Keyrock

Oh come now, did you not see the longing glances he and Dr. Beverly Crusher would share?

Absolutely, encounter design is part of it, Vancian magic only compounds the problem greatly. An aspect of encounter design is mindless, repetitious filler combat (which is to say, 95% of cRPG combat). It's such a standard feature of cRPGs and so widely accepted as being necessary (it shouldn't be, but it is) that it would take a revolution to exclude it from games (Help me Torment: Tides of Numenera, you're my only hope). If a developer is going to create a dungeon of any decent length, it's almost as if they have to fill it with a couple dozen filler battles, and with that many filler battles, and with Vancian magic, it's practically impossible to go through that dungeon without copious amounts of resting.

Here is another blasphemous confession: I've only ever played through Baldur's Gate 2 once, and likely never will again. I've played through NWN: Hordes of the Underdark at least 5 or 6 times (I've lost count at this point). HotU is more fun, and therefore better than BG2. (Though BG2 is still a better game than NWN since the OC and SotU bring the overall quality of that game down).

I agree with you, Humanoid. The idea of a party of adventurers breaking out bedrolls and snoozing for a few hours, or even just sitting down for 15 minutes, in the middle of storming a keep is straight up ludicrous. A lot of having to constantly rest, I suspect, is a product of how ludicrously bad a system Vancian magic is.

What if I want a cat companion instead? Why can't I have a cat companion? What does this developer have against felines? Obviously this developer is a filthy specist with a clear agenda against felines.

I'm of the mind that not every player needs to see every last bit of content in a game, or even be aware that every bit of content exists. Alternate paths don't need to be obvious. If a given player only is aware of 50% of the content in the game, that's okay. There's a great feeling of achievement when you find a different way to do something, a way to steer a conversation in a different direction, an alternate path, a different way to do something. I'm aware not everyone feels that way. That's why game mechanics are never one size fits all. Ideally, greyed out dialogue options, skill indicators, and such, would be an option in the config menu you could turn off. I'm perfectly happy to have the mechanic in the game if I can turn it off. The recent trendy game feature is focus mode or eagle vision or whatever, you know, when you push a button, the world goes all different color, and the game basically spells out for you where all the secrets, climbing paths, targets,etc. are. Personally, I think it's a garbage mechanic, yet another hand holding tool making games more and more automated, but I have no problem with it being included in a game so long as I'm never forced to use it. If I can turn it off or ignore it, then I have no problem with it being in the game.

I personally like when they don't give you the skill/stat amount needed, or even the skill/stat for that matter, it just looks like any other dialogue option, and if you don't meet the requirements or fail on your roll then you fail the influence attempt and have to deal with the consequences of your failed attempt. The downsides to this method are: 1) It encourages metagaming and save-scumming. 2) It can be difficult to convey how difficult or preposterous an influence attempt might be without clobbering you over the head with a number. My responses to those two valid concerns would be: 1) People are going to metagame and save-scum anyway if they're inclined to do so. 2) I enjoy trying to decipher/guess how much something would go against a certain character's wishes and nature and how far I could push them and get away with it from what I've learned about the character, their manner of speech, personality, etc.

I am very much against this sort of thing. DA:I is certainly not the first game to implement such a thing, and sadly won't be the last.

The things you describe are called faeries or sidhe and they have very little in common with the Elves. Granted that Tolkien drew inspiration from them, but that doesn't make it his fault that people today took inspiration from him and made it in to something else again. The elves we know today are awful in large part to being inspired by the awful elves Tolkien depicted. You start with an awful base and your modified version is more likely than not to also be awful.

How is that his fault? Elves, as they first were conceived by whatever Germanic tribe, were very different than what elves are depicted as in popular culture right now. The current depiction of elves all stem from Tolkien's depiction of them.

Some more: I wish I could punch J.R.R. Tolkien in the face for making elves what they are now I would rather Dragon Age 3 went The Full Shepard than back to DA:O style combat or the awful hybrid they created for DA2 (though I'll take DA:O combat over DA2 combat in a heartbeat) Contemporary real world setting is much better than the vast majority of settings

Hear, hear.

I didn't think that was blasphemous. I thought the majority of us felt that way? Anyway, here are some of mine: RTwP is actually slower and far more tedious than TB 95% of all cRPG combat is filler and completely unnecessary I often like games that aren't perfectly balanced and have exploits Elanee is one of the worst companion characters ever written Mass Effect 2 is the best game BioWare has ever developed not named "Baldur's Gate 2" The Witcher nudie cards were awesome And the big one: D&D doesn't just suck as a base for cRPGs, it's also a fairly lousy PnP system.

I'm the opposite. When I'm just walking around in a Elder Scrolls game, I like to be in 3rd person, but as soon as I get anywhere near a battle, I immediately switch to 1st person. Way more comfortable for me to fight in first person, whether it be melee or ranged. Frankly, combat sucks in the games regardless of which view you use.

Globetrotting with George and Nico. Good times. I hear you, gramps. I like a fairly firm mattress too. Nico schmoozing up that dirtbag Laine.

That's sooner than I expected.

I didn't think so... but then touch screens are not a positive feature for me; for one thing the level of control goes down, and for another a keyboard & mouse (aside from offering superior control); are a LOT cheaper to replace if they get messed up with finger oils/dirt/cheetoes cruft, and the like. Well, the touchscreen would mostly be beneficial for spellcasting. Trying to draw the spell symbols with a mouse or trackball was an exercise in frustration for me. It would have been infinitely easier with a touchscreen. Ideally, you'd have a touchscreen along with a mouse and keyboard.

Have you thought about running for public office? You sound like you'd fit right in.

Ohhh, I forgot about Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. And Arx Fatalis. Those were pretty bad. Sound in terms of gameplay concept, horribly executed. At the very least Oblivion, for all its flaws and depth-free combat, didn't have realtime classic grid-style inventory management in a game with real-time first person combat. Arx was a top notch RPG with few peers IMO. The game had great art (for its system requirements), and great rule mechanics, conversation, the spell system is unmatched to this day; the undead were actually scary; the stats & skills actually did their job. The spell selection included undocumented spells that the player goes deduce and then use; the secret passages were actually functional and not arbitrary... I could go on... but I'll stop with the note that the banker in town even sold shares in the mine, that you could sell back to him! incredible! *Hell... you could get the bards drunk, and they'd play their tunes drunk & off key. (And curiously, Arx also had the most credible 'jump' in FPS games that I've played) The concept was terrific, but in practice it was terrible. Arx Fatalis is one game that's just begging for a touch screen.

Yeah, I got a kick out of that play on Sonic Youth too. The Secret World slips in a few fun references like that, and nice and subtle, they don't clobber you over the head with them. It's too bad the mechanics of the game are so crappy and the combat so dreadfully boring, because the writing is fantastic, light years better than any other MMO I've ever played (granted, that's not all that many), and better than the vast majority of single player games.

In uniform getting jerked around by the higher-ups: In the field:

Woot! I'm off to Egypt in The Secret World. The best part about Egypt is that it's not New England. I didn't do every single quest in New England, but I did most of them, the solo ones anyway. I could go back there to finish those up, but, frankly, I live in New England in real life, I don't need to spend any more virtual time there. As an aside, I only wear my Illuminati uniform when inside the Illuminati headquarters. Once I'm in the field, I change into civilian clothes. I do still like to wear Illuminati colors (I look good in dark blue anyway), but at least I'm not wearing a sign advertising that I'm Illuminati while trying to blend in with the locals.

Sweet mother of excess, $200 million is one helluva budget. That kind of model is unsustainable. For ever GTA V record shattering success, there's bound to be a handful (or handfuls) of failures. As the budgets climb higher, the failure to success ratio will just get more and more skewed.

I kinda liked Arx Fatalis. I'm not a big fan of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, but it at least had the redeeming value of the hilarious awesomeness that was the Kick of Doom.

I thought the general public ate Binfinite right up? Everybody was all GameoftheYearing it up. I guess that doesn't necessarily translate to massive sales?