Saint_Proverbius

Note to self: Next year, work in a picture of a naked, crippled, retarded person to the gag. On that note, anyone got any naked pictures of Visceris? I may need one in 11.8 months.

Fat and stupid is no way to go through life, son. -Dean Wormer

When in doubt, blame Maldonado. I know I do. But seriously, cutscenes are pretty lame - especially when they involve the character doing something. I'd much rather retain control over my character as opposed to being forced to sit back and watch something that may or may not fit my ideas and goals. KotOR did this a lot, actually. If you were going for the dark side, and were trying to mug someone, many times it would result in a cutscene where your party members would tell the person to run away leaving you with no money and a dark point. On top of that, there's nothing you can do to scold or maim the party members for their actions. We're talking wussy evil here.

Note the sequel is an action shooter for PC/XBox/PS2 instead of a real time with pause tactical game for the PC.

You can keep on saying this, but by your criteria of selling millions of copies, the majority of them have failed and failed miserably. In fact, all the ones that BIS have produced in house have failed to sell more than half that amount. If you rule out all the ones made by BioWare, all of them have failed to do this. Every single one of them. Let's list some of the the "flops" since 2001: Prince of Qin (Though it did well in China) Gorasul (Sucked even in Germany) Soldiers of Anarchy (Post Apoc dungeon crawler) Weird War (Polish CRPG with a WW2 theme) Another War (Similar to the above) Icewind Dale 2 (Even though it had that gold dust D&D license) Freedom Force (You've heard of this one) Summoner (BIG BOMB!) Evil Islands CRPGs with real time with pause that did "okay" since 1999: Dungeon Siege (Though the expansion crashed and burned) Divine Divinity (Similar to NWN in terms of combat) Icewind Dale (BG with less BS party banter and more snow) Planescape Torment (Really neat game, though linear) CRPGs that did SUPAH DUPAH with real time with pause since 1998: Baldur's Gate (BioWare) Baldur's Gate 2 (BioWare again) NWN (Yet another BioWare game) KotOR (BioWare did this too, OMFG, a TREND!) Addendum: Games similar to CRPGs that have failed miserably with the real time with pause combat since 2001: Star Trek Away Team UFO: Aftermath Desperados Addendum 2: Games similar to CRPGs ... that did well since 2001: NONE What does this all show? Well, the odds of Obsidian, a company that is not BioWare is more likely to make a flop by using real time with pause - 4:9 against for CRPGs, and 1:3 against for similar isometric tactical combat. If I draw the line at CRPGs since 2001, the odds are 1:3 that the game won't flop. If we just stick to tactical combat, the odds drop further to 1:4 it won't flop. If they don't make a flop, then they're likely to make a small profit. So, your argument that the majority of the real time with pause games make billions of dollars is flat out horsecrap. You're been pwn3d. Take a bow.

The best part is, that even in the context of your posts, they still sound just as idiotic. Meanwhile, you've failed to prove that it would. On the other hand, it's been shown by countless examples that real time with pause and real time CRPGs do fail. NWN and KotOR are exceptions, hardly the rule. After all, the vast majority of CRPGs released now are real time or real time with pause, and only a few make money. Uhhh.. The same thing can be said about you. Baldur's Gate was D&D. NWN was D&D. KotOR was Star Wars. All of them came from the same brand name, too. Even BIS in it's hay day couldn't match the sales of BG with their IE games, despite having the same combat system and same license. Go figure. Descent to Undermountain anyone? D&D Heroes? Icewind Dale 2? You can also tell that to Atari, because at this time, they've halted production on making D&D CRPGs including a Ravenloft game that was in the works. I don't think any of them actually failed to make a profit. What does coming from Europe have to do with anything? I doubt the vast majority of gamers have any idea where developers are located. Oh, and Prince of Qin wasn't from Europe, it was from China's Object Software. And while I'm at it, the reason you can't name many is because they flopped. You're the one that brought Diablo up in the first place. As Iolo said, that 24,000 number came from Carsten Strehe on DAC talking about Silent Storm's sales in Germany alone. That number is also very questionable considering he also said that the developers of Silent Storm might be forced to close down since the game is selling poorly. In reality, that game was developed by Nival Interactive, a HUGE software studio in Russia that owns a big, four story building and an annex. They have such a big property most likely because they make LOTS OF MONEY. Given the range of sales of the real time with pause thing range from millions of sales(which really only happens if your company's name is BIOWARE) all the way down to a couple of copies versus turn based games generally selling 100k-300k+.. I think I'd take the sure bet thing with the turn based title. You said it yourself, turn based CRPGs are a niche. Market may be smaller than those that buy the BioWare games(and typically only buy the BioWare games), but that market does tend to turn out to buy games in enough numbers to make a nice little profit. Meanwhile, your Diablo clones and IE clones tend to falter and flop.

Might as well toss out IWD series, ToEE, Wizardry series, NWN, and so on then if you're going to toss out those.

No, it just means you can't do the same thing with different systems, which is what you originally said. If the outcomes don't match the events, then they sure as hell aren't the same thing. The fact of the matter is, you can't just take every option from a turn based system and make it real time and expect everything to work just fine. And thus, you'd end up with different results. That doesn't help your case, it hurts it. And if the goblin you cleave is to the left of the goblin you killed with your natural swing while the goblin you're going to great cleave is to the right of the first goblin or behind you? UH OH! Another problem. Yet having multiple swings for cleave, great cleave, attacks of opportunity, etc is unrealistic, but magic is realistic. Gotcha! Perfect sense! You listed a few divergent results, nothing more than that. One more time, if the results aren't the same, then there's a problem. Those feats can't work like they do in turn based because of timing. That's why the IE games drop any attack passed the fifth one and why NWN fudges up the Combat Reflexes and Cleave rules. This would be passed time for you to just admit that you can't have everything you can have in turn based in a real time with pause system.

I think I clearly showed what was wrong with having everything happen at the same time by pointing out the divergent results. Furthermore, I could add that real time combat with a ToHit roll system also created problems with ranged weapons. In turn based, this isn't a problem, but in real time.. Well, say you fire an arrow at a thief at the end of a hall corner. You fire, score a perfect hit roll, but at the same time, the thief runs around the corner. UH OH! What do you do now? Most likely, that arrow will be rounding a corner or passing through walls to meet the target that the hit was scored on. That's the easiest and best solution, even though it's hideously unseemly. The same thing could be said about a fighter slapping a teleporting mage or any other event where a roll is calculated to determine an outcome that takes any amount of time to perform. Sequence actually allows a statistical model with random probability outcomes much better than real time. It's always going to be a problem because in real time, you're never going to know when to speed up and when not to speed up during that round. Say you have the fighter with the goblins again. The gamestate isn't going to know the outcomes of all those rolls, so it's not going to know how much to speed up the animations of the fighter for in order to fit all that in to the 6 second round. The fighter takes a natural swing, hits, kills a goblin. Then he's ready to Cleave. If he hits on that cleave swing, only then is he able to do the Great Cleave swing. Each swing is what determines if the next will happen, so you can't just fluidly do the entire thing at once in real time. It's an impossibility. This affects this which affects this, all outcomes have to occur in order and wait for that order. ... Magic isn't unrealistic in a fictional setting? Do you need time to look up the meaning of the words fictional and realistic? And actually, turn based does a damned fine job of mirroring what goes on in real combat. When one combatant is on the offensive, the other is typically defending - that's how turn based works. I've already listed a few feats that will screw up real time. Next?

I'm sorry, you didn't bring it up to suggest that people should make games like Diablo instead of turn based games because Diablo sold so well? Then why else did you bring it up when you mentioned it was bad for developers to make turn based games as opposed to games like BG and Diablo? It was released in North America. It actually did make money in China, though, where the game is set. So? The real time with pause thing worked. Isn't that what sells big? Hardly. There's Divine Divinity, Harbinger, Lionheart, Gothic and Gothic 2, Arcanum, Blade and Sword, Arx Fatalis, Morrowind, Dues Ex and it's sequel, Mistmare, Pirates of the Carribean, and probably a few more I've forgotten. Do you honestly think BioWare couldn't release a turn based game that sold millions of copies just based on their name alone?

Which is why he says it doesn't count. Anything that basically screws his argument up doesn't count, like me pointing out that Diablo clones don't sell well at all. Oh yeah, and it should be TTB, for Tactical Turn Based, since Strategic doesn't fit the context of what we're talking about - tactical combat. But, that's ShadowPaladin in a nutshell.

Actually, you brought up Diablo about 6-7 pages ago. If you want to bring it up versus the sales of ToEE or another turn based game, I think it's entirely fair to bring up that it's clones haven't sold worth a crap. As for copying the IE, what about Prince of Qin and Gorasul, which were IE clones? They tanked. Two of the studios that have managed to make money off IE style gameplay to date actually used the IE, BIS and BioWare, and even then IWD2 tanked. About the only IE clone, as in not actually using IE itself, I can name that's sold really well is Dungeon Siege.

A better question would be to ask what games haven't sold at all and what combat modes did they use when you're assessing risk. Another better question would be how many of them there are. Like I said, you can say Diablo 2 sold better than ToEE until you're blue in the face. That doesn't change the fact that just about every single game that's copied Diablo 2 has bombed and the list of those bombs is quite lengthy.

My suggestion for making this forum at least moderately more interesting would be this: Every Friday, you put MCA in a different slinky dress and make him dance to the tune of Peter Gabriel's Shock the Monkey on a live webcast. For variety, you can broadcast it live from remote public locations.