anubite

Kotor2 was rushed development. I'm amazed they did as much as they did in under a year and produced some great work there in spite of it all. AP was a combination of untapped potential and poor balancing; glitches though? I dunno, I can't think of having experienced any while playing the game twice-through (just the ocassional crash I think, which is annoying, but probably engine-related). They should have found someone to help with their shooting mechanics though, it's tough to compete with the gun game crowd. It's still a great RPG, but it's a shame somebody over there didn't rope in some ex-Deus Ex designers or something. New Vegas? Gamebryo. Seriously, Bethesda making clunky engines is no surprise. Also, if you make an open-world game you pretty much triple the amount of glitches to hunt down. It's not like QA'ing a CoD-inspired hallway game. NWN2? I think this might be the only legitimate complaint against Obsidian. The quality of NWN2 is spotty in places. MOTB is decidedly great, however. I haven't played DS3, but from what I understand, DS2 and DS1 barely stand today as being 'playable' so it was a rather large mistake for Obsidian to take the reigns for what is at best a mediocre ARPG. Stick of Truth? I have absolutely no faith in it, especially since THQ died. This is another thing where Obsidian is out of their comfort zone. "Feast or famine" basically translates to, "We'll do any job anyone is willing to deign us with." Which is a shame - Obsidian is talented, but you don't ask them to make a game they can't make. AP didn't work for the market Sega wanted it to, Stick of Truth has no market, as far as I can tell. I'd say that Obsidian makes great work when they are in their 'realm'. DS3 and AP are outside their realm. Fallout, KOTOR? They know their **** and they get it done right. Publishers just don't have the diversity to offer Obsidian. This is why Kickstarter has the potential to let them shine. Show us that isoRPGs can work again and we'll be back to the golden era of games.

A "relationship" between the player and an NPC is impossible if the NPC cannot interact and respond with the player in a believable way. A lack of good AI and design prevent good interaction. Alyx still stands out as the best iteration of Elizabeth/Ellie/etc I've encountered so far. If developers refuse to invest in AI and design to make a "relationship" work all you've got to work with are cheap heartstring tugging and other emotional exploitation..

Here is what I'd suggest - consistent global rules that are balanced. If the original suggestion is something I misread, fine, whatever, but changing the rules at all based on realism is always a bad decision. If it's such a big deal, just make it a passive skill for archers you can pick at character generation, "You have no glancing shots, your miss and critical strike rate are increased."

I'm pretty sure it's perfectly legal to download a crack that kills the SecuRom? You do own the game, unlike a pirate. You could just do that, plenty of people have modified the executable. I mean, GoG has made most of its DRM-free titles such by actually taking scene releases. I hope I'm not saying anything aginst the forum rules by suggesting it, but I'm not aware of it being a bad practice, if DRM is screwing you over, you have every right to remove that crap.

Have you guys played Fallout New Vegas lately...? What happens when you approach a general-populace NPC and try to talk to him? Does he... A) Introduce himself. B) Say Hello. C) Comment about some inane thing because hey he's not a person he's a vehicle for narrative or exposition. If you picked C, you're right. Most of the time, in Obsidian games, "generic peasant" characters don't even try to pretend that they're not exposition vehicles. This is pretty much nitpicking, but... Why? It's a bit jarring to approach a character and for him to say something totally non-sequitur to a stranger like myself. This is such a small request, and it's probably an extra burden on the writing staff, but... could they just say Hi? Could the expoisition dialog be written a little more natural for those "masses" characters? Guy at the bar: "Hi, how're you? Need somethin'? I'd offer ya a drink, but I don't have any money since the Wall fell." That to me, is an example of short and simple yet natural exposition. Yet, some games would have this same character simply say, "Hey, did ya hear about the Wall falling?" Any steps made to flesh out these lowly unimportant NPC characters are good, worthwhile steps. It's not easy to give life to generic characters you can talk to, but I think a little more effort could be paid to them, if time allows. They are good exposition vehicles, but when you abuse them so... it kind of hurts the experience. It's kind of become a video game trope at this point.

Project Eternity is not about fielding a medieval army. You'll have at most, what, eight, ten characters? If you have eight to ten soldiers on the battlefield, your archers are going to "go legolas". In real life, archers sat en masse behind fortifications or on hills/defensive positions and just rained arrows down on their opponents. They didn't give armies room to "fairly engage" them. Fighting swarms of archers is scarcely a "fun" tactic. It's cheap. But hell, it's effective and safe. That's why they used them and said, "**** honor." Nobody likes dying in melee combat. There is another side of the problem you guys aren't thinking about. If we change the rules for ranged combat for our party members, we have to consider the ramifications of enemies too. Enemies will use bows. If enemy bow users miss signifiantly less than melee... then players will be forced to spend more resources reducing ranged damage than melee damage. A room full of archers is now suddenly a lot more powerful than a room full of swordsmen. Get what I'm saying? This kind of design is problematic to balance. It's better to keep things straight across the board. I wouldn't mind it if the rules were, "Ranged characters cannot crit, but they cannot have glancing blows." But many players enjoy ranged crits, it's probably fun to them. So, no, let's not justify changes to game mechanics based on some skewed idea of reality (archers miss all the time, glancing blows can happen if the arrow head isn't perfect and cracks against armor, or if the attack simply hits an ear. The "chances" of that happening probably aren't THAT high but for the sake of balance they need to be. This isn't about realism, because in reality we didn't have roaming bands of adventurers slinging magic and solving quests for phat loot). In reality, a archer probably one-shot-kills you at fifty paces with an arrow in your spleen. That's not fun, end of story.

The actual truth is that females are very pretty to look at. You can't have a love interest though, because then you're accused of misogyny by the media and um, gamers probably have expectations if you have a love interest escort mission the entire ****in' game. You can't meet those expectations, because let's face it, first person kisses and hugs aren't all that amazing. Third person isn't that spectacular either. How many games do you know of even have intimacy of some level? Those that do tend to feel corny and sappy. Most gamers want an action game and they probably would see a love interest escort for a whole game as a "chick flick"? Hm, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that developers went father/daughter more because they can't do a love interest angle for several reasons. Father/daughter can be tender and sweet, but is more likely to be about developing a connection that isn't physical in nature, which makes more sense than a love interest. Finally, Half Life 2 the game that started all of this cinemactic railroad action game genre had Alex. It's a part of the formula. They aren't gonna deviate; could you see this daughter being replaced by a son? Or another, regular ol' buddy? Nope, I don't see it. Sorry for being cynical, but I don't see this father/daughter angle that's been prevalent in almost every action/story game this season to be a good or mature thing. It's developers playing it very safe. Really, I've watched my brother play The Last of Us, and the daughter is ****in' stupid in terms of gameplay. Awful AI, always gets in your way, blocking passages when zombies are chasing you. That **** doesn't make you like a character no matter how much story you shove in the player's face. Developers are still spending too much focus on story and prettiness than the actual meat and potatoes - engaging encounters, AI, level design, weapon design, et cetera.

Mine activated fine. Let's hope it's good? The editor looks solid, so it should be worth the dosh for that at least!

Changing game mechanics (hit chance for attacks) so that a game's systems imitate "real life" is a poor motivator. Video games are not real life and real life does not make a fun or balanced game system. Ranged weapons are considered by most to be much easier to use (and abuse) than melee; ranged does not need any more inherent advantages than it already does.

Arms are easy to intersect and always get in the way of any kind of attack. Legs are poor defensive tools, despite what you might see in Dragon Ball Z, or something. You can't block with your shins, your thighs really can't take a hit. Trying to block with your legs will prove painful and most likely result in you winding up on the floor - there are various muscles and nerve groups that when stimulated will cause you to collapse under the right pressure/strain, especially in the back of the leg. This is why sweeps and throws that hook the leg are pretty effective. Mobility is probably the most important defense you've got, second would be armor, third would be your arms. Attacking/defending with your legs is only going to work in a "pressure" sense - martial arts with fast kicks can keep people at a distance, but once bladed weapons get involved...

From what I understand, there are a couple of degree programs and it's all very confusing when it comes to Computer Science graduates... though the first thing I would do is make sure I'm in the right program, what you're describing sounds right, but if you're going to program **** for games, make sure to learn c++ very well, though it really depends where you end up working, I think. A lot of studios don't make low level code anymore, they use pre-made engines like Unreal. I think you can modify these engines to some degree, so programming expertise is still necessary... But I'd say, the best suggestion I could give is... make ****ing games. When you go to apply for a job, you should at least have one game you wrote from scratch. Even if it's very primitive, showing that you understand the basic structure of game programming (ie you build a Main, an event manager, interface with graphics) is important. I think it might not be a bad idea to build a "tool program" - since I think a lot of game programmers end up making tools for the designers. Programs that handle models/animations for models/shaders/particles and programs that organize/can edit stuff like spells, unit data, etc are important. Of course, I'm not in the industry, so I don't know for sure. No one here knows what your university offers in terms of courses, but you'll obviously want to learn DirectX or OpenGL - at least to some small degree. You'll probably want to familiarize yourself with Linux (mostly because I think there's going to be a trend of more developers needing people to port their games to Linux; look at Valve alone). You'll probably want to familiarize yourself with mobile / console platforms as well. I think you'll want a strong foundation in the basics of computing, since the thing you need to understand is - some programs just need to work most of the time. But other programs always need to work. Games are kind of in the middle - games need to run smoothly and consistently, you can't afford even slight deviations or hiccups. Most games are very demanding on the system and stretch its limits, so you need to know how to optimize code well. There's always a trade off of clean code vs effeicent code - relaly effecient code tends to be hard to read. But you need to know when to write either or find a happy balance of the two. You basically need to know everything, too. For instance, CCP hires Python programmers (I honestly don't know why; EVE doesn't run on Python does it? It must, apparently, yet it's suuuuch a slow language I can hardly believe it). Riot hires Java programmers (I don't know why, honestly). The smaller companies hire for iphone/tablet development (Objective C, which isn't c++). I doubt any university is well-equipped to offer all of these languages equally well, so you basically need to learn everything on your own, or at least, that's from my experience. c++ is popular and important, but you should probably broaden your experience to... everything.

I can empathize with AAA developers in a sense - let's consider the drawbacks of non-linear level design: -Harder to bug-test -Harder to quality-control (as in, "Is this fun? Is this too hard? Is this too easy?") -Harder to market (Building set-pieces makes sense if you intend to use said set-pieces for demos, trailers, cinematics, etc.; linear game sections "look cool" to the masses but are pretty underwhelming in the short and long run) -Harder for artists to contribute directly (I'm not sure how this works - but if you procedurally generate rooms, for instance, artists can only stipulate what "looks good" in a vague, abstract sense, and can only tweak alogirithims to try and suit their tastes) -Less cinematic and tailored experience -Some players become lost (Ever play Deus Ex? It's pretty common for you to wind up where you started on your first run of some levels; it can get dizzying staying oriented with your objective) But I think the general public craves non-linearity. I watched my brother finish Max Payne 3 today, watched the whole last hour or so of gameplay. Now, MP3 isn't an RPG, but the general level design stuff still applies. The end of Max Payne 3 is quite literally one hallway, all the time. You can't leave a room until are all enemies are dead. You can't backtrack to even pick up ammo if you run out. Doors mysteriously seal themselves off and open all on their own (for a cinematic game this seems self-defeating?). The setting is pretty, but save for a few physics-object-chairs, nothing is interactable. Key items (like 'pills' and 'clues') blend into the background and you just get tunnel vision, walking forward constantly. My brother only just finished it, because in his words, it's a nauseating game. All you do is the same thing over and over with no progression in gameplay. I wasn't all that impressed with some of the set pieces either, the best one being a car chase toward a run-away airplane (but it's short-lived and so scripted that there isn't any tension at all). Max Payne 3 sold like dirt, if I understand. I'm not surprised, though I wonder why. Did the public know it was going to be that kind of game? Did they know the game wouldn't appeal to them? Was it TPS-fatigue? Bad marketing overall? Why did it not perform? The damning thing about video games is it's hard to try them before you buy, so bad level design can't be the cause for a failed game, only a failed sequel. Maybe it says something about MP2? I don't know But Tomb Raider sold pretty well, which surprised the **** out of me (despite this, Square didn't make any money on it). I haven't watched any gameplay or played it myself, but from what I've heard, it's about as linear as Max Payne 3 (which is kind of stupid, I thought TR was about exploration?). I don't have enough contact with the kind of people who play hyperlinear kind of games, so it's hard for me to understand what the appeal is. Is it just the desire to have a shooting gallery? Would they enjoy a non-linear version more? I've been playing a Deus Ex mod (The Nameless Mod) the last few days. It's very... um, weird. It's okay. It's got some tight level design (well, to be more specific, you have options, but those options are very limited by your supplies... lock picks and electronics crackers are fairly rare; guards and robots patrol in much shorter, narrower patterns, making typical Deus Ex duckwalking tricky) which results in some fatigue on my part. I want to let loose and shoot some guys, but there's a money bonus for doing non-lethal in the mod... And, when I say the level design is tight, I don't really mean it's tight at all, lol. Levels are huge, sprawling; massive. I no-clipped through one and almost **** my pants, they're humongous. There's a huge danger with making level so big - namely, player transportation. There's too much goddamn walking! I spend more time walking than I do doing ****, it's annoying. Non-linear games definitely need to have ways for players to move rapidly through already-cleared sections of the games, OR they need to shrink levels down and make choices meaningful, deep, et cetera - while not taking up too much walking space. Nobody really likes backtracking, especially if you have to do it ten times in a level in order to solve it or get lost. It's probably a very happy coincidence that VTMB and Deus Ex have small non-linear levels - the hardware at the time probably couldn't have supported more sprawling places... but then again, VTMB does have Going the Way of Kings. Eugh. Going the Way of Kings is about as bad as Max Payne 3. I guess I think it's important, when designing levels linearly or non-linearly, to generally vary what's going on and be mindful what a player could be doing BEFORE you start building the level. Set-piece hyper linear games can be fun, I think, if you get the right pacing down. Max Payne 3 is just awful. Literally, there is one level where you lay siege to a police HQ - catwalks and corridors for about 45 minutes. It is the most boring thing to watch in the world and isn't helped by the fact all the enemies are bullet sponges. There is nothing to vary the game. Yes, there are cutscenes intermingled, but just with some bleeding old men, half of whom don't even speak ****ing English (and there are no English subtitles for their dialogue). There's nothing stimulating about the game at that point; it's monotonous. It's important to encourage creativity and alternative experience in games. Players should be given the freedom to experiment. I think level designers, at least for AAA games, are too focused on making everything crisp, shiny, and pristine-looking. "Just like the concept-art" I think that they're thinking. This is totally wrong - if a player finds a way to beat your level that wasn't intended, then you have good level design. This means players should be given tools to clear your levels, but that your levels should also invite the usage of said tools in creative ways. Everyone I know who starts Deus Ex for the first time is told to "invest in swimming" - it's a joke. Swimming is largely useless, save for a few segments in the game (which can be solved using other means). It wouldn't have been hard to make swimming a very valuable skill - just put some very good resources in locations you can't reach without swimming. Put more safe havens to avoid guards with in the form of deep pools of water (holding your breath for a long time allows the guards to disperse). Of course, hyperlinear trainwrecks like Max Payne 3 don't even bother to create the ability to swim (there is a LONG docks level where if you fall in the water you die - it literally makes no sense, the least they could do is light the water on fire or fill it with man-eating fish), so it's a moot point to even bring up the balancing of player options... Erm, sorry, it's hot out and I'm just rambling to kill time for this room to cool down. I need to sleep. Been thinking too much about game design, really. It's a simple fix: give players choice. I get that time is money, but it seems like a lot of people in AAA game studios aren't doing anything (how else could a game like Max Payne 3 be created? Did the developers of that game really feel like they put out their best effort?).

Since any martial art technique that targets more than 2 people at a time is a work of fiction, I'm ok with that. -edit: especially if the AoE techniques come with decreased damage, which would make sense both ways. What? You have two fists you know. Have you even watched a martial artist deal with thugs? It's called a double punch, lol. And if you do some kind of a turning kick (striking with your shin or top of your foot), you could strike two targets if your foot didn't catch on the first one... There are also obvious grappling techniques (grab two idiots by the heads and smack em' together) that you'd see in any three stooges clip. Granted, real martial techniques that target more than one opponent are rare, difficult, and likely less powerful than a singularly-focused attack... but let's not call them fictious! Also, Jackie Chan, with a ladder? Yeah, I could see him knocking down a few people all at once with something like that.

Age of Empires taught me junior high school history? I was the only kid I knew who already knew who William Wallace was. That is, I think I would have been the only one, but Highlander had just hit theaters then, if I recall correctly? Or maybe not. I played the campaigns for AoE and Aoe2 over and over and over until I knew them pretty much by heart. A shame they aren't entirely historically accurate. The right mix of education and gameplay is critical. A lot of "education games" are informartion dumps and/or dry. It's a shame Nintendo doesn't do educational games anymore like they did in the 90's, I think a Mario Algebra game (with a focus on quality) could be very successful. Not that Nintendo needs to brainwash little kids into liking Mario at this point, he's more recognizable than any single DIsney character...

Eew, vectors and c++? Just eeeeeew. Also, don't you want automatic stat allotment to be a function? Don't want that kind of code executing just... well, whenever, even if that code is contained in just a character generation screen, you want it deliberately executed by a call so that it's easy to disable when testing your game out. I'm also wary that your code isn't extendable. What I mean is, enemies in your game - won't they use stats like the PC? You have a vector called stats, but shouldn't that vector be contained in a "unit" object? Unit can be a player or an monster of some sort.

Hm, I think people are fixated too much on my first example. I do concede in the original post that it's a fairly linear dungeon - which is probably why I dread replaying BG2 as well. The point is, that it's a tutorial level and yet still exhibits a good kind of 'circularness'. I probably should have used a different dungeon for my first picture, as it's misleading to call the Irenicus Lair dungeon 'non-linear' - it has a few non-linear elements, but there's definitely one optimal solution. That said, at this point, I haven't played an RPG with level design even as good as that particular dungeon... probably since BG2. I'm struggling to think of an experience that is as good as it after I played it, first time or not. It's kind of sad that engaging level design is such a lost art. I'm still trying to figure out what makes it tick, though I think I've nailed the gist of it in my first post? Whether you agree with the particular examples or not, aside.

Extending from Zoraptor's point, I'd say that "reasonable character choices" are most likely the ones that a dev will "think the players will want to make." Forced companions is always a point of contention, and BioWare's games (as well as Obsidian's) are certainly games that frequently suffer from that. I'm trying to think of Obsidian/BW games with forced companions. If a companion is forced on you, it's usually only for a short segment (you first meet them). There are probably some characters that are forced, but you can ditch most of the characters in DA:O, DA2, KOTOR, KOTOR2, JE, BG2, BG... I don't usually ditch characters since it pretty much defeats the purpose of playing an RPG, but I'm trying to think of a character I couln't get rid of totally and I can't. Obsidian and BioWare are actually pretty good about letting us dump ****ty characters. You can kill Zevran, exile Anders (though he comes back in the final act of DA2, unfortunately), and dispose of most characters... or just turn them away when you first meet them. Morrigan might be "forced" on the player? I don't know, I guess she HAS to survive to the end of DA:O? I think it's pretty criminal how DA:O, DA2, ME1, ME2, ME3 (and I should add, though it's not on topic: The Walking Dead) all offered illisory choices for the most part - if you get a significant choice that impacts the game's story, it's towards the end of the game, mentioned only in the epilogue, retconnedin the sequels, or some combination thereof. It's good to offer players choice, but not when it amounts to nothing. I would argue that BioWare should enedeavor to offer as much impactful choice as possible. This can be done by PLANNING the game out. I mean, TW2 gets a lot of praise for letting players decide where they go for the second act of the game. It's a binary choice (the worst kind) and it's still kind of deterministic, but even a choice like that, because it has immediate weight and impact as well as long-term consequence... I know a lot of people praised CDProject for what TW2 did there. But, I have been thinking about BG/BG2. You don't get a CHYOA with either of those games - you can effect certain sequences of events, but you don't usually get to decide much that effects the flow of the story. I think players expect the wrong things from BioWare. We want our choices to matter, so people instantly get up and say, "When you side with the Mages in DA2, why is it Orsino is still a final boss at the end? Isn't that hamfisted?" Or "I sided with the Templars all game! The mages should hate me! The entire last act of the game should be totally different!" I think the major problem is that BioWare games aren't programmed to be reactive. I mean, if I play Dwarf Fortress, everything is simulated. Water physics, dwarf desires, the desires of surrounding nations, dwarf boredom or humor... every update adds more simulation. The game is interacting with all these complex systems at once, so the game responds to my decisions. None of that goes on in a traditional cRPG, or at least, ones designed by BioWare/Obsidian. That's because the games are cinematic in nature, with most of the game's functionality hardcoded. So what is it that people really want? I think it has to do with level design. BioWare's level design has been pretty abysmal consistently, after BG2. Tiny levels, too much railroading, not enough secrets to discover, the choices you take in navigating a dungeon have no impact. They sort of do in BG2. Thought experiment: You design a game that is 0-dimensional. That is to say, you write a real time battle system, like the one DA2 has. Spells, attacks, models, art, et cetera - it's all there. Except, it's 0-dimensional. These entities aren't on a map. There's no dungeon to navigate. Your game is just a battle system, one battle after the other, in a sequence. Oddly enough, that sounds like how DA2 plays, doesn't it? There's no real navigating in DA2, you just walk forward and fight another wave of enemies. Only, it's not exactly true. DA2 is two-dimensional - you can move back and forth and left and right. You might be tempted to say it's 3-dimensional, but jumping serves no purpose. Levels are not designed to take advantage of the z-axis, so there are only two real degrees of freedom. But for the sake of this thought experiment, forget DA2 for a moment - imagine a one-dimensional level. You are a fighter on a line. Your enemies are on the line. The battle system still exists, only now, your character can move relative to this one-dimension, left or right. He can move back to avoid enemy attacks and move forward to close in and attack. Adding a dimension has put SOME amount of context to the innate battle system - you can move. Meaning, you can physically avoid attacks. In terms of navigating a dungeon - there's no choice. You can only move forward, because moving backward doesn't open up anything you haven't explored already. In a nutshell, Dragon Age 2 is a one-dimensional game. Although a few levels (like the Beach/Strand) have a few winding paths you can take, but these choices are few and far between and they really have no long-term impact, you still have to explore the entire region to complete all the quests. There's no difference between having DA2 on a virtual line and wasting dev time and putting your party on a 3-dimensional dungeon map. This, I think, is what's fundamentally wrong with DA2 - a lack of chocie in gameplay, not necessarily in narrative. Dragon Age 3 is a 3D game, so it should take advantage of AT LEAST two dimensions with its level design. You can do this by giving dungeons multiple solutions that don't involve killing every single monster group on the field. You can do thsi by giving dungeons multiple entrances and exits. You can do this by introducing a reason to SNEAK in a BioWare game (for the record, every time they offer us the ability to enter 'stealth mode' in an Obsidian/BioWare game, I never waste points in it, because the game is never designed for it), to pick locks and open doors, etc. Unless BioWare intends to start developing ARPGs, that is. DA2 didn't work because as its core, its combat was atrocious. If you give context to your combat system by having good level design, then you can fix this. But if you have one-dimensional level design (actually, now that I think of it, considering how little good moving your characters around in DA2 did... maybe DA2 does have a 0-dimensional gameplay), there isn't a whole lot to engage the player with. What I mean by this is ... well, take a character, give them a gun and Call of Duty's gunplay mechanics, but set them in a city block instead of a corridor, and suddenly, regenerating health isn't so bad, because the level design allows for less monotonous, more thought-provoking gameplay. Ugh, tl;dr material, right? Even so, I had to write all this nonsense to get it out of my head. Making DA3 open world doesn't solve the 0-dimensional problem, is my main point. Neither does turning DA3 into a literal CHYOA like TWD. I think players expect some sort of marriage here, between the two concepts, but for there even to be a relationship the two have to exist first in the game. Neither don't, except in some shallow capacity - at least in DA2.

Yep. I am also convinced. I will have lots of fun playing Dragon Age 3 when it comes out! You can look forward to a Breathless Experience that keeps you gripped for over twenty hours. Complete with thrilling Open World Exploration, Deep, Satisfying Combat, and Awesome Real Characters. Look forward to Autumn 2014!

Guys, you're getting off topic. The last thread was closed not too long ago for this reason. So, stay on topic please. I honestly don't see the point in discussing DA3 at this point. We have no new information on it and we won't for quite a while. BioWare had its swan song a while back, it's time to just let them fade into obscurity. Let them be. They don't listen to feedback (or when they do, they take that feedback and twist into such a warped, skewed perspective that they can justify doing just the opposite of what gamers want) and they clearly are going to use the same tactics as always. They're still with EA. If the game is anything less than a disaster, I'll eat my own foot.

Player getting instant-death skills? Probablly not. Too hard to balance and not all that fun. Enemies getting instant-death skills? Yes, please. But not luck/chance based skills - like - the enemy has an instant-kill fire attack, but he telegraphs where he's going to throw it before he throws it, so you can move your party members out of its path. That's perfectly fine.

I haven't done any calculations, but various sites have. I read 25% somewhere, here's one that says this: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156273-xbox-720-vs-ps4-vs-pc-how-the-hardware-specs-compare Processor equivalent to 50% of i7 + $150 card + PSU + motherboard + HDD i7 3370 is $279.99 on newegg, so let's say stupidly, that 50% performance translates into 50% cost = $140 $140 (processor) $150 (vid card) $50 (this is probably a low watt computer, considering low end parts, so $50 is prob enough for PSU) $60 (HDD) $100 (motherboard) $550 USD. This is of course supposing quite a bit, but these are today's prices. Who knows what they'll be come November, or during the xmas holidays. I'm pretty sure someone who's way more saavy at hardware than me, could do exactly as I suggest here - the pricepoint of the PS4/XB1 isn't all that strong, especially when we consider the cost of PC games compared to console games and the fact migrating from each new console will set you back a lot of games (at the very least, you are losing all your downloaded titles on your PS3/360). Also, the PS4 and the XB1 have membership dues if you intend to play online. Which you will. I'm pretty sure PC will always win out, especially if we talk about 1+ years of subscription for online play.

But, um, the PS4 is still 25% as powerful as an i5. I wouldn't say we're getting a deal at all. The parts are old, you could just buy a PC and save us a headache. I mean really, if we killed the middleman (big consoles) and everyone switch to PC/handheld&mobile for gaming, the industry would be alot healthier, because those platforms are more open source, more economical, and give the consumer choice. More competition is better for us, the consumer, and Sony/M$ would love to wall us in their pretty little garden. I gaurantee you can build a PC that will play "next-gen" games for the same cost of the PS4/XB1 this November, for the same exact price. There is no deal, especially since Steam/GoG sales will save you money over time, compared to console games (Sony/M$ have yet to offer the same kind of deals on their online stores). What is Microsoft/Sony offering you that's of 1000's in value? Play music and movies on your box? My PC already does that. Play television on your box? Why? What's there to watch? Game of Thrones? Just get that on your PC too... anything else? I mean, what's there to watch that's worth it? "Share button"? Um, do you really need that? I guess that's a special feature, but... Steam already has (most of) that integration and I don't find it to be all that amazing. Kinect? I guess if a game ever came out that was good that used it...

This is actually something I touch on in my research -- what makes a critic a "professional" or even a "paid" reviewer? If some guy writes game reviews on his blog, and uses the ad revenue to pay his bills, I'd say he's probably a "professional" or least popular enough to where he is considered to knowledgeable. Is he a "professional" critic or a just user-reviewer who got lucky? These are sticky questions with no easy answers, and the lines get blurrier every day. "Non-paid" reviewers can also be bots or people paid to write positive reviews as users ("viral marketers"). So, both sides of the pool are pretty polluted and trustworthy. When I'm unsure if I should get a game I: Look and see if there's a demo Read the professional reviews (1-2) Read a bunch of user reviews on multiple sites (and do a background check on the users by looking at their history) If 2/3 don't line up I generally hold off on the game There are some sites I don't trust (like IGN/Gamespot) outright for reviews. There are some sites I follow, like Giantbomb, but their scores are worth a lot less than their quicklooks (which are the kind of lengthy hands-off demos that game companies should be providing to sell their game).

Iwata made a pretty good point in an IGN article: Software is key. He hypothesizes the handheld market could have crashed without Pokemon, that the Wii could have doomed Nintendo without Wii Sports, and that the 3DS saw its sales grow considerably with each new major Nintendo title. People buy consoles for the games. Did people buy the PS2 because it could play DVDs? Or did they buy it because it had the largest game library in existence at the time? Did people buy the PS3 to play BluRays? Or did they buy it to play games? They could have just bought a DVD or BluRay player, instead of a console. At best, peripheral features help distinguish consoles from each other on launch day. But they aren't going to move units for the larger audience. I'm not convinced the Xbox One can sell on its TV features alone - google and apple have had their own smart TV ideas that went nowhere. Mobile hasn't taken over the DS/3DS like many analysis predicted - and that's because Mobile's crowning glory is a single title: Angry Birds. I happen to think Iwata's theory is pretty solid. And let's remind everyone: The 3DS didn't sell beacuse it offered 3D. It had pretty mediocre sales at lauch, which gave market analysis a field day. The showing of games for the XB1/PS4 did not impress me. I won't be buying the consoles until I see some solid reasons. For instance, I was pretty disappointed by Clang! - but maybe it's the kind of thing that could work with the Kinect sensor? I've always wanted a full motion sword fighting game, ever since the Wii came out - but I've yet to find one that gets anywhere close to what I want. A game like that could draw me to the Xbox One (well, realistically, I'd prefer to have at least six or seven games that draw my interest), but all we saw was more of the same. Also, here's my theory: The COD players look up to buy the next Xbox for the latest COD. But, they see it's $500 USD. That's kind of pricy, so maybe they check out the PS4 instead? They check and see the next COD is coming to the PS4. So, they buy it because it's a $100 bux cheaper. That seems like a pretty possible scenario that could lose M$ this race. Is the average COD player going to be drawn to the TV features on the Amazon or Best Buy page? Will they think any of that is worth $100 USD?

Oh. Awesome site. Thanks.