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crakkie

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Posts posted by crakkie

  1. ^ Wrong. How about a Shadowrun game set in 1972?

     

    Richard Nixon is a warlock, the monsters all wear flares and you can tear about in a Ford Camaro with laser guns on the hood. Groovy.

    would be boss. Maybe with more gearhead+Bond gagetry in your vehicles and cheesy 70s technobable instead of cybernetics and lasers. The designers will have to nail the puke green color scheme of the interiors, and research proper cloth simulation of 70s shirt collars.

     

    I dunno. Shadowrun needs some kind of history erasing refresh to address how convoluted the setting has become.

     

    I really want a Rogue Trader RPG more than anything.

  2. Wow, I've still got Gamma World (1mil rads to these reviewers you speak of).

     

    I gotta say, with Eberron, Dark Sun, and now Gamma World-- WotC is at least picking their most interesting settings.

     

    Now if only 4e wasn't so awful and they weren't trying to nickle and dime people with their thousand and one power cards, miniatures, battle maps, 3-part core rulebooks, etc..

     

     

    ...but I'll probably still get this.

  3. I've played plenty of RPGs that had a tacked on story that led me from point a to point b. It didn't stop them from playing and acting like an RPG in every other respect, just with a story and plot progression that could have been much better. And a precious few RPGs have had an open world.

     

    Story involvement and backtracking and open world and C&C are all nice aspects of any game really, especially RPGs. When folks talk about a game having 'RPG elements' they aren't referring to it having a protagonist who's the main character of the game's story or even whether you can do something to affect the story. They're talking about:

     

    having a selection of abilities, upgrades, and customizations that you can pick from and that alter what the PC can do and how well he can do it;

     

    the progression of your character's abilities throughout the game to a level more powerful than where he began.

     

    Recreating the PnP experience in a game is impossible, and that's never really been the point of CRPGs. And as for a literal interpretation, you play a character that has a role in the story in most games. So just rename CRPGs to character customization and progression games. That way you can define the character-building strengths separately from having a great story that involves the character, choices that affect the plot progression and outcome, great writing and characters, and exploration. All of these are nice to have in any game, but having one of them in any game will not prompt anyone to claim that your game has 'RPG elements'.

  4. I'm only an optimist compared to all you jaded cynics. :p

     

    So having a character and making meaningful choices. What about character advancement and stats, are they necessary?

    I would say that they are the only things necessary, especially given your examples. The ability to customize your character's abilities and having those abilities advance throughout the game is the only thing tying all of those titles together. There are no branching dialogs or meaningful choices in Diablo 2 or FF. There is very little exploration in DX and ME (to consider the Mako secitons to be exploration is a painful idea). Diablo 2 gives you several different builds of characters within each class, allowing you to attack baddies in a good variety of ways. RPG inventory is a method of character customization (getting a new weapon in an action game isn't really the same thing, since the weapon itself is usually all or nearly all of the gameplay). Stats are just a representation of how you have customized your character's abilities and skills. Party selection is character customization, since the party itself becomes your character. The story is important, but most of the time it just needs to keep you motivated enough to continue through the next level, on to some more advancement and customization opportunities.

     

    Choices and effects are nice, but they are a separate principle and don't imply customization or vice versa. If an FPS allows you to make a choice on level 6 that will affect whether you go to level 7a or 7b and gives the big baddie at the endgame a different exposition, is it suddenly an RPG?

     

    That's probably why ME2 is so effective. By downplaying its RPG fundamentals and concentrating on choices and shooting, it comes off as an action game with a level of C&C and character interaction never seen in an action game before.

  5. Fallout 2's dev time was about 1.5 to 2 years I believe. In that they added the car, new companion controls, a gameworld twice the size of the original (both world map and visitable locations), dense and complex areas like Vault City and New Reno, new guns/armor/weapons/talking heads, and even had time to add far too many easter eggs, too much goofy floating text, and an awful tutorial level. They should have an ample amount of time to make FONV, if they use it well.

  6. Will we ever have an MMO thread without everyone coming in here to say how much MMOs suck and how they would never buy one.

     

    You seem to care awfully much about something that you supposedly don't care about at all.

    It should be blindingly obvious that it's because "Fallout" is in the title, a game that many people who hate MMOs care about. How obtuse.

  7. . The game of... centripetal force-based warfare? I was expecting a little indie-time waster, but it has a great story, interesting central-Asia-in-the-sky setting, brutal AI, huge selection of weapons with different strengths and weaknesses (and sockets), several game modes. You can really feel the impacts from a solid strike with a hammer or direct hit with the mortar. The programming seems a bit shoddy, with no widescreen and a bare minimum of audio options (very much want to turn off that stupid laugh), and some goofy UI issues. The demo for it is ancient, by the way, from over a year ago when it was called Hammerfall.

     

    Definitely glad I grabbed this over Torchlight, which I'll wait for a sale on.

  8. These days you can't make money selling users a single game through a retailer - unless its a best seller. You need to offer a product that gives you a constant stream of income - either via a monthly feee (i.e. WOW) or a constant stream of expansions that are so low priced that a fan of the game finds it hard not to purchase it.

    Games are still sold through retailers without DLC or subscriptions and make money without being best sellers. NWN2 had 3 expansions.

  9. I don't care if the choices that a company makes nets them more sales and makes them more money. I have certain requirements and desires that I want in a product. I will give money to a company that produces such a product. I'm a consumer not an investor or a cheerleader. It's in my interest for a company create the game that I want with an IP that I like, new or old. It's not my concern if they get a 10 to 1 return or go bankrupt.

     

    You assume that the company is actually dying to get your measly $50, when they could get 1000x that by making a game that appeals to a wider audience.

     

    Companies don't make stuff to make you happy, they make stuff to make money.

    I didn't assume that. Their balance sheet and how successful they are are not my concern. I don't buy things to support companies or to make them money; I do it fulfill my needs. Should I care about Michael Bay's success from his creative interpretation of the Transformers IP even though the films didn't interest me? 'Companies exist to make money, by making products that people want' is half of capitalism, and not being a company that sells things, it isn't the part I care about. 'Consumers exist to purchase the products that they need and desire' is my half. I don't exist to support for-profit entertainment companies. I buy their products that interest me. If producing something that I do not enjoy and thus will not buy makes them a lot of money, it isn't my responsibility to begin desiring the product that they are producing. That's as absurd as thinking that they exist to make me happy.

     

    In the end you're going to end up either lowering your expectations or not playing any more games.

    I wasn't only referring to games, but I find enough that fit my expectations. Do you assume all consumers' needs aren't fulfilled?

  10. I don't care if the choices that a company makes nets them more sales and makes them more money. I have certain requirements and desires that I want in a product. I will give money to a company that produces such a product. I'm a consumer not an investor or a cheerleader. It's in my interest for a company create the game that I want with an IP that I like, new or old. It's not my concern if they get a 10 to 1 return or go bankrupt.

  11. FYI most srs bzns PS3 developers do not in fact use the OpenGL ES implementation on the PS3. libgcm is the "closer to the metal" API that is generally more commonly used.

    Skool'd. Thanks for the info and insights.

     

    So, since you're feeling talkative, what makes Onyx better suited for (some of) OE's RPGs than UE3?

  12. The PS3 uses OpenGL (ES, customized for the PS3). Unreal Engine 3 supports OpenGL. This new Crytek3 Engine supports OpenGL.

     

    There is still the decision whether or not to port an engine to another platform, and to provide all of the maintenance and support that the port will require. Game engines do more than display things in 3D, and porting all of the other systems (audio, windowing, scene management, networking, input) to another platform isn't always trivial. Even with OpenGL built in, if it still isn't cost effective to build and support a port on linux flavors/mac/whatnot, then it won't be done.

  13. How so? Unreal3 does both DX and OpenGL. So does Gamebryo. So does Unity. It's pretty silly not to unless your engine will be only for 360 and/or PC.

     

    But just because their engine supports OpenGL doesn't necessarily mean that they will be releasing their games on PS3/Mac/Linux/Wii.

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