Luridis

Yea, I was trying to figure out what you were asking for because the choices they have are pretty obvious and come down to three. One is a time sink, one they're already doing and one wouldn't make sense at all. This post should be merged with the wall of text. 700 words of what a game that's been in development for 2 years "should have".

Looks like Tomb Raider is $4... Might pick it up, haven't played any TR game since the PS1.

If you are talking to me... Well you can take your bizarre hostility and just shove it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do.

The one little bit I stopped to read said something about PnP rules not being ideal for computers. The beginning said something about don't make it too complicated. You do realize that they use PnP systems in CRPGs precisely because they're easier to follow than multibyte values of some kind? The first CRPG I ever played, Might & Magic 2, had characters where the stats were decided by byte values: Level 1-255 Attributes 1-255 Hit Points 1-65535 Etc. I'm glad they gave that up in subsequent games. I for one didn't like the time required to grind through 512 Devil Lords at the end of the game.

Oh, I thought he was asking for attack for attack animations. NWN1 has placebo animations, IIRC. If you're talking about ones that don't actually show action by action then it's probably less work.

Hideous dwarves? Nice elven butts? Consider your character's appearance? We definitely don't want you writing them then. You do realize microprocessors can't have an "opinion" of human aesthetics.

Meshugger, you're looking like a real nut so... Of course, that pretty much applies to anyone who can pull Tom Petty songs out of the blue.

Out of This World? Really? I loved that game... Well after a while. Took me forever to figure out I needed to grab that damn vine! Was so sick of that dog, or Zool or whatever it was. I ran across that tonight going through some stuff on old RPGs.

BTW: Something that always makes me laugh, "Diablo was the first of it's kind." LOL, No... If you think Diablo was original, perhaps you should check out Demon Stalkers and Gauntlet, even though I know Gauntlet recently got remade. Both were dungeon crawls far older than Diablo, and in DS the objective was to kill a big bad demon at the end.

Lots of people here don't like Action RPGs, don't consider them an RPG at all. I am genuinely shocked. The only way to do it in the past was on platform games. Until 3D acceleration & collision detection came around "action" RPGs didn't really resemble tactical. Software rendered 3D environments have been around quite a while longer than they were usable for the more action focused games. Now, what I would consider an action RPG around the same time.

Dodging animations in non-action based combat are a kind of waste of developer time. Non-action based meaning roll vs defense in the background. The tech isn't really there for this either. Why? Look at sword rangers in NWN2: 14 attacks per round. A round is 6 seconds of real time, so that's 2.3 attacks per second. So, the attack & dodge animations would need to go so fast that the character effectively looks like Neo in The Matrix. That is asking for a lot of developer effort for what is a minor flare in combat animations, that could quite possibly look silly, or even goofy when it's done.

Heh. No, you missed mine, which was that modded Skyrim IS Skyrim for PC. Especially a barebones list like yours, which is just vanilla + bugfixes and minor tweaks. Otherwise, you're just playing console Skyrim on a PC. I was just joking around with the second paragraph (though ENB is arguably worth it for the bugfixes and memory management, even if you want to keep the vanilla look). And stay away from my underpants! Plus I think you're missing why some people hate Skyrim (or any given RPG). Some folks automatically dislike single-character RPGs, or RPGs that are first-person, or hybrid RPGs. People will forgive a lot of bugs and even poor design, as long as a game scratches their personal itch. Skyrim was never going to satisfy somebody who wanted an IE game, for example, or somebody who wants C&C (which is probably my biggest issue with where TES has gone). So, what you're saying is that the game the developer shipped is not the game that should be graded? Look, I like Skyrim. But, it also frustrates me to no end because it's less than half as good as it could have been with a little more care. I'm currently playing Risen 3, which a lot of people find terrible. Personally, I don't... but it could do with some changes, like it's terrible action queue and targeting system. I'm also playing Divinity: Original Sin, which I think is a better game, but it too has flaws. To me these are both role & story based games, but the way that they play don't feel similar enough to call them the same genre. Lots of people here don't like Action RPGs, don't consider them an RPG at all. I agree with them and don't at the same time. Action RPG is kindof it's own thing now, I think Skyrim falls into this category. IMO What's the best one I've ever played? That's a simple one to me: Jade Empire. Actually, scratch that bit on Action RPG... I think a better way is just to subdivide RPG into tactical and action and for us to stop being too lazy to add another word to describe what we're referring to.

Yes, and it's going to be near impossible to do that because human sexuality is as diverse as human personality. How do you represent pansexuality or polysexuality in games? Not to mention gender identity, androgyny, gender roles, polyamoury. That's going to be hard to do. I've seen whole movies try this and fail miserably. Just put in a couple of good love stories between two people, and pick their genders based on what might seem interesting. And there's no reason to get graphic and start trying to showcase penetration and oral and all that. Seeing two people make out and then jump in the sack is probably as far as it needs to go. If people need more visual stimulus than that, they need to visit a porn site, really. Just as... lol and example. Look at this girl's fantasy. Yes, that's Cicero... She's hot for an unstable & psychotic clown. You'll never be able to cover all the bases.

Hey... Something I've seen crop up in subsequent comments again: all-or-nothing thinking. Again folks, this is unreality in your mind. Saying that if you examine closely enough you can pick any game to pieces, so it's better not to examine at all is silly. Like any art, minimum standards of quality should apply or we'll start looking at everything like it's a Picasso. Am I saying Skyrim fails to meet any minimum? nope. But, I do think it's pretty far from the best RPG ever made. Last, you can't consider community fixes, like I did, in your analysis of the game as it was delivered. People keep doing that and publishers will soon be outsourcing patch work to the fans. Sorta like Newegg has started outsourcing questions to it's customers. (No, it really has...) No, I won't answer that question so you can fire another person from your customer support team.

No, actually... You totally missed the point. I'm saying that I probably defend it a little too much because I don't play the out of the box version of the game. A version which has thousands of more bugs, mechanics issues, quest hangups, etc. than I experience. Unmodified Skyrim is probably a pretty terrible experience for some. I've tried ENB and other mods so you can get off of whatever farce moral high ground you're trying to construct. The number of mods you've loaded into your underpants doesn't impress me.

Oh, and I do like this point 500metric, from the thieves guild break down: There are so many frustrating things in Skyrim that I find myself asking the question, out loud, "What idiot wrote this? Did he or she even attend school past middle?" That's really sad, sad I am talking about a game designer in a highly competitive industry who is apparently so inept that I'm asking whether or not this person, finished highschool. I'll bet even the greenest of the greenhorn designers here at Obsidian could have done that quest line better. Based on what I've seen in their various products.

You know what folks... I've spent a lot of time here defending Skyrim quite a bit and now I feel I need to apologize for that a bit. There has been a giant elephant in the room that I have been failing to consider when I post, so here goes... I do not play vanilla Skyrim, and the idea of doing such has never really crossed my mind. And, now that I've been thinking of it, for people on consoles the experience is hugely different. At minimum I run with the following: All official PC patches. All Bethesda expansions. Official Skyrim PC HD Texture DLC nVidia Game Optimizations Manual INI entries for shadow map clip range, far plane collision detection, uGridsToLoad=7, huge visible navmeshdetect, etc. (In other words much more of the world is visible and interactive including arrows that will hit as far as they can fly.) All unofficial Skyrim Patches, these are community fixes for literally thousands of bugs, glitches, and exploits; the gravity of change can be seen here. Multiple AI fixes including "no magic 2 meter arrow electric slide dodge" and AI that will actually flank you. Probably about 200MB of community texture, mesh and map changes for models. So yea, to be completely honest I don't play the same game a lot of people complain about. In fact, without the communities work, I wouldn't play it at all.

I can't argue with any point you made. They're all good, but I still find I like the game. Perhaps it's the ability to just go anywhere after the game starts. And, that somehow, my own imagination fills in the details they did not. That said, I also find myself infuriated by it at the same time for many of the same reasons you mentioned. Again, I see a game that could be so much better with a little TLC. Oh, there is one thing I can argue with... There is one NPC in the game who is quite racist and will react badly if you are anything but a Nord, that being the owner of the sawmill in Falkreath's capitol. Edit: There is actually a hysterical bug video on youtube somewhere of the Imperial Legion charging and one of the imperial soldiers screaming, "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" That's the sort of lack of attention to detail that makes me more and more inclined to skip AAA titles every day.

This isn't true, either. He is talking about those Justiciar encounters where you end up finding a note on their bodies specifically outlining an assasination mission against you. Those encounters do NOT occur randomly. They are triggered after your character either 1) attacks a thalmor patrol on the road; or 2) clears out Northwatch Keep (their base); or 3) does the "diplomatic immunity" quest violently; or 4) makes certain decisions during the truce talks. You are likely not correct. (likely explained last) I will post the data from UESP.net and then I will tell you how I verified this with my own test. Name Desc. Req. Thalmor vs Player Three Thalmor Justiciars with an execution order hunt you down and attempt to kill you. Level 8. I started a new game. I opened the console and incPCS a few skills to level 8. I left Helgen and saved at the GuardianStones, no Thamor were encountered along the way. I repeatedly went to the back road into Riverwood. (The left turn on the road to Helgen after the GuardianStones.) I saw which random encounter was there and reloaded so that no Thalmor prior to this encounter were recorded. After about 6 tries I was attacked by a random encounter of Thalmor assassins without ever having encountered them before on the current save. To be honest, I've played through so many restarts of Skyrim I didn't even really need to do this. I've gotten pretty good at guessing just about when and where I can expect them based on when they're up on the radiant AI. Note that there is another one, that some of the game guides report happening only after you've started The Black Star quest line, 2 necromancers attack the player. I have also encountered this without actually starting that quest, and even UESP, which is fairly reliable, shows that condition. So, if I am experiencing something different than the norm, and my game isn't behaving as it should then the only thing I can think of is that something in the Unofficial Skyrim Patches changes those. But, from where I stand and my own testing the video, and you claim were not verifiable.

I'm all for romance in games... romance. Not any of these: Trite and meaningless sexual encounters, seriously... There's this stuff called pornography, and it's much better at this. Example: Witcher 1 Romance dialogues that pop out of nowhere for no apparent reason on characters I barely know and don't really care about. Example Skyrim: Options to romance dozens of nobodys, while the one person you actually spend time getting to know, Serana, can't be married. In other words: build the character and then build the relationship. Romance dialogues that are crafted solely for the purpose of promoting awareness of a particular orientation or to give examples of sexual oppression. Example: Don't have one, but I've heard whispers of it on the rise. I know more about sexual oppression than anything like that could possibly teach me. I'm playing a game, not attending high school sex ed. So, if it's going to be any of those, I'd vote for it to be dropped.

Why am I inclined more towards the first video than the rebuttal? Because the same guy made the video below. And, I've never seen anyone make any kind of valid argument against it. For instance: "DRM sucks, but it's necessary." No, it isn't. And, it in fact does not work, period. Games with DRM end up on torrent sites anyway, so the only people who DRM has an effect on is the people that actually bought it. That stuff is all true, yet morons bring it up again and again saying the opposite as if the more they say "DRM is necessary evil" the more it will become true. It's not, never has been, and it never will be. That's the kind of stuff that makes me angsty: trying say something is perfectly logical, in the face of a reality that proves it is not. Anyway, here's the other video the guy from the first made. Edit: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and someone's going to accuse me of flamebait or trolling.

Heh. Heh indeed! Hey, I said I would try, not that I would succeed. Me calling him Mr. Tool was really about his incessant monologue about how he likes quest markers. I thought that was ridiculous to spend so much time on so I got angsty. No, I do agree with some of what he says, but all in all I think both videos miss the overall problem. It's not about casuals, not about who's no longer at Bethesda. For whatever reason, some terrible design decisions were made across the board. I don't know why, so I'll just blame the PS3, because I like to do that, and unapologetically. :D No, aluminiumtrioxid... I'm not actually angry, just kind of disgusted by AAA stuff at the moment. Mainly because the ones that I think are "okay" could have been exceptional with just a little TLC.

My best guess as to how they could allow it is to setup a custom level load that reads a file for descriptive information. They could even use the EMCAScript Eval("EMCAScript Code Statement") function to execute modder scripts. I've seen posts about people doing it before on the unity forums. If they manage to incorporate it in 5, Unity will hopefully get Mono's compiler-as-a-service for .Net, which does more or less the same thing for VBasic and C#.

RE: Why the Elder Scrolls isn't dumbing down. Something has placed a tap in me for forum commentary the last few days. So, I'll indulge this and at least try to be diplomatic, so many peeps accusing me of being angrycat and all. This is a response to the points the guy made in the above titled video. 1. People that complain about the supposed dumbing down of the elder scrolls series are doing so because their brain is making constant comparisons to Morrowind. This point is conjecture. He even points out, "I know, I use to do it too." He's projecting his own experience on other people. Other people's reasons for complaining about the game may or may not be similar to his, and he has absolutely no way to know that on the larger scale. I actually have played little of Morrowind and my first ES title was Daggerfall. 2. He points out that the state of recent elder scrolls games probably have more to do with Bethesda's poor design choices than some conspiracy on the part of the "filthy casuals." Personally, I agree with him on this 100%. I've pointed out before that I think some of the design choices (removal of notoriety or whatever it's called) were found to make the game feel static in hindsight and replaced with a very shallow mechanic (I got an arrow in the knee.) 3. Bethesda is not a particularly great developer, and compared to other studios they're arguably quite bad. Again, I agree, to some extent. I think they actually have odd priorities that probably make them look worse than they are. 4. The developers have changed through the years. Agreed. 5. Most of the things so-called hard core players are complaining about are complete nonsense. Disagree. Most? As in who most? What research demographic did he use as a basis for this statement? This is his own opinion thinly disguised as a blanket argument without any substance at all. 6. The game is catering to casuals because quest givers can't die. I don't know about that particular reason, I'd call it a poor design choice, but his justification for them doing it is a poor argument because: they could act like followers, taking a knee in until the threat is gone. They could have put a single box in settings that toggled this off and on. 7. Faction Exclusivity His points here are absolutely meaningless. I am archmage, masterthief, dragonborn, harbinger, listener, etc. Mary Sue protagonists are immersion breaking, period. He completely missed the point and went on about the reputation slider, that's not the point, never was... Lack of failure and everyone loving you is naturally irritating to people because we know it does not exist in the real world. Picking sides should have consequences no matter what this dork says. Just because you can game the system when the sliders are near neutral is not a reason to abandon the reputation mechanic altogether, its a reason to redesign it better. Instead, Bethesda took the easy path and just gutted it. It's not about Morrowind comparisons, of which he needs to let go. It's not even about casual here, it's about terrible faction design, design dumbed down, even if it has nothing to do with the "dirty casuals." 8. Interactivity: He says, "If you manage to piss of the Thalmor, they'll dispatch squads of Justiciars to try to assassinate you." Dead wrong. The come, whether you piss them off or not, for no apparent reason at all, just like the Dark Brotherhood assassins. It's a radiant random encounter triggered by level when you're near a random spawn point. He didn't check his facts and he just assumed that was planned interactivity when it is nothing more than silly RNG. He also mentions armed thugs, well, those are actually sent by an angered NPC. But, he just summarily attributes all of these things to player action when it's well documented to be the contrary. 9. Groups and guilds have become more believable. Believable like becoming Harbinger of the Companions when you're already the arch-mage? They hate wizards, but somehow they seem to be completely oblivious to your use of magic. More believable my rear end. 10. Quest markers. His argument fails. He didn't listen to the original video very much here. The original video's objections were far less about the inclusion of quest markers and far more about the lack of dialogue necessary to find what you need should you have the desire to turn the markers off. His argument here sucks and has nothing whatsoever to do with the stated problem. "For every person that says they get more immersion from getting in-game directions instead of a quest marker, I point to this woman." You are a tool, Mr. Video Maker... a tool. You're using one example of poorly written directions to say that the entire idea of questing without markers does not work. Tool... utter tool. I'm sorry, no diplomacy here, he's just talking out his rear and I refuse to take him seriously. My god, he's still going on about it. Stop wasting my time with hollow arguments. Oh, now he calls questing without markers, "archaic nonsense that has no place in a modern game" and thus the truth is revealed: a tool too thick to sort out directions. His personal loathing for not being hand-fed aside, I wonder how he survived before GPS. And still, "I enjoy quest markers." Again, you thick cretin, it was about having enough wording to find them with the markers off. Honestly, that probably had more to do with voice acting costs than casual gamers, but the argument that it does not diminish the game for some people is hogwash. Please shutup about it now. You can't follow directions, we get that, please move on. Alright, I am done he won't shutup about quest markers and I'm just fed up.

LOL! I only posted it once! How do you figure biannually into that! Yea, I saw this and I largely disagree with him aluminiumtrioxid, he did make a couple of almost good points, but failed to point out that they method they used to solve the issue was ill-conceived. But, I will say he did do a good job of putting together a well considered response, it's just not strong enough of an argument.