is, why? Why would you prefer a dated, less functional viewpoint to a more modern one?

 

Bear in mind that this discussion assumes that the quality of the gameplay and storyline is mutually exclusive from the graphical viewpoint. It's assumed that we CAN have both a good looking game, and a game that features the gameplay and storylines that we're here supporting the development of. Unless, of course, someone has a compelling argument as to why it cannot be done.

 

Actually, I'm sure with marketing and licensing costs, the budget for NWN2 was much higher than 6m. Even if it is, that's 2006. According to you, 1999 is OLD. 2006 was 6 years ago, 1999 was 7 years before that. You're saying that 6 years isn't a long time? That 6m is a reasonable figure for a NWN2-esque title being developed? Get some consistent belief system here - is 13 years a long time? But 6 years is not a long time? That's half the distance of a 'long time' - 6 million won't cut it. Costs have risen dramatically.

 

Thanks to thoughts like the ones you're expressing. That a game can't be 'good' unless it's 'cutting edge'. Game costs have risen dramatically - just for some stupid eyecandy. I want a fun game, I don't care if it's pretty or not.

 

Well guess what, you can't even have 'call of duty esque' graphics for 4 million dollars let alone six. Obsidian doesn't even have six by the way, so even if what you're saying is possible, they just can't come up with 33% more budget out of thin air. Get a grip!

 

Developing NWN2 in 2012 would probably cost between 12 million and 20 million dollars, minus marketing. And NWN2 isn't even worth copying. It took MotB for Obsidian to give us a campaign even worth caring about. I'd rather they emulate a good game, like one of the IE games, than emulate a game which was barely mediocre at release.

 

From what little we've seen, PE looks aesthetically pleasing enough. What's so atrocious about 'isometric gameplay'? Why do you not like it? If you don't like it, why did you back this project? I'm sincerely confused. You should ask for a refund.

[Best way to learn programming?]

My other suggestion is - although it is perhaps not immediately useful, you could probably interest someone in programming by introducing them to Linux/Unix. Showing them they can customize their own operating system or see the inner-workings of one, I think will be a strong appeal... given how terrible Windows 8 is. Definitely a good skill to have no matter your profession - knowing operating systems well.

[Two-handed weapons attack speed]

It entirely depends on the weapon. Katana and Longswords can be very light/flexible and move swiftly through the air. People practice swinging these things to be lightning-quick, they aren't like giant sledges.

 

I agree to there being weighty two-handed weapons, but if you want to argue some level of realism, people in real life would not use two-handed weapons that were slow. Even spears are extremely light and quick to use in combat.

[Dragon Age: Origins]

DA:O was good because it was different. Had it own place, different from AD&D. But then DA2 happened and turned promising game into arcade linear jRPG slasher with primitive dialogues, animu emo characters and useless stats. The success of DA:O was ruined.

 

But... DA:O wasn't different at all.

 

-Heavily WOW/EQ inspired, from the combat to the currency and aesthetic.

-Ancient evil has awakened

-Rogue, Mage, Warrior (that's it)

 

I can't even say it took much from BG/BG2, which would have been the "good derivativeness".

 

Also, Diablo is not a rogue-like, though it has rogue-like elements (randomization and dungeon crawling). That doesn't mean it isn't a roleplaying game - it's just very light on the roleplaying. Diablo-inspired titles, like Titan Quest or PoE, have bigger roleplaying elements, such as faction-interaction. The genre is worth examining I think. There are some neat elements that would work well with an IE-inspired RPG (in terms of itemization, randomization, and replayability).

[Epic items in PE world]

I think "epic" items are satisfying when:

 

They're ridiculously overpowered

They're ridiculously niche

They're ridciulously unusual

 

Obviously, the first one carries its problems - it might trivialize the game. But I think it's fine, if said weapon is difficult to wield due to requirements, super rare or difficult to create, or comes with a nasty downside (like a curse or something).

 

The second one is great, especially if you want some low-level 'epic' items. You know, an epic staff that probably sucks compared to a rare high level staff of some kind, but maybe carries a special stat that's hard to acquire (like, a low level epic staff could make fireballs explode on contact, giving them a small area of effect on collision).

 

The third case is also great. Finding an item that's epic that serves some unusual purpose like making your spellcaster much more adept at melee fighting. Causes you to rethink maybe how you'll develop one of your party members or build your class.

[Kiting enemies or "How not to do AI"]

I agree, there should be systems in place that make enemies capable of "remembering" things. If, well, Obsidian is expecting players to run/stealth/hide/disengage from combat when it turns sour. It's stupid when enemies walk back to the original positions in the zone and pretend like nothing happened. There should be systems in place so that enemies can alert their friends or pass on information, or at least remember, that yes, there is an arrow in their knee.

[Anti-Dragon Age 2?]

Finally finished my DA2 replay-through. But ugh, three-hundred clips of <1 minute each I've got to sort through now and make into a video somehow. Gonna be a while.

[Kiting enemies or "How not to do AI"]

Kiting implies there is no AI. That your enemies only know how to be offensive and run toward you.

 

A good AI system would let AI be adaptable. They might behave that way, until you start trying other tactics. Like kiting? I think good AI would allow enemies to recognize they're being kited and either find cover, use a special ability, switch targets, or go in the opposite direction, forcing you to move towards them.

[Relationship/Romance Thread IV]

I think romances are expensive to develop well. You just can't slap one together and call it a day.

 

This is inherently what is wrong with romances. Not everyone wants them. And since they are so time consuming to create, they reduce the possible complexity of a companion's relationship. You're either romancing them, or you're not - this is what it boils down to, usually. And this lack of complexity tends to hurt the game, even if some players rather enjoy romance.

 

You can't just say to non-romancers, "Just don't romance." Because it usually means they're missing a big chunk of dialogue or interactivity as a result. This is usually fine - choices SHOULD often bring us down paths which have exclusive content, otherwise, there's little point to a choice you make, but in the case of romances, they are such deep and expensive choices, that they reduce the number of choices and outcomes that would otherwise exist, that would otherwise appeal to all players of the game.

 

If we can mod this game.

If this game is good.

Then people will make romance mods.

This goes without saying.

Everybody will win if Obsidian just focuses on making a good game and romancers just deal with waiting a few months after release before they can wank off to some elf.

[Ishar's Recruit/Dismiss]

I don't think "player agency" means that "the player shalt be omnipotent" - because that's dumb. Bad things should be possible outcomes to actions. If we don't allow such things to happen without player consent, suddenly, we no longer have a game. Player agency has more to do with whether the game we're creating will be tunnel-vision corridors-with-guns or VTMB.

 

That said, I agree - this feels like a silly addition. People murdering each other? Why would you even want to remove someone from your party? Why would you even take a vote? You could just say, "Okay **** this." And then maybe people from your party who are loyal would follow you. But it seems ridiculous that companion characters would start murdering everyone because you couldn't ask them to leave the party.

[Relationship/Romance Thread IV]

I tried modding BG2 multiple times. I tried all the crappy romance mods, which I was looking forward to at the time, since I wanted to have some different options for another playthrough.

 

I made the mistake of installing Saerlith and having her join my party. Wasting my time leveling her.

 

I think Saerlith should be studied. Classic example of horrible writing and design.

[Relationship/Romance Thread IV]

Umm, Osvir, you're describing "well adapted Western romanticized and idealized love" - I think you can be in love/love someone without any of those things being involved.

[Relationship/Romance Thread IV]

If at least 50% of the characters you can get in your party aren't romanceable I will be sorely disappointed. I also expect all females to be wearing tight clothing. No exceptions. We're making art here, people! And there better be at least 2 bisexual men. Bisexuality is underpresented in games. As are hermaphrodites. I expect at least one of those.

[No dumb memes]

The only references I'd like to see would be to other IE games, but they'd have to be pretty indirect/sneaky references, given that Obsidian doesn't own the rights to do any direct references (like Drizzt showing up and asking for his stuff again or something ).

 

Given Brian Fargo's niceties, maybe we could have a Wasteland I or Wasteland II direct reference hidden in the game though.

[Relationship/Romance Thread IV]

Here are some great ideas

 

-A terrorist jesus character (you know, they heal the sick and the lame, but kill innocent people in the name of justice) that gets mad at you if you tell him you're not gay / don't love him too

-A cute huggable shy elf who's naive, she wants to do something too

-Oh I love this idea - how about, you kill this woman's husband. And she doesn't really hate you for it. But she kinda does. And she still kinda thinks about her husband, but you fall in love anyway!

-Oh, oh and what about this? A serious dark elf. He was a slave though. So he has some emotional/sexuality issues you need to go through together before you're happy. He hates magic too, but he'll love you even if you're a mage, if you accept him.

-She's really slutty and a whore - but she's cool. And like... kind of manly at times. But she's really sweet, if secretive. Umm, she doesn't really trust you either. But it's okay, she's sexy.

[No dumb memes]

Borderlands 2 was praised for its writing though. C'mon guys. Can't we have just one minecraft meme? Or how about one reaction image meme? Nobody will notice! Well, some will, and they'll laugh. Totally worth it.

[South Park delayed?]

They should already probably have a back-up plan.