Slowtrain

If you're playing 1.13 on either expert or insane and have Drop All turned on you'll have better guns than the H&K G41 by the time you take your second or third location. Take Lynx instead. His mini-14 is decent for the early game.

Well, I enjoy them simply because its something else to do in the game, but I'm definitely in the minority with that view. You don't really lose all that much by not having them. They are more of a "side-quest"" than anything else. edit: they do make the game somewhat harder though, since they are pretty tough to get rid of, and they will eat into your mine income and town loyalty.

Just an FYI: most people who like Jag 2 for its "realism" hate the aliens and never play with them.

that used to be quite comon in crpgs. I used to have make sure I had bedrolls, boots, and food rations before I left town to journey in the wilderness. Happily common sense has prevailed and trivial realism has largely been eliminated. I mean we do without watching our party take their potty breaks, no? hardly "realistic" if you are playing a night-active character. That's more of a gamey limitation than a realisitic option.

You can now train all your mercs to 100 over the course of the game rather than being capped at 85. The 1.13 mod is really a CQB mod since it really focuses on increasing the balance and difficulty of the tactical combat aspect of the game while mimimizing some of the gamey crpg aspects. For example, if you play at either expert or insane difficulty with the drop all option and Bobb'y rays selection set to the best level, then the game loses any loot-hunt feel because everybody has access to all the best equipment and weapons right from the start of the game. If you are really interested in realism there is a smaller CQB mod that basically makes the combat a one-hit-kill game.

The 1.13 is a massive add-on that was started about 9 months ago. It adds a lot of stuff to the game, enables some stuff that was lost, changes the way certain things are done, fixes a lof of bugs and inconstiencies. ENemies wil now shot you from beyond visual range with sniper rifles for example, using their lead troops as spotters, and you can train your mercs all the way to 100 in all theiri stats if you want. ANyway it can make the game much harder at the higher difficiulty levels if you are not used to it, but it is also somehwat unbalanced because you can start the game with better equipment and you can get uber items like UVGs in the very first town as drops, and you can have all your mercs with 100 stats across the board. Its your choice really how you want to play it. The store selections options and drop all options are especially unbalancing. The unbalance tends to even out by the mid to late game. But some of this stuff might be changed. I haven't been keeping up with the progress of 1.13 really since October. There are also a bunch of fan made campiagns which are pretty good if somewhat buggy. SOme are as big as the original game itself. The last official patch is 1.07 which is almost the same as 1.06 just fixes a coulpe things that 1.06 broke.

I can't think of any that were particularly good or bad in any game I've played. I always had a soft spot for Lenny the Ghoul in FO2. It always cracked me up when his float would say: I am the Master and you are the learner while he shot someone in the face at 10 hexes...and missed. lol.

Bloodboil is fun in Grout's mansion otherwise its pretty craptacularly useless.

1) Icewind Dale: Far and away the best. Dice Roll, full party of your own, lots of loot, leveling, undead crushing 2) BG2: A quality game though never will be among my favorites because it made me resuce Imoen. Colorful and interesting game world, lots of stuff to do and see, lots of cool irtems, high levels. Dialogue was not overwhelming or pretentious. 3) Icewind Dale 2: A big move up for this game. 3e rules, your own 6 person party, some really good levels. 4) BG: Hurt by a lack of leveling and limited char development which is alomst impossiblee to do under crpg D&D anyway. A lot of low lwevel boring monsters. The city of BG was TOO big. 5) Planescape: Torment: Far and away the worst. An awful game really, with little to redeem it. Made incalculably worse by the huge amount of excuciating text, I was forced to wade through. If I had known I was dealing with an adventure game and not a cropg I probably wouldn't have bought it. Ah well, at least I have a couple interesting coasters.

I've never played a computer game where it mattered even a little whether I was the chosen one or a laundry machine repair person with a tap in her kidneys. So the chosen one concept is ok with me. All character backgrounds in crpgs need to do is to function as an excuse to whack something with a sword. Groundling or god is irrelevant.

Farcry was pretty standrada FPS fare, maybe a bit worse than that actually. Its 2 big pluses were its amazing viewing distance and stunning exterior enviornmental grahics, and the very good (but not great) AI of the enemy mercs. Fora mere ten ten hours of gameplay though, I'll be picking the next one out of the bargain bin.

Well, I think its great Josh spends time on the forums and talking about not only his games, but games and other things in general. Not many devs would do that. And I understand why, it's like rubbing yourself with raw steak and hurling yourself into a pit of hungry lions. A good rule of thumb is to always avoid game forums immediately following a games release because 75% of the posts will be people who are pissed off and angry. WHy people even aspire to be a game designer is beyond me. Poor money, a lot of abuse, little appreciation. Give me a hot plumber anyday.

But Vis, you've been saying that for like what 5 years now? ANd yet you ALWAYS buy the game. You silly.

I support everything everywhere being a Morrowind clone.

Well, I know in Deus Ex, Warren Spector has come right out and said that they left the AI for just about the last thing and just ran out of time to do things right with it. He said he regrets that because he feels the poor AI weakens the Sim experience of the game greatly. I'm paraphrasing that obviously.

Yes, that would be the upside of it. Or one of them anyway. For me, rushed would be the feeling that I am skipping over things I would really like to stop, do, see, or explore. True you can always replay, but the first time through is always the best time for me. For some reason I was OK in FO. I never felt rushed either, never had any problem finding the waterchip. I still felt I had plenty of time, and I didn't even know about the Water Merchants. The only time I ran afould of the time limit was on a replay when I had all the implants installed by the BoS. The recovery time on all those surgeries ended up costing me the deadline. But, FO is one of the best games ever, imo. I don't expect many games to hold to that level. I still don't know (and never will now) if FO was an exercise in awesome game design or just a blinding stoke of luck for the devs, really.

Actually I disagree totally, in this specific instance. Time is not like a fake sword in a crpg. TIme for a player is as real in a crg as it is in the real world, IF you force a player to acheieve result X wthin a given timeframe. Granted, the RESULTS of failing will have limited, if any, real world consequence. But the unpleasant feelign of being rushed through something, the fear that you might be screwing it up and making your game experience less enjoyable, would absolutely be there and be very real. At least for me. AGain, I am not saying that all timers would result in this situation, but that would be my concern.

I didn't have a problem with that. Minsc wanted to find Dynaheir. He meakes that clear early on. He gives you time to find her. He gives me plenty of warnign that he is getting annoyed. Then finally he just leaves. No penalty beyond that. I think that was well-implemented as a time sensitive event. Or yours with mine. WHich is fine. We all have different takes on games, sometimes they are widely disparate, sometimes they overlap. I play games.

OK. You also qualified your thoughts by saying this. I'm not entirely sure which bad example you were actually referring to or it it was merely hypothetical. But my concern with the implementation of a timer is that a timer forces me (as the gamer) to play through situations as if they were "real world" when they are in fact not. My purpose in playing a game is to have fun, not to mae rushed decisions or hasty actions in an artificial environment that make the game less fun for me. Now I am not saying that WOULD happen, if the timer was well implemented, but that would be my concern. And I know you are denying the "real world" aspect of your suggestions, but the pressure of time is a "real world" pressure.

I don't know what to say. It doesn't sound like you read much that I wrote beyond the first couple line sof my first post.. WHich is OK. Its sometimes tough to do on a message board. I don't know. I'm already dealing with the ultimate responsilibty of keeping them alive as best I can. The whole stat loss thing seems overkill. If it had a game point like forcing you to spend money on rehab time or shipping them back to AIM for X number of weeks, it would make a lot more sense. Yes, I agree that is irrational and it would make more sense just to reload if I hate that feature. But I don't reload in Jag 2 so its not an option. A dead merc doesn't cost any money. Callous, tis true. Not always. If its my IMP, yeah. That's as good as death. New Game. If its other mercs sometimes I'll keep playing with them, sometimes I let them go, sometimes I quit and start a new game. It depends how I am feeling at the moment. I don't recall doing so. I'll go and look. edit: anyway I'll stop because I do agree that its a good idea for a thread and I'm nopt going to be spamming it.

And you think timers, both general and specific, are a good thing because they add to the immersiveness of a game? makew it more real as in a "real world" sense? fair to say?

OK. So really your point has nothing to do with time limits really, but more just a world that moves onward wether the pc is around or not?

But I don't.... I don't understand why they implemented it though. It doesn't seem to make any sense. True, Deiranas forces take attribute damage also, but that is an essentially infinte supply of replaceable generic troops. I could see it make more sense in a game like XCOM. hmm. I don't reload when a merc dies. My quitting the game and starting a new one is my response to a design feature I think is annoying and pointless. Most of my campaigns end with a few dead mercs. It doesn't bother me. I never complained about mercs dying. WHy do you keep bringing it up?

IS this the main point you are trying to get across then?