Slowtrain

They'll balance themselves if they're created with any serious consideration. Morrowind really didn't have much of a problem with it, aside from like what Wals is mentioning with Oblivion, but that's a fault of lackluster design. Oblivion's main problem around it is the hybridization with a normal level-up system and the creatures levelling around you. I seem to recall though that one of the chief complaints of MW was the lack of individuality to the player characters since they all leveled up all their skills pretty much the same. Same as Oblivion. In a classless, learn-by doing system it is very diffcult to create player characters that aren't extremely generic unless you implement some user imposed limitations.

Did Diablo have any cutscenes? Other than the opening and ending? I don't recall any.

If I remember correctly, the extensive and lengthy cutscenes for Diablo 2 recieved quite a lot of praise at the time.

I was thinking about starting up a game of X2, but I really am obsessed about finishing my current game of Oblivion. I'm having difficulty finding the motivation to do so however. I play about 5 minutes, then say enough of that ,and go to bed. Its going to be a really long playthrough. lol

Is D3 actually confirmed yet?

They both sounded great! Whenever I play through the into I always am thinking about how in the world Patrick Stewart could have possibly kept a straight face while saying all those silly z-grade fantasy epic lines of dialogue. Then I think of Sir ALec Guiness and how much he hated his role as Ben Kenobi. Well at least they got Liam Neeson for FO3. We can rest easy knowong that Bethesda's dedication to pushing the limits of the narrative form remains intact.

Yeah, but come on, Bethesda spent the big money for Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean! I mean if that is commitment to creating a brilliant and engrossing story I don't know what is. Right? Right? Hello? bleah... I always wonder if Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean felt stupid about being in something so dumb. Or was it just thanks for the check see you later?

Hello, Can I play? lol. Your bad: 1) level scaling (as implemented by Bethesda in Oblivion): ludicrous. Removes one of the core aspects of a crpg. Turns the whole game into an fps. Will be a part of Fallout 3 but in a changed form. We'll see. 2) OOO a good mod for what it does and its general ease of use is nice. 3) Shops and shopping are completely messed up in almost every way possible 4) Learn by doing doesn't work in crpgs. Balance is impossible. (cf Oblivion, Morrowind) 5) Betheda is all about shiny happy people, even if they don't look remotely human. I especially love the ones who have their eyes somewhere in the forehead. lol Your good: 1) If you are into Metagaming, Oblivion is tailor-made for that. Oblivion is metagaming really. 2) Learn by doing: Good idea in concept, never really seen it work in a crpg. It was okay in WIzrdary which was a combo of XP and learn by doing. 3) Vampires: Never bothered. It doesn't seem to add much change to the gameplay. 4) The only way to survive the early levels of OOO is indeed with a fleet set of feet. A little too much so if you ask me, but there you go... Plenty of times I've run the bad guys into an imperial patrol only to get the imperial patrol killed lol. my good: 1) Open world and exploration: I love that sort of thing 2) charcter development: I love building my player characters 3) Construction kit: At least people could fix problems. I'm really concerned FO3 will not have one because the devs were embarrassed by the efforts of the fan community and don't want to look bad. my bad: 1) Quests are meaningless 2) Exploring wil find you nothing other than a few high resolution views. 3) The level scaling makes so much of the game, rewards, monsters, items, utterly generic. 4) The skills are poorly implemented 5) Dialogue is pretty much meaningless 6) Lockpicking lol

And why change around a good thing. Their battlenet setup has obviously done quite well for them over the years. People stil play Diablo 2 even though the game is what 8 or 9 years old? SOmething like that. I'm trying to remember when it was released.

Some helpful mod should probably split this thread. Or not. Perhaps the discussion of fat has simply run its course. ANyway, I find "what is gay?" threads are best avoided when on the internet.

What's funny is that is probably the single most hated and derided item in the Fallout 3 forums. Its good to see that in at least some cases, like lockpicking, your actual skill level actually affects the gameplay. I'm quite happy they kept the XP/skill pioint system and not changed to an ES learn-by-doing system.

I would actually be kind of interested if it was Diablo 3. I played the heck out out of the first Diablo, but I think I overdid it because I couldn't drum up any interest in playing Diablo 2 despite the fact it was obviously a better verion of Diablo. But not having played any Diablo for years and years I feel kinda tempted to play some again. In a shiny pretty 3d wrapper!! wheee

Fat is bad when it decides to camp out in your butt. lol

It reminds me of a hunched over Grinch wringing his hands in anticpation of some heinous evil. Maybe Blizzardd is making Grinch: The Christmas Wars.

Transfats are your friends! Oh wait maybe not. ANyway, I think they were just banned here.

Just a note that I am not intending this as any sort of hostile debate. Its just something interesting to talk about. Tone can be hard to judge in the internet so I just wanted to clarify that. I agree that the control scheme of SS1 was tough. It took me a lot of play to get it and even then if something took me by surprise the only option was to run away and regroup. No way was I was I able to actual respond to a surprise attack using the GUI. Anyway, 2 points: I am not saying anybody should neccessarily want to go back and play old games. Speaking for myself personally, I wish I didn't have to, but games like XCom and Jagged Alliance 2 and Fallout and Daggerfall and EF200 (Hello 3dfx and glide!) and yes, even System Shock 2 are not really made these days. That type of gameplay appears to be out of favor for the moment. I am hoping it is somewhat cyclic, but who knows. Those are not the only types of games that I like, but IF I want those types of games there is nothing to look to currently. Secondly I am not saying that awesome graphics are a bad thing. I remember when I first played MDK and I was totally blown away by how cool the graphics were. Sadly, that thrill only lasted a few minutes then I got tired of shooting at little twirling robots and stopped playing. lol. But good graphics can definitely make a gameplay experience better. Far Cry was the first game where I really came to believe that. Without those incredible island graphics Far Cry would not have been as fun to play as it was. IMO, the designers made a mistake by locating so much of the game either inside or outside at night. They should have pushed their strength and kept those awesome jungles and blue seas at the forefront at all times. Or watching the mountain split apart in the distance while riding up the valley in the tanks in Crysis. That was a jaw dropping piece of visual awesomness that I literally reloaded several times just to watch over and over again. Mediocre games can be made more nteresting with grahpics and good games can be made better. No question. However, in the end, the gameplay in both Far Cry and Crysis is far too pedestrian and unfulfilling to make the game's worth all that much despite the awesome graphics. Crysis pushed aside Far Cry and some next gen game will push aside Crysis with its visual splendor. SO, I gues my overall point is that technology has enhanced the visual splendor of games as it has advanced. WHich is great. I am all up for that. But I don't see the same pushing forward of gameplay depth. Rather I see older games that were more complex and interesting than games are today. And I freely admit here that not every gamer likes complexity in games. As I posted earlier in this thread there are gamers who buy the latest FPS, turn on God mode and cheat in all weaons and ammo and have a great time playing the game through just like that. And they are happy as clams. I don't understand it, but I accept it. But there are also plenty of gamers who are looking for more than that. You can find them on every forum, including this one. ANywa, thanks for talking with me. I enjoy it.

Well, I could lie and say I've played them, but what would be the point of that? I did buy HL2 and still have it in my closet but still haven't ever gotten around to even opening the box. As I said in my post to Patrick, I play the games that I can play, which in fairness to me is still a lot of games over the years. But yeah I can't play everything. The usual excuses: time, money, mortality, inclination etc and so forth. But I don't think that not having total knowledge of all games should prevent me or you (or anyone else) from having opinions as long as they are grounded in some sort of experience, both firsthand and secondhand. I'm always open to learning new things so I am more than happy when someone says: Did you think of X and Y and Z? And if I haven't then I've learned something. I don't know what else to say really.

Well, I can't play every game. I play what I can, listen and read what peopel say about their own experiences and extrapolate as best I can. I freely admit its not scientific, but sadly no one wants to pay me to play and comment on games for a living. WHich I actually wouldn't want to do anyway. I agree with that argument, but it is not really getting into issues of gameplay. You're talking control schemes and resolution. Sure, nobody like learning odd control schemes and by today's standards 640 * 480 is um a bit of an eyesore to say the least. No disagreement. But I've not in any way disagreeing with the notion that technology has very much improved in graphical aspects and presentation of all sorts. Games look BETTER nowadays. Absolutely. But I should also point out that the very game you are criticizing for its graphical appearance here and now in 2008 was once criticized heavily for its cutting edge take on graphics. (The usual "why make a game that no one can actually run argument). Again, graphical splendor ebbs and flows as the years pass, gameplay is what stays with you. Sure. I will agree that the pictures we form in our head about the games we play are very important. We are primarily visual creatures after all. Our lives and our histories are filled with images .But nobody goes back and plays old games because they looked great five years ago. They go back and play them because of the gameplay, wether its the awesome NPCS interaction or the TB combat or the cool research tree or the skill based dialogue options. That's what brings us back to the old games. Gameplay is the transecdent aspect of games, not the resolution or the HDR or trilinear filtering. Its the same basic plot structure though right down to its twist in the middle. The Big Daddy's and Little Sisters are different though.

We'll just wait for MC to embrace the X universe in some form or another. I think it would be his kind of gameworld.

I should also point out that I am in no way down on Alpha Protocol. There is not enough info (from what I've seen) to make any sort of determination about the game, so I am just hanging around and waiting patiently. I was merely commenting in response to some of the "open questions" earlier in the thread. ANd just a general note on the changes you guys have made becuse you felt the game was too boring: I remember Warren Spector talking about his original design of Deus Ex, and how when they had finally brought most of it into a playable state, people that Spector had try the game out said it was just too boring. So he redid a lot of the games systems, dropping some of his "realism" that was in his original vision of the game, and made it more gamey and "fun". And look how that turned out! Yay! So I'm not saying anything bad abut the choices you guys are making now. Maybe later though. lol

Hi Patrick! These are the only games I've played of the ones you mention, so they are the only ones I can speak to. SS1: You don't really say much about it except that it is largely unplayable today. I'm not sure what that means. Can you be more specific? I haven't played it recently, but I played it a lot up until a few years ago so I am still pretty familair with it. SS2: I would say that using the inventory as your one example is not very convincing. Some people like inventory fiddling, some people don't. The interface has a lot going on, but I wouldn't term it clunky: one merely has to hit tab to pop back and forth from a standard FPS mode to a fiddle about mode. Regardless, my problems with Bioshock had nothing to do with the interface. Rather they had to do with a lack of meaningful choices in gameplay, the never die chambers of eternal bliss, the removal of skills, the reptitive enemies, the bad FPS combat. SS2 did not have great FPS combat either, but it had a lot more going on than Bioshock did. Bioshock: Yes, it certainly REMOVED a lot of things from System SHock 2, but I don't think it added very much. Except the graphics and visuals, which are definitely very nice. But graphics and visuals are the most quickly dated and forgotten aspects of a video game, so its hardly the thing to want to hang your hat on, I would think. ALso, the story is pretty much recycled from System Shock 2, with the exception of the Big Daddies/Little Sister thing.

I think it could be said though that if one were to try to get all their nutrional needs from junk food they would have to consume way too many calories in the process. Not that it couldn't neccessarily be done, but it would be a less than optimal dietary option. ALso, there differences in junk food. A Big Mac or a pizza may in fact have some nutrionakl value but does a Twinkie?

ARe you saying games offer more currently? Or have the potential to offer more? In terms of graphics and visuals, yeah, games definitely offer a lot more than they once did. I don't see any other ways in which new technology as raised the bar of what games offer today vs 5 or twn years ago. It seems games are tending to offer less really. AT least ones developed in he US anyway.

I haven't eaten at a fast food restuarant in maybe 10 years. Ever since I got old enough to realize how bad it was for you. I don't even eat potato chips or pizza or soda. SO I guess I woudl chosoe option 1. Only more so. Never eat junk food at all. Edit: Nationality: AMerican.