Slowtrain

How much money did Obsidian waste developing AP and the Aliens crpg? Didn't Bioware completely reboot Dragon Age at some point during development? I think a lot of financial loss in games development occurs due to poor or unfocused internal processes.

Game developers spend too much money making games. *shrug* Eventually like every other industry they'll either get their budgets in line with reasonable expectations on returns or go out of business. If the big ones fall, small developers will move in to fill the gap. I see no reason why I or any other gamer can't criticize them for Day 1 dlc or whatever else we want.

Yeah, he kinda put down the concept of High Fantasy/Dark Fantasy, fantasy in general. But his review of the actual game was quite positive. I'm amazed he actually spent 25 hours on the game. That's gotta be some kind of record for him and crpgs.

Why? He liked it.

When did JVC leave the M&M series? Did he work on it until the end? Because it became a embarassment in the last couple games.

I agree that unless it is something that is likely to affect sales numbers significantly, it is not going to get much consideration, especially if it is complex to implement.

It's not as easy as "just add more options" unfortunately. Definitely. But some things, such as turning off the quest arrows in the HUD in Oblivion couldn't have been that hard to implement. Having that option, and others, would allow more tailoring of the game experience.

Yep, that was awesome. I used to play with Game Diffculty on Normal and Combat Difficulty on Rough. Not that either did that much, iirc. The game difficulty just nade your skill rolls harder to hit and the combat difficulty gave a damage bonus to enemies. Still it was nice to be able to affect 2 sides of the game independently. I've alwasy been a big believer in giving the player as many options as possible to affect their game experience. I'm actually a bit puzzled why more game developers don't offer options of the sort. It would reduce player complaints, if nothing else.

You might be right. Definitely with the 2x multplier for the head. I could never quite figure out how the damage that JC did was calculated. Like Flush I never played mucgh at the other difficulties though since Realistic was so ideal for trhe DX experience.

I think Alan is right about DX. Realistic gave a 4x damage multiplier to enemies damage. Which when combined with the standard 2x damage multiplier for headshots, gave enemies damage an 8x multiplier on headshots. Which made most weapons instantly lethal on headshots, even the wimpy stealth pistol.

This was when Visceris still had his 'tude on. I miss the old Judge.

I'm not watching it, but I'm still sorta paying attention in case it seems to be getting better.

Yeah, I know. But the show was putting me to sleep. The potential for characterl death always invigorates the push for survival.

Awesome. Does the game have one hit kills? On both your pc and npcs? MAybe on hard diffculty? It could be possible, depending on your spec. This game is going to be awesome. Can't wait.

It's called Fallout 3 for repercussions of stealing in someone home/store. And I am pretty sure NWN2 cut down on this as well though my memory may be a big foggy on NWN2. Fallout 3 had more crates than any game I've ever played and you could take whatever you wanted from 90% of the shelves in the game without penalty and on most of the remaining 10% the penalty was so nothing that it didn't matter. Not sure what fallout3 you played but not the one I did. You steal in front of someone in their home/store it usually ended up in a fight of them defending their property. You steal when no one is looking you lost karma. Repercussions as I said. Yeah,. not sure what Fallout 3 you played but I took stuff right of the table in front of people and a lot of times no one even cared. Any other time, as long as they weren't looking you could clean them out. As far as the karma hit goes, well, karma is pretty much completely meaningless in FO3 so who cares.

If that's the case, I agree. Anything can be done badly if it is poorly balanced: too powerful, too easy, etc. The Gifted trait in Falllout 1/2 is a prime example. However, the concept of using stats, skills, and other aspects of the player character to influence the game, inckuding conversation and social relations is pretty important to a crpg. Otherwise you['ve just got an action game.

It's called Fallout 3 for repercussions of stealing in someone home/store. And I am pretty sure NWN2 cut down on this as well though my memory may be a big foggy on NWN2. Fallout 3 had more crates than any game I've ever played and you could take whatever you wanted from 90% of the shelves in the game without penalty and on most of the remaining 10% the penalty was so nothing that it didn't matter.

I don't understand why one would be opposed to using stats in dialouge or a persuasion skill. Isn't that one of the things that makes an rpg versus say a shooter?

Stuff in crates has been an rpg staple for years. So is walking into people homes and rifling through their shelves. And a host of other bizarre activities. I wouldn't be opposed to a crpg that had the stones to take this sort of stuff out, but it's not really worth complaining about unless you simply hate every crpg ever made.

I just saw the preview again but this time with the volume up. Nevermind. It's fake mayhem. Has anybody died since the senator dude closed the leaky shuttle from the inside?

I just saw a preview for this weeks episode. Looks like there's going to be some mayhem. I might watch this one.

Also, Fallout 3 and Oblivion are hardly what I would call "balanced" anyway. Don't know about Mass Effect.

Awesome. Does the game have one hit kills? On both your pc and npcs? MAybe on hard diffculty?

I think it really depends on the nature of the difficulty. There's difficulty that people find challenging/satisfying and difficulty that people haphazard/frustrating. Fallout 1 is a pretty easy game, but when you die in the late game, it's usually because of x3 damage armor-piercing critical hits. They are haphazard, cannot be planned for (outside of simply avoiding being hit), and are frustrating. If you didn't have critical hits like that though, late game characters would never take any damage. It kept a threat level in the game; you always felt vulnerable, no matter how powerful you were. Which is pretty important for a combat game, I think. Maybe gamers don't like that these days. I recognize that some gamers always want to kick ass right from the start and never take a point of damage, but I don't think devs should cater to that mindset. If gamers are really bent on being gods they can just cheat through in god mode or something.

So they purposely made extra work for themselves because the felt nobody would ever want to reenter the Keep they just bought and quested through? C'mon. *shrugs* They probably just didn't think about it, Or maybe they meant to and forgot. Maybe it's a bug. Mybe they are planning a second dlc that actually makes it re-enterable or something.