Slowtrain

Master of Orion.

That's what I said. Indeed, my objection was with the "options and possibilities" line. I suppose I should have said "Ergh, sorry not only was Wizardy 8 slower and more ponderous than anything to with FO3 VATS, but..." Also VATS was optional, the borked combat system of Wiz8 was all there was. Protect, defend, attack, cast spell, pray, change formation, use item, equip, move, beserk, breathe, banish... *shrug* Wiz 8 had more options than most crpgs do. VATS has exactly 0 options. WHich was my point. Nothing more. Certainly wasn't meant to be a referendum on Wiz 8 specifically. I remember when you played Wiz 8 through, I think it was back at the Lair. I remember you had a lot of issues with the combat system. Some I agree with; some I don't. But I do agree, as I said, that it was a slower and more time consuming and ponderous system, than VATS. But many other TB systems aren't. Which was my larger point.

That's what I said.

FO3 VATS is slower and clunkier and less interesting than any TB system I've ever played, and that goes back to those grid systems in Star Trail and Blade of Destiny. The only game I can think of with a slower and more ponderous TB system is Wizardy 8, but at least that had a lot of options and possibilities. Its actually kind of interesting. VATS pretty much destroys the notion that gamers won't play TB system because they are too slow. Just through in exploding heads and flying limbs and assorted nasty bits and gamers will play anything.

It's stupid. WTF is wrong with people they they need to see **** exploding all the time. But as long as its optional, then no problem.

The bigger problem with the Witcher is the grindy combat, much of which is optional, and the inventory system, which is mostly ignorable if you don't use much alchemy. Both have a much much larger impact on the game than the sex stuff and boobie cards.

Ummm, that's a miniscule and almost completely ignorable part of the game, except for a few key relationships that occur as part of the main quest. One of the problems with the whole boobie card thing is that it generates some much discussion that people jump to the conclusion that it is a major aspect of the game. WHich it isn't. Not even a little.

I wonder what the rationale was for making every single VATS attack a slomo event. To me, on the surface, when coupled with the ludicrously violent animations, there appears no point except to rub the players face in violent animations over and over again. But maybe they were just thinking of how to do some sort of bullettime-esque feature and over did it. Also, speaking pragmatically, with the amount of combat in the game, it must be rather wearisome to use VATS all or most of the time. But again, it is optional, which is really the best approach.

As long as it's optional, I'm ok with it. But I am curious about the rationale behind the endless reptition of extreme slomotion violence that is VATS' hallmark. Frankly, it does feel a little disturbing. Or boring. I can't decide which.

Vault Assisted Targeting System, or something, iirc. Not that it matters. But yeah, the violence. There's a certain humor in the ludicrousness of it all, the cyber-spectacle of pinwheeling limbs and whatnot. Plus, I think the transgression of social boundaries, within safe confines, plays a part in the appeal of viedo game violence. But what gets me in FO3 VATS, is the slo-mo and the repitition. It's just not that funny. Or interesting. For more than a few minutes.

Yes, you're incredibly deep and nothing comes close to the standard your massively intelligent brain demands. We get it. *shrug* If that's the way you want to look at it, it's cool. I've played a lot of games that I like, most of those, such as Jag 2, XCOM, Wizardy 8, don't really have stories, just rules and objectives and gameplay. Computer games don't need stories to be fun. They need gameplay that holds interest in some way. And when games do get a heavy-handed story treatment, the result is almost always quite painful. Not universally so, true, but it's the exception that proves the rule. edit: And just to point out I haven't actually made any remarks (at least not recently) one way or the other about the story of DX3. Perhaps it will be awesome. Perhaps not. I don't really care. I'm more interested in the gameplay, specifically, how removing skills will affect the complexity of the game.

Its easy to say when you've played hundreds of games that seem to regard saturday morning cartoons as deep and complex narrative.

VATS is so broken it's beyond fixing. But as long as no one is forcing me to use it, then it doesn't matter. edit: if the slowmo could be removed it would help a lot though.

I agree with this, and its the key point. Back in the days of Invisible War we were told exactly that, that the skill system of DX would be folded into a complex aug system that would more than make up for the loss of skills. AT the time, being young and impessionable and naive as I was, I believed them. Ooops. Bad move on my part. I see no reason why I shoudl believe exatlcy the same rhetoric, when the gamin climate is even less conducive to making interesting games than it was when IW was in development. One of the things that made DX interesting was the interplay between augs, skills, gear and mods as you built your version of JC Denton. There were an almost infinite number of choice son how to do it.. In IW, there was no interplay with anything. None. Even the ammo was all the freaking same. It was nightmare of streamlininng and uber-simplification to the point of utter boredom. If DX3 REALLY has a complex aug system then yes, it could make up for the loss of skills. If it were up to me though, I'd keep the skills and the augs because we know it works.

Going to Invisible War for your inspiration is like going to Daikatana for your inspiration. Much better to forget either game was ever made and go look for something else as the wellspring for your gameplay concepts.

Too bad the way IW did it, didn't work. Ooops. Bad choice, guys.

The only one I might agree on was SH vs Power Recirc. Power Recirc was so important for late game aug usage that it was pretty indispensable for any build. It should have been paired with something equally critical. CS vs MM was a player choice on melee vs other builds. CS made you pretty impressively powerful in melee combat. I almost always took ES over Regen. Regen was a nice luxury but hardly neccessary. Of course no augs were really neccessary, except Power Recirc. I always thought one of the great things about DX was the way you could choose, skills, augs, gear, and mods to create all sort of interesting builds. IW completely missed the concept and I'm pretty sure DX3 will as well. edit: I think pairing power recirc with regen would have made a nutbuster of a choice for most people. Even thpough I rarely used regen, I realize how much others did.

In DX? Which ones are those?

Just when I believe you've run out of images, no, I'm proven wrong, once again.

XCOMApoc had very good combat but so did 1 and 2. 1 was somewhat unbalanced in the end game, once you had certain items everything became super-easy. Terror from the Deep reamains to me mind the most difficult and demannding of the the three XCOM games in terms of combat. Missons are long, enemies are tough, the weapons and items are very balanced and success in combat requires a real combined-arms approach, no uber "press this to win" button. Not a game for sissies, that one.

That's a good point, and I agree. Sometimes cutting/simplifying stuff off does help improve a game. I'll try to keep reminding myself of that.

"Streamlined" sounds a lot sexier (it's like an F-22!) than "now playable by chimpanzees". So streamlined it is.

Either Obs or Beth obviously doesn't believe adding descriptions adds enough value to be worth doing. In a sense they're right of course. Is someone not going to buy the game because it lacks item descriptions? Probably not. Don't get me wrong. I love item descriptions, but I can see why the devs wouldn't bother. Maybe in afew years, as game development becomes more standardized and a greater emphasis needs to be placed on subtle additions to the game, then maybe we'll see a return of item descriptions.

Better you than me, G1.

the way I see it, we all ready know mostly what NV is going to look like: FO3 wasn't the prettiest game on the planet but it was good enough. With the short dev cycle and the fact that NV is not FO4, to expect anything other than basically the same visual experience is not a reasonable expectation. NV appears at this point to be more than meeting expectation in all areas and exceeding it in most. In the end that's all you can ask for in this situation.