Slowtrain

I always wished that as well, but it would ruin the point of having clans in the first place since they are mostly defined by their discplines. Besides, obfuscate, potence, and celerity would be a little ummm unbalanced, don't you think.

I would define gameplay as interactive stuff that you can do as part of the gameworld. That could be something like creating a spell or simply swimming. I love swimming in games. I did in Thief and I do in MW. Any game where I can't swim gets a minus 5 points off the top. I also love climbing and breakign in through second story windows. ME has no climbing of course which has always bothered me. Reading is not gameplay (to me). Reading is completely one directional, from the designer to me. My input doesn't matter and has no effect. No interactivity.

OK. That I agree with. But that's a little different. Sure the medium has a ton more possiblity than is being even remotely utilized right now, but I think that's is to be expected. Until the environment created by games approaches 100% real in terms of input for all 5 senses, the push for increased sensory realism will mostly overshadow the push for story. And even then, a with game 100% sensory realism and an awesome story but with no gameplay isn't a game, its a movie. Whcih we already have.

Custom spell system, Custom weapon system, custom alchemy system, widely varied skill tree with no class restrcitions, huge number of things to find, puzzles to solve, places to see, flying, swimming, the list goes on. There's far more gameplay in MW than in most games. And its pretty open-ended to as to what you do with it all Fair enough. I usually forget about whatever story I'm supposed to be paying attention to pretty quickly. Regardless of genre. In Far Cry for example, not that FPS are great examples of story-games, I was always thinking about how to get from one point to the next without being killed while gawking at the scenery along the way. Every once in a while this guy named Harlan would buzz in on my walkie talkie and the only thing I ever paid attention to on that was where the next objective way point would pop up. Then I would head that way and shoot anything that moved. Stories have been part of human existence since our ancestors made cave paintings on the walls of their condos. That wasn't really my point though.

Well, only in the sense that MW has a ton of gameplay but characters and story aren't so great. SO if you are into gameplay I think you will find MW a very rewarding and involving game. If you are into story and vivd characters you probably won't. Dooesn't make one better than the other, but the oppostion is pretty clear even from th emajority of posts in this thread.

Exactly so. I never understand why people talk about stories in games. What do games do that are unique to games? Well, they games let YOU play, interact, bend things, break things, whack things with a stick. You can get story anywhere, good story, bad story, indifferent story whatever. But you can only get gameplay from games. Why make a game that is all story/text/reading? Makes absolutely no sense. WHen I want story I read a book, or watch a movie, some sort of ppassive linear narrative experience. When I want to do something that allows me to um do something, I play a game. I don't ever want my games to become books. And I don't ever want my books to become games.

Its a game, Mr Khan. I don't want to care, I want to play. Not that they have to be mutually exclusive to be sure, but given limited time to spend on implementing all of a game's features, I'll take gameplay over characters anyday. Give me some plastic cut outs, but just let me have fun with them. If I want to care about some characters, either fictional or non-fictional,I'll read a book.

Gangrel aren't nearly as powerful as they would appear to be with their combination of fortitude and protean, although if you max them both out and max your unarmed skill they are pretty touch and can take damage. Mostly as you point out their hand to hand attacks are so slow, and if you are going to play Gangrel you are almost locked into unarmed since why bother with a gangrel if you're not going to rip things apart with your claws. Far and away the best unarmed clan is Brujah, followed by Nosferatu, Toreador, Ventrue, Gangrel. SOme disciplines are just a wee bit unbalanced for the game (hello, celerity!).

found it: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdeusex/to...073&tid=1768900

What kind of laptop? WHat are the specs?

Wow, hold it there miss. If Planescape: Torment wasn't a good story, then what is a good story for an RPG? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Where did I use the word story? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No need to be a smartmouth. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No smartmouth here. I ws merely noting that tere is a difference between "story" (ie plot) and the writing that conveys said story. Plus PS:T has a lot of writing that has nothing to do with the stoiry arc in the first place. Thirdly: my primary point was not about the poor and self-indulgent writing (hello Reekwind! wtf? ) but that the most seriously interactive aspect of PS:T is moving the scrollbar.

Wow, hold it there miss. If Planescape: Torment wasn't a good story, then what is a good story for an RPG? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Where did I use the word story?

In PS:T you could pretty much remove every game feature except the badly written page after page of text and have virtually the same game. Ergo: PS:T wasn't a crpg; it was a book. And a badly written one at that. Wot a chunk of poo.

For me the heart of a crpg is free-form adventuring. I recognize that is not everyone's cup of tea, but probably its my old skool roots that just won't let go. A story is nice and stuff, but as long as there is new stuff to see and do, characters to level, and monsters to slay and spells to cast, I can do without much of a story. Linear story games can certainly be fun though. The original System Shock is a masterpiece of linear FPS actioon/adventure gaming. But I would hope that there is room in the world, and appreciation enough, for both.

Master of Orion Stars XCOM Jagged Alliance 2 EF 2000 Fallout Warlords 3 Daggerfall Thief System Shock System Shock 2 Close Combat(s) Wizardy 7 X2 The Threat

I really don't see the need for both DT and DR though. They basically do the same thing so one of them should be able to cover both. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I gues really its a matter of preference for complexity and control? The more variables you can affect and change the more interaction there is with a game world? I don't know really. But generally speaking, the more games thoroughly model something the more I enjoy being a part of it. I mean theoretically you could simply get away with saying this weapon does ten damage, this armor absorbs 2, so pc takes 8. And in some games that would be completely sufficient. But I grew up on turnbase combat games, and I think that broke my brain.

I kinda do, too, but what's done is done.

I could see why that might be a problem. Does anyone smell burning...hair? lolol

But isn't that more just an issue where the values attributed to the various armors are unbalanced but the system itself is not broken? Also what was your thinking behind removing DR from the armor system?

I see your point, Spider, and I don't disagree with it as long as AC (a not very descriptive term, I agree) is kept as seperate number that remains outside of the DT/DR of the armor. SOmething that the pc can change as they develop. To me it makes sense to include an value attached to an armor as part of it, but I'm not married to that. From my point of view, the actual value that a piece of armor adds (or doesn't add as they case may be) to the AC is not that important. What is imporant, what I see as working so well in FO, is that the AC exists seperate fom the DT/DR. Whether that AC number comes from armor or agility isn't so important. I think a good armor system should make several checks on an attack. 1) Does the attack hit. (AC) 2) If the attack hits how much is deflected (AC/DT) 3) After deflection how much penetation power remains (DT) 4) How much energy is lost during penetration? (DR) A system like D&D isn't so good for that because who want to make 50 rolls on each attack. But in a system built for the computer the CPU has no problem making multiple checks. FO is one of the few games I've played that takes advantage of that. (yes, its true I'm one of those people whoa actually read through all the attack tables at the back of the Master of Orion strat guide. lolol)

clock speed isn't as important as how many operations per clock tick.

The more individual aspects about your player-character, the more choices you have. If those choices reequire hard-thought trade-offs so much the better. By breaking defense out into three seperate categories that affect different areas, one gains a great deal more player choice. That seems pretty straight forward to me. I'm not saying your system wouldn't have worked or wouldn't even have been totally awesome. I am merely saying that of all the games I've played FO seems to me to have the most interesting and flexible armor system and then I tried to explain why.

I would agree with this, but to me it doesn't indicate a broken system. Rather, it indicates to me that AC is not properly balanced with DT/DR. The benefit of the +15 AC of leather armor vs the +6 of metal armor is not even close to the value of the 5/40 DT/DR of metal armor over the 2/25 DT/DR of leather. For those people who have a leather fetish (hello, me!) and loved wearing the leather jacket for the whole game this caused a great deal of trauma (and reloading). If I were going to tweak the FO armor system, I would increase the usefulness of the AC number as well as having more stats and skills that could affect it, but still keep it seperate from the DT/DR of the armor itself. On a side note, I would also decrease the usefulness of the PAs. However that might just be personal because I don't like them and I refused to wear them. AT the very least you should have to carry around several thousand small energy cells or something. lolol. I hadn't thought about the stealth penalties since those are really outside the AC/DT/DR system, but yes, I do agree with the heavier armors giving sneak, lockpicking, pickpocket penalties, maybe even direct AP penalties. Plus perception penalities for the PA's or anything else that covers the head. Also chr penalties for walking around in PA since you look like a buffoon. But back to AC! But here you are basically limiting the player character from doing anything with stats and skills and items that has a countering effect to the attacker's chance to hit. Especially since in a turn base game no target is ever actually moving, there needs to be some way of abstracting that. The AC number is something the defender can affect to make herself harder to hit, but not to damage. Armor should be a part of that AC number, but not the only part, and probably not even the biggest part, although depending on character build it might be. Indeed in FO a character with 7 or more agility gets more benefit from that than from the AC increase of metal armor. Again, I am not saying the value of the system don't need tweaking. They do. But the system is not b0rk3d, I don't think. Yes, that's true. But metal armor has a substially smaller bonus than leather armor. And as I said earlier, armor IS combat clothing, that is what it is built for, all armor should give some sort of AC bonus. Those bonuses have to be measured relative to one another not to an absolute state of not having any armor at all. Tweaking down the PA AC values is probably agfood idea though. I do agree that was a problem. It reduced player choice in the game. I will sorta agree with this. Yes, DR/DT could work to make players invincible but criticals were so frquent that it didn't matter too much. Also because of the 5 different damage type, your pc might be highly resistant to one but not others. For example, one of my favorite builds for a pc was to take three levels of toughness and the chem resistant trait. By taking one dose of psycho, with a reduced chance for addiction, my pc had an 80% DR to nornal damage. This is how I got my leather jacket only characters throgh the game, lol. But of course that was DR to nomal damage only and was worth diddly against plasma and lasers and rocket launchers and what not. But I loved the fact that having AC/DT/DR as seperate entities allowed me to bild a wide and disparate group of player characters. I would have liked to have done more with straight AC but that just wasn't possible, sadly. This I will agree with. Was Power Armor overpowered? I don't know really. I know I didn't like it, mostly because I like to roleplay light on their feet player-characters and the PA's just don't fit that idiom (so to speak), and since I never used it my games were much harder. But I can't complain about it really since it was my choice to not make use of something the game was balanced for. I did give it to Sulik in FO2 because I couldn't see him wearing it so I would forget he had it on. If I were going to tweak FO's armor I would probably reduce both the DR and DT of the PAs. Well, FO and to a slightly lesser extent FO2 have ways around most of the combat. Which was great! And when you did have to fight againt the high end enemies there were perks and ways of building your character that made those fights winnable even without the PAs.. Were the fights harder without the PA's? Very much so. ANd I think that overall is quite proper as a goal, but that doesn't mean the FO armor ystem is broken, Josh . AC + DT + DR rule. Chnage the values but not the concept. I think (duh)

Thank you for cutting this out and moving it, helpful unknown mod/admin person. I was feeling a little guilty about going so far off topic. But I like talking about this kind of stuff so I couldn't give it up.

punch the box then crouch. Its not even slightly hard. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ohhhhh, now i get it! all that time... :"> thanks. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I f you crouch you only have to worry about the low beams because you will pass under the high ones. At least that's how I always do it....