Drowsy Emperor

What do you guys think about Elder Scrolls Online? It doesn't look like much on the gameplay video I saw graphics wise (and art style wise). The animations are no better whan WoW. Any noteable gameplay features?

In anticipation:

I see you people are warming up to the idea of a Bioware made WH40K game.

I've been reading the main rulebook for the second edition. Nice set of rules, unlike DnD/Pathfinder they're immediately understandable and the character generation process has a lot more variety.

Terraforming was much like building improvements in Civ but the way it was done was very atmospheric. Everything you could build made sense in the in game world. Bascially there are: farms, mines, forests, solar collectors, condensers (alter rainfall patterns), echlon mirrors (alter energy levels), thermal boreholes, drilling to underground rivers, raising ground level up or lowering it and various combat enhancing improvements. Towards the end satellites could be launched for massive resource bonuses. I don't know if there's a comparable unit in Civ but there are Supply Crawlers in SMAC, autonomous resource collection units that don't cost any upkeep and enable you to collect resources from outside base range. They're essentially "borrowed" from Dune spice collectors.

well, melkathi pretty much listed it all. But the one thing to keep in mind is that success is not the result of simple accumulation of well made features - in the sense that having all those features won't necessarily give the same result. AC has a definite personal touch to it that definitely can't be copy/pasted into a new game. A spiritual sequel would likely fail. A real remake, with the real IP would be far more likely to work. Plus the hype would go through the roof.

I'm just thinking out loud. In order to make money it would be helpful for the game to feature the original name and Sid Meier's reputation. As for the what made AC special - it was the setting and the ideas featured in it. A lot of sci fi games have a ton of techno babble, but AC's often had sensible explanations to go with them. Faction leaders were also well designed, and had a definite (although) limited personality and playing style. Terraforming was pretty well done. Other civ games had workers, but AC's terraforming was so well thought out that it had a lot of flavor packed in.

EA has the rights, since GOG published it as part of their catalog. The real designer of SMAC was apparently Brian Reynolds and he's in a separate company now. So basically, we'd need Brian and Sid to get together and obtain the rights from EA.

Don't you guys think that SMAC2 would be financially viable through partial crowd financing? I think SM could get a couple of million just by dropping his name behind the project. I mean, they resurrected XCOM and its debatable which game had more fans after so many years.

Eh. what I would give for AC2, just a remake with souped up graphics and a few tweaks.

Acidic saliva, seriously.

How come there are so few setting related books for Warhammer FRP? Both in the first and second editions there are a ton of adventures but very little setting material.

Or it could just be the hard sci fi theme. Or the simple fact that Civ is one of the best selling games of all time, so all comparisons are going to be a tad unfair. Its like saying its the worst selling bottle of Coca Cola of all the bottles they ever released.

I agree with Monty, it looks like any other shooter. It could just as easily be another Killzone game with all the Jin Roh soldiers and standard robots.

The expansion is very unbalanced, (and the new factions went a bit over the top for my tastes) but the original game is more or less balanced. The more combative factions are pressed into offensive strategies at the expense of choice. Like how its very hard to play Sister Miriam any other way than as cheap unit spam and hoping for early victory. There are cheap ways to break the game, sure, but that's something to be expected in a game that's so complex. But overall SMAC had flavor which is actually supported by the gameplay: the capitalist makes money fast, the fascist has the best troops, the totalitarian is very hard to assault, the ecologist is faster at working the planet than anyone else etc. In most games gameplay blatantly disregards flavor for the sake of balance, or the benefits and drawbacks that flavor brings to factions/classes/ whatever are so slight as to be non existent. In SMAC the faction traits coupled with the amazing social engineering made for radically different societies, which really played differently. And it doesn't have Civ's random mixing of historical periods and personalities that grates on my nerves.

Why thank you private.

SMAC is easily the most thought provoking computer game ever made. Although PST has some claim in that department as well. I always considered Civ a weaker work, not nearly as seamless as SMAC and much more of a game. Going from SMAC's serious atmosphere to the happy Ghandi and Hammurabi in the silly land of Civ 4 was a shock to me. I stopped playing SM games at that point.

Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate. Spartan Battle Manual

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri for 2.5$ was too good to pass up.

I can't be blamed that their games are as bad as they are far and few between, Volourn.

Achievement unlocked: Hook Line and Sinker.

BTW did they get someone's little brother to draw that cover

Otherwise, its: BRAKKA BRAKKA!!!!

You know, I like warhammer 40K as much as the next guy but the setting is really beyond stupid. Its basically a way for westerners to enjoy role playing genocidal nazis without guilt. The only thing it has that's really good is the appealing quasi baroque aesthetic and the undercurrent of humor that lets you know it's not taking itself quite so seriously. Without it, in the grimdark future - there is only melodrama. And yes Mass Effect, I'm looking at you.

Regarding Bio, I haven't played any of their games since ME2 but I know you lot would buy a WH40K Bio made game at the drop of a hat. Hypocritical hipsters.