Slowtrain

hmm. my memory isn't all that great, but even still this would only be a problem if I was away from a game for a month or so. Even I can remember what I was doing just last night. For the most part.

Why put it off until you are forced? The only MS operating systems I've used since DOS 6.2 have been Win 98se and XP pro. Saved myself a lot of money and aggravation not upgrading every time MS craps out a new OS.

Really though the bottom line is pretty simple: ANY changes Beth makes to Oblivion's mechanics are positive changes since nothing in Oblivion was worth keeping around for this next iteration of the ES series. The new perk based high speed leveling system of skyrim may not work at all, but it's still better than reusing a system that we all ready know is completely broken.

you're just jealous of our nimbus.

heh. Probably. There wasn't really much to choose from back in 1976-77; all the classic crpg IPs: gold box, wizardry, ultima, might and magic had yet to be established.

The glorious pc master race farts in the general direction of the console hoi polloi.

WHy is that? Is there a limit to how many FO games Bethesoft has the right to make?

hee hee Only if you're a console plebe.

heh. It's weird to think an id game is capable of running well on 5 year old tech. Who'd thunk such would ever happen. You mean, other than making money? no, no. I said id not bioware.

My first rpg was Hunt the Wumpus played on some pdp-11-34 or some such back in the late 70's. Although the graphics were just ASCII bits, gameplay-wise I can't say it was all that different from Oblivion.

I don't understand how an fps from id will even run on any current console. Isn't the tech limitation of "console-friendly" the antithesis of everything id strives for in a game?

Yep. In the ES system characters became more similar the longer you played rather than more different; however different they might be at the start, they all grew to a common endpoint, so to speak. To me, personally, that result shows a broken rpg system right there. Character development should work exactly the opposite: characters start similar but the longer you play them the more unique they become.

Perks, which Beth seems to be focusing on as the one of the key areas of chaarcter development in Skyrim, could potentially do a lot of interesting things, without the need for stats. A perk could increase running speed or jumping distance or strafing speed. Or anything really. One could build their character based on perks and the skills they use. It could be an interesting approach to character growth. That being said, Fallout 3's perks were for the most part utterly unimaginative, mostly just consisting of +x skill points, and unless Beth does a much better job coming up with perks for Skyrim, then the perk-focused approach isn't going to be too interesting to me. But it does have potential. If done well.

I don't get that really. The leveling up in Oblivion was absurdly fast -- your character could gain 2 levels just falling down a flight of stairs. Even in Skyrim, despite hearing some good things, it's still the typical Bethesda/Todd Howard all-gamers-have-ADD approach to game design.

I dunno. I think the attribute system in the ES games was pretty messed up. I think dropping it altogether is a pretty decent idea, otherwise they would have to rework the heck out of it. edit: I also think getting rid of athletics and acrobatics as skills is a good idea, but as always Todd Howard's belief that simplification solves all problems continues to disturb me.

Good news. Nice to see devs make a positive change for once. Options are the best solution to single player gameplay: let the player design their own experience as much as possible.

Their whole relationship with Sega seemed to be such a disaster, much more so than anything else they've done, that it is hard for me to believe that Sega wasn't a major contributor to the whole mess.

One difference I think, agreeing with Tig, is that Obs seems to be better at getting projects that have commercial value than Troika did, although Alpha Protocol does feel like a Troika game in a lot of ways. But, DS3, though not much interest for me personally, seems a much more potentially lucrative financial choice than ToEE on its best day.

The similarities between Troika and Obsidian are...unsettling.

I don't know if I quite agree with "disaster". Dai-Katana was a disaster. Troika's games were all pretty good in their own ways, all of them just lacked fine tuning and proper QA.

It crashed occaisionally for me, both the regular and EE. Not nearly so much as other games such as Fallout 3 though.

iirc, reflexive has done very well with their casual gaming stuff, but Lionheart appeared to be way over their head.

All classes shouldn't be equal in the name of balance, but no one class or collection of skills should be so much better that all others are pointless to raise unless you are simply into making a gimped character. No gamer wants to feel like they are wasting points by investing their level up gains into useless skills, stats, attributes.

Yep, I remember Cabal and Reflexive. IIRC he/she really alienated the potential fanbase back on the forums. And they ended up making a game that was far worse than anything Troika could possibly have imagined on their worst day.

And this is why we can't have nice things. When RPG fans consider such a complete cluster**** of a rules system as only "the last 10%" of game development, it's little wonder why developers don't sink much effort in making systems that are logical, flexible, and reasonably balanced*, and that add to the fun of a game rather than distract from it. We just keep eating heaping bowls of **** and begging for more. * By "reasonably balanced," I'm not talking about MMO-level micro-balance. I'm talking about avoiding situations where the player feels like a chump for having put points in an ability that turns out to be flagrantly under-useful. Which was true for roughly 70% of the abilities in Arcanum. I agree with your overall take on the ARcanum system. Basically, melee/dodge + harm was a "press this to win" button and everything else was how to spend points building a gimp. but, I do think that just a bit more time and work in playtesting and balance (+ bugs) would have provided a marked improvement in gameplay.