AwesomeOcelot

It's not programming work (excluding scripting) that's the source of all the bugs, or even most of the bugs. I think every developer that has budgets over $10m has QA, but it's never enough for the scales of games we're talking about, most developers couldn't possibly do testing in house. Also it depends on the game, multiplayer games and RPGs need a lot more testing. Even Dragon Age: Origins didn't have that much depth in terms of RPG elements, Jade Empire was even more simple, more linear. I haven't played Mass Effect yet, but I saw a lot of complaints about Mass Effect 3 around the internet on games forums and youtube. It's not absolute but it might as well be. Find me developers that could do this that aren't Blizzard or BioWare. It makes a bit of difference when the developer merges with one of the biggest publishers around. Independents have a different experience with publishers. Good luck getting funding for the next project if you aim for Christmas and miss.

One of the main reasons I couldn't play Far Cry 2. Crysis 2 isn't that bad compared to Far Cry 2 & 3, but yeah, before the aliens and the technical problems at the end, Crysis is the pinnacle of pure FPS gaming for me in terms of gameplay, but it's also still a damn beautiful game, it's a pity they decided to go in many different directions for Crysis 2. You can have first person animations that don't break gameplay, Tribes does it, it's not even like it would be more difficult to do it the right way. This and quick time events, completely ruined FPS for me.

The opposite in terms of failure, smaller teams are far more risky. Larger teams to need proportionally more management, that doesn't scale evenly, it's way harder to coordinate design and style with larger teams, I find that smaller teams produce games with a more consistent vision and style. With larger teams, you can lose a few people and it's not a disaster, with smaller teams, if you lose someone you're going to have a hard job finding a replacement, an even harder job getting them up to speed. Publishers insist on gimmicks and multiplayer, box checking features, things that take a lot of time for little benefit, time that could be spent making a better game, they often take over QA and then the developer gets blamed for how buggy a game is, I think backers will always be sympathetic to release dates slipping as long as it's measured in months not years, that happens with publisher backed projects, and a large sentiment from gamers is that they'd rather get a good game released later than a buggy mess released for Christmas, but publishers don't see it that way.

Path of Exile?

Oh there will be a massive leap, around the 2nd generation of next gen games. ...which we won't see prior ~2016. My understanding right now is that Next-Gen games currently in development are hybrid titles, being made for High-End PCs (and later ported to PS4/Xbox Next as soon as they have close to final DevKits) and of course current gen consoles, to minimize risk in case people won't immediately switch. I think you could say that about the Xbox, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U, since AMD and Nvidia moved into the console space, high end PCs have been used to test and demo console games, I'm pretty sure some of the original Xbox devkits were PCs, the Xbox 360 devkits were Macs, because of the almost identical hardware. I don't really buy the rhetoric about how launch titles don't make use of the hardware and that it takes the next generation to really see what the hardware can do. The Xbox 360 launch titles were a massive leap compared to any Xbox titles. Project Gotham Racing 3 looked a lot better than PGR 2. Launch titles can be pretty rushed, they're definitely not going to be the best developers could have done, but I don't see the massive improvement from launch titles to titles that are released at the end of the console's life. It has way more to do with who developed the games, and what kind of sacrifices they make with freedom and other areas of fidelity like resolution. I expect the PS4 and Xbox 720 to have at least 4GB of RAM but I think 8GB, DirectX 11 type shaders, all games to run at Full HD 1080p (I don't believe the rumours about Ultra HD/4K), much larger levels and textures. I wouldn't be surprised if both have 8 core processors, 4 at the minimum. Neither is going to blow people away that have seen a high end PC, but that's always been the case. The biggest changes in this generation should be what Sony and Microsoft are doing with internet stores and DRM against pre-owned discs. Sony will probably try to do something stupid with their controllers.

You are confusing failure to sell with failure to create. The point of KS is that games get funded, so that's not an issue. Assuming you can plan around your assets, which some/many can't. And then the project fails. I didn't mention sales. But you did mention cancellations. An AAA game doesn't get cancelled because the publishers suddenly decide the professional developers forgot how to make games. It does get cancelled if it starts to look like it won't meet its budget, or the publisher want to "concentrate on established franchises". Of course it's unfair to compare KickStarter projects to AAA (I hate that term), that's an nonsensical arbitrary stipulation. Publishers don't tend to give AAA budgets and teams to leads that haven't developed games before, the teams are by definition much larger than KickStarter project teams, you're not going to get all the same problems just by the nature of the size of the projects.

You are confusing failure to sell with failure to create. The point of KS is that games get funded, so that's not an issue. Assuming you can plan around your assets, which some/many can't. And then the project fails. I didn't mention sales.

The games that fail wouldn't get publisher backing, that's why they're on KickStarter. These problems happen with publisher backed games, delays and cancellations happen. You could say that the majority of failures from KickStarter wouldn't have happened because publishers would have seen that they were likely to fail and would never have backed, so it's not guiding influence that's the difference. The influence of publishers apart from the money they bring is bad, they ask for gimmicks and multiplayer, they expect unrealistic release dates, they cancel projects.

That's not the inventory management. That's the economy part of the core gameplay, and only exists because you want wealth in other parts of the game. You can't take that out of the game and still call that a game. For a start, the inventory management system doesn't include stuff coming into the inventory or going out, that's a part of the core gameplay, the economy systems of the game. Just think about trying to take that out and make a game by itself, if you have to add things to it, then it's clearly not a game by itself, therefore not a minigame. The Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Bioshock minigames? You could easily take them out and play them on their own. Technically correct, the best kind of correct. To involve intensely? I must assume that you're the one that doesn't know the definition. That **** does not involve me intensely, it's not engaging in the slightest. Perhaps you can't accept that other people get engaged by different things, I don't know.

The arguments that have been dismissed still apply to this game, whether that's lost sales or non-target markets. People who would not buy the game do not effect anything. You can't just go "these don't apply anymore, I don't care for logic". We were promised DRM-free, we get DRM-free. DRM does absolutely nothing to stop piracy for single player games.

Most developers are really bad at keeping the community informed with updates, I guess they're not used to having to do it. I don't think the estimated release dates on KickStarter are real, it's probably KickStarter's fault, because obviously a lot of those games greatly surpassed their funding goal, therefore much bigger games, but twice the money doesn't mean you can develop a game in half the time, so those release dates should only count for the project without stretch goals. Of course developers should be way more upfront updating the status and releasing real estimated release dates.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution does gameplay options well. I find most games have terrible difficulty options, I usually stick to "normal" because harder levels of difficulty usually mean "everything is now a damage sponge", a lot of the time it's not any harder, just longer. I really like meaningful difficulty levels, like New Vegas's hardcore and iron man modes. Options are great, I really wish the hacking in New Vegas was just a skill check, the minigame is painful, it doesn't make any sense either. The hacking minigame in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is quite fun, I would have probably played it just on its own, although its used way too much, and I never wish to play it again. Having the option to remove annoying things makes good games into great games, especially for repeated playthroughs. The more options the better. I don't understand why people want to force others to play games the way they want, it doesn't harm anyone if they turn off friendly fire, it should be up to the player.

I'd be surprised if any of the 8 games I've backed fails. All are being developed by studios that have launched games, all have at least one lead on a launched product, and all got about 200% or over funding. A project I backed launched when it didn't have any of those points in its favour, so they're not a requirement. Smaller teams of 3-5 are vulnerable. Teams that don't have experienced leads don't always manage time and resources well. Projects that just meet their goal don't have room for errors in rewards or development budgets. Developers that have never launched a game might struggle at the polishing, testing, crunch period. If I was going to back a game like that, I'd only back it for 15$, and would half expect it to fail. I consider KickStarter a huge success, if you just count Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, Chivalry, and FTL but the games coming next are even more interesting. Only 73 games have been funded for over $50k, I wouldn't even count games under that as failures if they don't launch.

I would really like holding a key down to show the paths characters are taking, so that I can use way points to make sure they don't do something ridiculous. So many games, so many needless deaths.

tetris*

Really. So I take it the inventory management interface is a minigame, too, because you interact with it and things happen. You could take that out of the rest of the game and try to get items from one part of your inventory to another and have a ball all day long. The inventory tetras in Deus Ex is similar to some puzzle games, but most inventory management systems, no. For a start, there's no "try" in getting items from one part of your inventory to another. If there wasn't enough in this thread showing you have no clue. You still haven't changed the definition of "engaging." You didn't find them "enjoyable." And if you can quote me stating that people must share my opinion, I'll buy you a puppy. Just because you disregard facts before you reply doesn't mean everyone else must. No, I didn't find them engaging, just because you can't accept that doesn't change reality.

No. Yes they are, and they would would function on their own, that's why they're minigames. I did not find the Fallout 3/Oblivion lock picking minigames engaging at all, just because you liked them doesn't mean everyone else must.

In how that possibly relates to game development costs, apart from them going upwards because it takes more experience and man hours to do that then create a game using prerendered assets. I hate to break this to you but real-time 3D still needs animators, actually it's harder to animate in a real-time 3D engine because you have to code for things you could just preset for prerendered animations. Some people claim, like a few people on Wikipedia, that simulating a 3D perspective in 2D is called 2.5D, but that's not its common usage today, and I don't think it ever was its common usage, it's hard to find references to 2.5D in respect to isometric games or parallax scrolling games for that matter, I was a fan of the SimCity and Sonic series in the 90's and no one ever called them 2.5D, never heard it in relation to the isometric RPGs that were made from 1996 to 2004 either. Wikipedia is not perfect. Perhaps it's a non-English speaking reference, possibly from Germany or Japan? I have only ever heard 2.5D refer to two concepts in gaming: real-time 3D games like Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams or Ancients of Ooga that are restricted to 2D gameplay, and games that mix 2D prerendered backgrounds with 3D models like Resident Evil, The Longest Journey, and Grim Fandango.

2.5D as it's meant with Project Eternity is not also known as isometric, they're referring to completely different things. Fallout and Arcanum aren't 2.5D, they're 2D using prerendered 3D models. It's not more expensive to use prerendered characters compared to real-time 3D, I don't understand your point about GPUs at all. You don't need to prerender every armour and weapon combo, that wasn't the case with Fallout or Arcanum, there were types like two handed rifles in Fallout using the same animation with the weapon sprite rendered separately. Project Eternity will be using real-time 3D models.

They broke Far Cry with a patch, and Far Cry 2 was the worst FPS game I have ever played.

You can postulate about a as of yet unknown type of minigame all you want, until you give examples then your criticism of me not exploring actual possibilities is hypcritical. When you're interacting with object you're not moving around, that doesn't make it a minigame. Dialogue is applying the core gameplay rules to an activity, where as mini-games are adding self-contained, game within a game, non-core gameplay. In dialogue systems of RPGs, it's not about how you select options, it's that they're applying an RPG system like SPECIAL to dialogue. A good way to test if it's a minigame is if you take it out of the game, does it still make sense as a game by itself. That NCR quiz in New Vegas? A minigame. Dialogue can include minigames, but it's not usually a minigame. You keep using the words like deeper, engaging, and dynamic, they certainly don't apply to the lock picking minigames I've found.

OK, I have got to stop, I've got 78 games I've accumulated on Steam since 2006 that I haven't touched, I always mean to get around to them but then I play Fallout: NV, Medieval II: TW, CS: S, or Tribes: Ascend.

Being promised 92 virgins as a reward would hardly qualify an action as selfless. Not all suicide attackers have believed in an afterlife.

More XP and you can't be realy evil. You can be a selfish as****** and still your karma is high (defender of the wastes) The only way for the game to recognize you as evil was the childkiller or slaver perks in F2, but then you just miss half the content of the game. Or to go on a rampage and wipe out entire cities. Thats not evil its lunatic I didn't really need my evilness recognized by the game in terms of karma or some meter like in the Star Wars games or Fable. In the original Fallout, I could be evil in a number of ways, and get a lot of stuff, it's a trade off between that and XP. I don't necessarily want communities to know I'm evil if I leave no witnesses or no one witnessed my crimes.

One of the worst things to do is reward people for playing a minigame, you get a Deux Ex: Human Revolution scenario, it's not truly optional if there's a reward for completing it. I can't see commanding units from a top down view being at all good while still being a minigame, but I'd be fine with a game having two different types of gameplay, like the Total War series, or Brutal Legend, although obviously not this game, because it was pitched on Kickstarter. The thing about minigames is that I can undoubtedly play a full game with similar if not identical gameplay, so why would I want that gameplay in a RPG? That's on the off chance that the gameplay in the minigame is something I'd want to actually play, a lot of the time it isn't.