anubite

My entire team would probably consist of very unusual characters - hopefully. And by that, I mean that, I hope Obsidian will allow some degree of flexibility in character development. Barbarian mage-tank - Lots of tough brawn to soak up damage, stands in the front of the fray, uses weapons defensively (parry dagger/sword + shield). Casts wild spells from his location in the fray. These spells are probably very chaotic and perhaps have random supportive effects, or are also harmful, could be a blood-mage (uses life to cast spells) and the spells he uses are boosted by his high strength (or synergize with it). Ranger-reaver - Survivalist/hunter who attacks quickly/wildly with a hatchets, either by throwing them as enemies approach, or by dual/single wielding them in close range. Has good accuracy, good evasion/dodge rate, decent damage potential, a semi-tank. An all-around character who is both ranged/melee and light-support, setting/disarming traps. May have a wolf-pet. Warrior anti-magic/witch hunter - A superstitious tribal warrior who hates magic? Never casts spells. Focuses on countering magical attackers and protecting the party from them. High life, medium damage, probably uses a staff as a physical weapon (and not a supplemental magical conduit). Probably uses light/medium armor and not plate/chain. Doesn't really focus on parrying attacks or defending against fighters, since he's entirely zealous about fighting mages/witches/similar-type foes. Fast and brutal. Druid - Sling/bow user. Focused on weapon damage with their sling/bow, but also uses supportive spells and has a pet of some kind. Largest contribution is auras/buffs. Monk - Unarmed fighter, but focused on providing support through buffs/auras or debuffs/stuns/incapacitations. Probably a few more characters, but I'd focus on doing weird things like a mage that focuses on sword damage or a warrior that focuses on using spells. It's really hard to say though, even knowing what classes will be available. We have no idea what possive active skills there will be for each class.

I think it's a misconception to assign a role to a rogue. A rogue should be capable of many potential roles and excel at any of them very well, but only when they're specialized. I think the key to making good classes is to allow a breadth of specialization available to them. Potential roles (but not all encompassing, a combination of 1-3 of these roles should be the maximum possible roles a single rogue-player can encompass): DPS - Rogues should be good at high burst damage or high consistent damage. Usually in the forms of backstabbing or dual-wielding weapons. Distraction - Rogues should be potentially good at melee combat. Parries, blocks, dodges. They should be able to fill the role of an off-tank or someone who can fight toe-to-toe with warriors and melee fighters by avoiding or indirectly mitigating damage (armor should not be a significant factor for a rogue, beyond its weight and flexibility). Utility - Rogues should be able to unlock or disarm or untrap things or opponents. They should be able to detect the presence of nearby enemies or dangers. Stealth - Rogues should be able to move silently and avoid danger by not provoking it. Crime - Rogues should be able to lie, cheat, steal, bribe, and/or charm NPCs. Illusive - Rogues should be good at maintaining or detecting illusions. Shadow - Rogues should excel at blending in or utilizing shadows. Agile - Rogues should have low reaction times and be quick on their feet. 'Average' - Rogues should not stand out from the crowd. 'Cutthroat' - Rogues should be physical. They may have scars, tattoos, piercings, unusual religious beliefs (or lack thereof), or have a 'loose' personality. Chemist - Rogues should be capable of understanding or using poisons, toxins, venoms. Dead Eye - Rogues should be good with a bow, but not like a hunter. I guess the difference would be rogues are good with short ranged weapons like short bows, crossbows, or flintlocks. They may be skilled hunters, but are less likely to be as skilled as a "Ranger" archetype. Shields - Rogues should be adept at light, small shields/bucklers and using them not only for blocking, but also deflecting blows. Also good at shield bashing. Illicit - Uses 'unconventional' magicks. Likely less skilled at magic than your standard "mage" but still capable of utiliizing a unique array of spells from supportive to offensive. Illusion-based, weapon-based, or projectile-based magic makes the most sense (rogues would probably not what to use magic that is loud and flashy). And I'm sure there are many more qualities a single given rogue could encompass. But the thing I hope Obsidian does - is it gives us a wide array of passive and active skills to choose from, such that we can develop rogues in a multitude of ways. The role they play in and out of combat should be integral for most groups, and should be able to fulfill the role of "glass cannon weapon melee damage" character or "sturdy, tanky evasion/block-based chaaracter" or "supportive, medium/short ranged attacker with utility". The worst thing they could do is narrowly define the rogue as an invisible, frail backstabbin' scumbag, like many WOW-inspired RPGs of late tend to do. I mean, there are a wide number of rogue-characters one could consider. There's the "typical" rogue, who wears green/brown, carries a dagger and backstabs people - but then there's the suave nobleman who duels with a flintlock pistol, who couldn't swing a dagger for anything - and then there's the ex-student, who was going to be a royal advisor or accountant or something, who knows a bit of magic, and uses it to blend into the shadows at night, distract guards, and unlock doors to break into peoples' homes and rob them.

And if anything I've learned that most professors suck teaching programming. For instance, this is what I learned from my Discrete Math professor: int somefunction (int i){ if (this) { do this return that } else { do this2 return that2 } } This is a common mistake I think in programming - sure it looks elegant to have two return statements in a function sometimes, but in practice - this kind of thing compounds quickly into a nightmare to try and figure out (imagine 20 if else statements and thus 20 return statements). It's infinitely better to have one return per function and change a return value based on a conditional. It's stuff like this, crucial stuff that probably saves a company thousands of dollars per year, that is never mentioned or discussed by most professors. Instead, a professor might harp on the difference between two vocabulary words you never mention in passing to your peers 10 years later because technology has already changed anyway. I guess the point I want to really make is that technology is the least timeless academic subject there is. It's always on the move. There's no point in talking too much theory, past a certain point, because it's absolutely invalidated in less than five or ten years. Or at least, if there's theory we need to talk about, it's the theory of design - or the theory of timeless architecture - stuff that won't change by the time you've graduated. The best way to learn how to make games is simply to make games and program. To do so to a professional capacity, you will inevitably need a strong educational background (games are cutting edge - they need to be fast, responsive, almost like you're writing a program to calculate some quantum number), but... I mean, again, professors don't expect you to know things, but they kind of do. There are expectations that you can figure things out on your own. And it's true - one programming language is all you need to understand how to learn the rest on your own. A lot of the programming assignments I've received, had precious little to do with some expensive book they make you purchase, or some hour-long lecture, and were more about you just /doing it/ and figuring out how it all works, yourself.

I'm not sure what you're implying. If Volourn is allowed to have as many posts as he does, I highly doubt there's a limit to how trolly somebody can be on these forums.

Really, the difference between KOTOR1 and DA2 is the difference between communism and capitalism. Are you a communist? You probably think DA2 is a bad game. Are you a capitalist? **** yeah, enjoy the most capitalistic game ever. ****ing commies ruining the gaming scene, getting upset that DA2 isn't "fair" or something. They're soooo entitled. I think I can see where Volorun is coming from with this. I hope he'll invite me to the meeting tonight.

Agreed. Dragon Age 2 is a much, much better game but because people had completely wrong expectations they ended up getting convinced it was a bad game. Oh the irony. I just got done with a huge boss battle with a guy who was holding a hostage. I almost got lost in the cave he was in.

After having played Dragon Age 2 some more, I have to say, it is in fact a much better game than KOTOR1 or BG1. I mean... Anders. Oh god. He's so adorably funny! He had a pet cat but then he lost it :( it made me so sad to hear sir pounce a lot was taken away! Oh but he was so nice helping all the poor people in Kirkwall healing them. Even though I never saw him help or heal the poor or sick again, it convinced me that Anders was such a dreamy, gold-hearted young man. And then when I learned he had suffered with Justice in him all this time? And that all of Ander's actions were about justice? I felt all sad when I turned him down and made him mad! It just adds volumes of thought to his action to mercilessly slaughter hundreds of innocent people by secretly rigging a holy sanctum with a magical bomb though. I mean, compare Anders to Carth! LOL THere's no comparison. Who would want a straight-faced yet snarky military man on a space-fairing journey? Anders would have made that game ten thousand times more funny and gripping. And then there's Isabella. Who wouldn't want Isabella in their game? Look at Bastila - she's a 2d cardboard cutout. Isabella at least isn't afraid to hide the fact she's a loose party girl. The whole game of KOTOR1 is spent getting Bastila to stop being such a stuck up bitch! Oh, she's such a more shallow character than Isabella. She's just no fun either. Then there's Aveline. Oh god she's written so well. I mean your character doesn't really talk to her much for the first year they're in service to the mercenary guy, and I guess she's busy with her job to talk to you - but she's soooo deep and complex. I mean, she asks other guards to watch you for her, even though she knows you'll be doing illegal stuff to get out of that debt-servitude? It was fascinating for her to comment off-handedly that she was proxy-stalking me. Oh but it was alright 'cause she explained that we're family and stuff after I helped her with that fetch quest. Family's got to stick together! I guess it was a good thing I stabbed her husband through the heart anyway. Such deep drama, who would want somebody like that cat-woman-sith-jedi, whatever her name is - all I remember is that she was bisexual (it's funny but it's so much harder to remember the sexualities of all the DA2 characters because they're wrapped up in their complex personalities and they try really hard to hide what kind of things they like to bone!!!) and stupid and I never really had her in my party once but I've been really enjoying Aveline. Oh and there's Fenris. Who would want an old bumpkin like Jolee Bindo in their party? He's soooo old and he talks about nothing and he's boring to listen to but Fenris - oh his story makes me cross my legs real tight and bite on my cheek because it's sooo sad :( he's an escaped magical slave warrior who's also very hot. He never gets over himself which is soooo believable and realistic. And then there's Cullen. I don't think I need to even try to discuss him. Overall, the cast of KOTOR is just... stupid! I mean, they're Star Wars characters. They could never compete with some deep, home-grown postmodern medieval characters dealing with their issues of bdsm or stds. And let's not talk about the gameplay difference! Dragon Age 2 has AWESOME combat, first of all - it has waves. Secondly, it has a WIDE array of enemies. There are bandits, rogues, brigands, cutthroats, smugglers, contrabanders, transgressors, highwaymen, cutpurses, fences, thugs, swashbucklers, slavers, thieves, crooks, criminals, pirates, mercenaries, kidnappers, hostage-takers, human-trafficers, assassins, murderers, conmen, impersonators, burglars, robbers, larcenists, pickpockets, swindlers and spiders! And when you fight the non-spider rogue elementsin the game, they have a wide array of abilities. Some climb down from walls, some rappel off buildings, some run up from stairwells, and sometimes, they even appear out of thin air! Occasionally a big bad guy will stand around and shout for his allies to help him! And when his health gets low? He'll drink a potion! It's incredibly gripping real time with pause combat that really forces you to put your thinking cap on when you enter any fight. You have to deal with WAVES of enemies in every fight, which super complicates your strategy! KOTOR1 is so flat. I mean, there are lots of aliens and stuff to fight but it's the same thing over and over and it's slow-paced and it's dumb and it's round-based so the numbers don't make sense - you don't even really see the big numbers like you do in WOW or SWTOR so it's not even the least bit fun... But the best part about DA2 is the exploration. KOTOR1 just has a bunch of smelly planets - who cares about exploring dumb, half-deserted planets? DA2 is chok-full of caves, sandy coves and brothel rooms for you to explore, killing spiders, slavers, bandits, rogues, brigands, thieves and mercenaries! I was so wrong about this game!!!

I thought crafting was a dumb addition during the kickstarter - crafting doesn't feel like it fits cRPGs at all. It just reminds me of WOW? Any recent RPG that has had crafting has just struck me as a, "Oh, they're pandering to WOW players." moment. Maybe I'm wrong about that - but crafting tends to be shallow in most RPGs, because they're afraid to let some of the best items be craftable, and also because, once you've crafted that item you want from the profession, you're practically done with said profession. The only professions that are "useful" are the ones with consumables attached, but those have limited value to me. I think crafting could be done well in theory, but it doesn't strike me as a feature that inherently has much depth or finesse. So it was an odd stretch goal for the kickstarter. If anything, don't do crafting like NWN2. I liked that recipes were well hidden and that crafting was kind of unintuitive. But that was it - there's nothing fun about having to go onto the internet to look up all the bizarre recipes, there's nothing fun about taking a dagger mold and turning it into a +3 dagger of frost, there's nothing fun about buying iron bars from a vendor, only to realize they only have 9 of them and you need 10 to make the dumb dagger. Now you have to lug around all those iron bars until you can find a stupid vendor with one more, and then you need to walk aaaaall the way back to the blacksmithing area to craft. Crafting like that just felt like a hassle even if it was balanced. It wasn't fun or deep at all.

Perhaps my distaste of programming courses stems from the fact I grew up during the transition. I mean, took HTML courses in high school when the curriculum was just developing. They instilled in me a contempt for educators of technology courses - because the curriculum was oversimplified in many cases, or irrelevant in others (I recall learning a bunch of networking nonsense, and useless vocabulary terms instead of the meat and potatoes of html). I did concede you can't get away without education, but programming, unlike some fields it seems to me, requires that you be actively engaging with the material far before you even decide to go get a degree in it. Not that educators expect you to already know programming when you start courses, but the difficulty of said courses seem to expect it. I guess I shouldn't generalize my experiences, though I personally doubt they differ much across the globe.

I don't have a tablet nor do I want to be forced to purchase one to run a PC. The tablet doesn't enhance my experience. It simply makes my games harder to play, my productivity reduced... there's a ****ing reason I'm using a desktop and not a tablet right now. Keyboard and mouse > touch screen. Claustrophobic start touch-screen thing < Normal desktop I /hate/ tablets. If I want one, I'll get one. Yet this is going to be forced down my throat. It won't be long until operating systems are no different from microwaves - appliances for the computer illiterate. Windows 8 is designed for a generation of children who have grown up only using smart phones. It's why experienced computer users are now being forced to move to Linux. Or will be, if my predictions are correct. Maybe that's fine for you. Maybe you're their target audience. They're missing me by a wide mile though.

The post is 2010. Blizzard was still reasonably respectable back then. I don't even think SC2 was out yet.

Wouldn't put it past me. If FOIV doesn't have motocrycles, FOV will. And if FOIV doesn't have multiplayer of some kind, I will be shocked, frankly. FOIV is ripe material for someone over at bethesda to go, "Hey, what if we make a game to challenge call of duty with?!" They're crazy enough to think they could pull it off. Zenimax is already gearing up to challenge WOW, so don't put it past them.

I'm trying to remember, but I swear there's a RPG - maybe it's a jRPG - where you get a hideous, fat female party member. And over the course of the story, you can change her into an 'attractive model-type'. Which I think is a pretty fun thing in theory - you'd have this character you could antagonize about their weight and appearence, only for them to change towards the end of the story and hate you for it. But at the same time, it does feel kind of creepy/weird.

Considering that Lucas is still a 'creative consultant' for the series, I doubt we will see any major reform or positive movement for the series. We'll see Lucas' brand of 'wacky childish fun' (aka Jarjar) and campy nonsense continue to ruin the series. Only now, it'll be justifiable to turn the next Star Wars movie into a musical. Granted, Disney at least has done some decently 'mature' kids movies in the past, but Lucas has this backwards idea of what it means to appeal to a young audience and he's been trying to change Star Wars to fit some kind of crazy agenda he has. I don't think Disney will change Star Wars direction for it to matter to us. Probably the biggest change will be a shift in the video game department - probably less war in Star Wars. We'll see more spinoff nonsense like Angry Birds just released. Maybe if we're lucky, in twenty years, Kingdom Hearts 20 will feature Darth Vader as a boss.

XP is already defunct if you're using programs that 'require' multi-threading. I'll be sticking with W7 until it is no longer feasible. Windows 8 is making the experience I like (desktop OS) into a tablet experience. I don't like where this is heading at all. I will probably be switching to Linux over the next few years, especially if Valve (and by extension, Kickstarter and Indie organizations) is successful in 'igniting' Linux gaming.

There aren't many 'freemium' RPGs to look at. I only know of LOTR and EQ2 - the rest are either pure F2P by design or pure subscriber based. I agree BioWare only has a narrow view to work from, but I'd also like to point out that TF2 and LOL, whatever you think of those games, as well as EVE online, have equally successful models that don't make death "exclusive" to subscribers (that certainly does soudn like a silly boon ) and are reasonably unrestrictive in their F2P terms. You can play EVE online for free by contributing in-game currency towards an in-game item which redeems subscribtpion time - which has shown to be very effective at curbing 'chinese farmers'. Although SWTOR may be relaxed in comparison, I think the main draw of SWTOR is its "linear single player story", which you get for free anyway. The rest of the features they're selling seem to be for the more "hardcore" crowd, whcih strikes me as odd and ineffective. SWTOR isn't in a good position to be a F2P game - it clearly wasn't intended to be. Nobody designed it with that kind of flexibility in mind (or anything in mind, which is the sad part). But I don't think people are going to jump onboard as a subscriber to PVP multiple times a week (not with a 1-2 second delay for abilities) after they've tried it once.

We have enough well choreographed linear game stories and characters. I'd much rather have a story which is sufficiently adaptable to a wide array of player customization and choice. The fact you can remember BG2 after all these years should be enough to you that the game's story is impactful and effective and that your character was meaningful enough. I don't know about you but I've played many games. Most just become a blur after a short while. And it's really not that much fun to play/spectate the same story over and over again.

If Bethesda were smart, it would at least hire some writers who can make dialogue which isn't painful to hear over and over (mudcrabs, arrows in knees, et cetera). But knowing Bethesda, we'll get an even more streamlined Fallout for FOIV. If we're INCREDIBLY lucky, we'll get Obsidian on FOIV's expansion. But you can be sure FOIV will have vampires, fart jokes, absolutely insane logical paradoxes, pointless explosions, idiotic conflict resolutions, and suspension-of-disbelief-breaking nuclear reactions just like the last game.

"Healthy body image" is a relative concept. Someone who's 300 lbs overweight could be perfectly health in theory. The concept of being overweight is one of averages and statistics. What matters in the end is your heart rate, your blood pressure, the stress your body is under, and your general overall hapiness with yourself and your body. If you're overweight and your body is biologically fine with that weight - and you don't mind the way you look and feel physically, then what's the problem? You're healthy. The key term is healthy - which implies a 'successful adaptation to the environment'. Someone who is as skinny as a rail could be completely healthy too. So, yes, I'd like to see, at least if not in PE, then in an 'ideal RPG or fantasy setting', a wide varety of bodytypes. I'd like to see characters that are healthy when we might think they are very unhealthy, and characters who seem very healthy, but just aren't at all. Such contrasts are interesting and inviting. Too often, creators of these things latch onto familiar concepts and ideas - mass media has made us ready to accept anorexia, but not obesity. Why? Exploring such a thing can be interesting. But having a "happy well-adjusted fat man" as a character, let alone as a romanceable character, just for the sake of having a fat well-adjusted guy, is silly and self-defeating. And it's what's grating about most PC threads or wants. We don't want "political correctness" - we want actual correctness. We want things that emulate life as it truly is, if not directly, then in an indrect, artsy way.

I like the careful thought here and agree with the concerns laid out. It has always bothered me that it is 'mandatory' to upgrade to a superior armor type in most RPGs. Why can't I wear some concept/aesthetically pleasing leather armor? Usually, if one can upgrade to chain/medium armor from leather, they will. I think the solution to this dilemma is to go with what you've laid out, to some degree. In order to make all character concepts viable though - just include some very powerful, unique, niche low-tier armor in the game. Let's say raw hide is tier 0 basic starting 'leather armor' for a Ranger. Let's say Rangers are 'expected' to upgrade to chain by the end-game. Let's agree there are some players who want to play a leather-armor, raw-hide Ranger in the 'end-game'. The solution is to include special, powerful leather armor that has different bonuses on it. Unique bonuses. You can purchase (or preferably, find) "Rhino Raw Hide Armor" - a very rare kind of armor a special boss drops, hidden vendor, or something. This "Rhino Raw Hide Armor" is tier 0 leather armor - it has a low base damage reduction. BUT, this Rhino Hide armor is magically enchanted and causes the arrows you fire while wielding it, to be enchanted with a special debuff. The armor also provides an increase to the Ranger's strength and charisma as well, making this item very peculiar. You could wear it instead of chain, giving up defense, and exchange, you would have added utility/support with the debuff on your arrows, and you would be able to exploit the bonuses CHA/STR offer for a ranger (whatever those unique bonuses/synergies might be). Path of Exile does this particuarly well. There are very low level items in the game that offer significantly inferior base defense or weapon damage, but provide unique supporting effects. A staff which makes your burn debuff last twice as long, a sword exceptionally good at parrying attacks, a super fast machine-gun bow - that does pitiful damage. Each of these weapons are barely as effective or significantly less so than weapons generally found at a high level, but provide such unique effects that players can exploit these items if they wish to, and can create unique characters from them.

When a party member dies. Please don't make me re-equip all of their items by hand. It's fine if my companions drop all their stuff when they die, I mean - what if there's permadeath in PE to some extent? This could happen in BG/BG2, where you might get a petrified party member and not have any means to un-petrify them, at least not right away... So yeah. Party members should drop their stuff, but it shouldn't require a manual re-acquire when I resurrect said dead fellow. Having an auto-requip mechanic would be great. I know it's a minor nitpick, but this seems like one of the obviously obnoxious design flaws in BG.

There are lots of mod groups on the internet. Join one. I did some PAWN scripting (very C-like scripting language) - when you goof around with how a server interacts with a game client, you pretty much get the basics of everything from bitshifting to recursion. And then you're pretty much set to teach yourself a major language. Of course, the alternative is to take classes at a university in some capacity - but I personally don't recommend it. University courses are dry and boring, they'll make you lose interest in coding. They're supplemental at best - a means to get a degree and nothing more. You learn a lot more just experimenting and writing programs, after a certain point. WC3 is an excellent place to start for a young kid I think. It has a friendly, only slightly unintuitive game editor. It supports JASS and GUI scripting, so there's a lot of room to grow. Games like DotA have become an international success and sprung from the editor. You can make a map and test it with random people on the internet on the fly. Lets you build up a theory of game design and a theory of coding/scripting. Granted, it's very old and probably less flexible than Game Maker, but I think it would be more inviting for somebody young, and the added bonus of testing your games with a live audience seems far greater. And I'm not saying you shouldn't get an academic background, just that, you shouldn't /learn/ programming via an institution. Programming is academic, but it is very hands-on. The best way to learn to program is to program. But - programmers generally... are generalists. They can program, which is a useful skill, but the true purpose of a programmer is to solve problems that are highly logical or mathematical in nature. That requires a good education. Game design requires some of the most advanced technology and mathematics we have available to humankind. Of course you'll want to further your education - I don't think anyone is suggesting someone become a bum, to make video games. Programming is the way to go though. Even if you eventually decide you don't like programming, if you do want to make video games, whether you're an artist, a writer, the sound guy, etc., working on something highly technological like a video game requires strong computer literacy. Really, the motivation of making a game is a great academic pursuit and it's something existing educational environments should utilize. All the skills you could learn in the pursuit of making a video game are so general and integral to a lot of other jobs in society, there's no reason not to get an education while pursuing such a career, even if that person decides they want to do something else, later on. But, it's important to emphasize that... generally, or at least, from the people I've met, programmers are industrious and pro-active - by the the time they finally get some piece of paper, they've programmed many things on their own initiative.

I do agree that BioWare's past games, even Jade Empire, NWN1 and DA:O - are all 'competent' even if my taste for them varies at a personal level. I can't say they exactly fail at what they set out to do. But in those three games, BioWare was in total control of its operations and they had plenty of time to carefully make the game. Although they have been given more time for DA3, I suspect they have even less breathing room and autonomy. Publishers have a history of putting choke holds on their sla- *cough* subsidiaries. A recent story about Kaos studios (http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/1/3560318/homefront-kaos-studios-thq) is just one of many anecdotal tales of this happening. BioWare has made enough bad decisions that I have a sneaking suspicion that with the Doctors leaving the company, BioWare has lost any sense of control over their establishment. Of course, I can't confirm such a thing, but at this stage, I'm sure EA's brilliant business team is rapidly becoming convinced it should nanny the company.

When I was following the SWTOR fiasco, the most densely populated server had <30 alliance players above level 50 in /who at any given moment; the queue for PVP was several hours. That's a ghost town, at least to me. Maybe it's improved since then, but that was enough fo rme to call it a ghost town.

And while we're still on the subjects of crimes against humanity, can anyone, in the entire universe, explain this Of course, I have never played it, but judging from the reviews, and this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrpglqYeQBc&feature=related It may be a more horrifying game than DA2. Can anyone rationalize this game for me? How do you defend this exactly? I guess it's a moot question, since I suppose any of the defenders of DA2 will simply claim they haven't played it, so it's a moot discussion, but to me, it just demonstrates the lack of quality and vision at BioWare.