Diogo Ribeiro

The Portuguese team's failure seemed to be caused by their lack of knowledge of themselves. It's as if they had not trained together. We had the individuals, the method, the play style - just not the team. Not only that, when you see things like Fernando Couto dodging the ball that gave Greece their first goal like a fat cat being shooed by their owner, with no effort into trying to stop it, you can't shake the feeling of wrongness with the team. On better news, Denmark rocked the house today.

Yes. If you helped the plant by finding it a new spot, it would tell you the required chess move. When you used it against the radscorpion, he'd go ballistic, cursed the plant (if i recall correctly), and attacked you.

Splinter Cell. Thief 3: Deadly Shadows also has a similar lockpick mini game. Wizardry 8 also has one, one that i find more entertaining than the other two examples.

Actually, the cheater was the player, as he/she could be told the chess move that would vanquish the radscorpion.

Hence, why i dispute it. Truth be told, i'd dispute it anyway, even if some unnamed group of people claimed it was something undesputable, so i'm just playing the part of the opinionated ****. No doubt. My point was not to imply or claim otherwise, but rather, point out why player-driven elements like mini-games aren't usually associated with an RPG, and are usually something alien to them. EDIT: Fixed the url tag, which i have no idea how it got there.

And yet, you point out yourself that it was, quote, an "FPS with RPG elements", not an RPG.

Why can't they be? Likely because most 'mini games' are elements which rely upon a player's skill instead of a character's skill. Success in a mini game is mostly achieved by you, not the character; and a given rule about RPGs is that success in them should be achieved by a character's possibilities and skills, not 'twitch skills'. The thing with mini games like a swoop race is that you're not winning the race because of your character's skill; you're winning because of your reflexes as a gamer, because of your own personal skill. Watching the race being played by itself wouldn't be an attractive feature for gamers, but that's not quite the issue. You can draw comparisons between two different types of minigames, the one that's player-driven and the one that's character-driven. The player-driven is the one that exclusively relies on what you, as a player, do, and it does not matter what character you're playing. This type is likely what Drakon is against. The character-driven type is the one that takes into account your character's possibilities and skills. Examples would be Neverwinter Night's drinking contest, where the higher your character's Constitution score, the more he can drink. Another example would be in Fallout 2, in Broken Hills, where you test your character's skills against the mad scientist's radscorpion. Your character's perception, agility and intelligence (and gameworld knowledge) are tested. As far as i can tell, Drakon is against the type of mini game that disregards, or is not built to take your character into account; in essence, purely player-driven ones.

Javelin Chameleon. Eh? Straight outta Rockman games, 't seems....

Shapeshifter. Hmm.

Don't forget orgies and dancing midgets.

Granted. Like i said, i didn't remember of any particular event, as its been years since i've played it.

Thats somewhat similar to John Romero's story, isn't it? Only except falling into evil, he fell into relative obscurity.

Coma fits quite well in a fantasy game? If you say so.... Anyway, the romance felt disconnected at some points. Using coma, or any character-disabling event, as a means to expose some character's motivation or feeling that he was unable to express until then was badly pulled off. Come to think of it, until that particular scene, i can't recall of any event where Squall actually hinted he liked Rinoa, wheter in dialogue or thought, yet he crumbles as she goes veggie. Not only that, the romance was terribly cliche. How many times have we seen silent, angsty teens depressed about everything, and girls with a high tolerance for being mistreated, all the while making advances towards someone who doesn't give a damn about them? The 'romance' reeked of south america, drama-dripping soap operas.

Its good to know i hold such a great place in your heart. <3 Vollie.

I think this can go both ways. In the beginning you might need a droid which can help you familiarize with planetary regions, alien languages and diplomatic resources. But you also might need a combat droid. It depends on how diplomacy and combat are included in the game. If the earlier areas include enough situations of both diplomacy and combat then its just a matter of letting the player decide which to take. However, if the game will include overal more combat situations (which i'm inclined to think), then you might need a combat droid early on, and not just towards the end. Of course, what you could do is to give players more ways of droid customization, so that he the customization, plus its growth, can lead him into being a good backup in earlier battles, an adequate fighter at mid levels, and a walking behemoth of destruction towards the later stages (should you feel so inclined), without necessarily sacrificing the diplomatic aspects (supposing they'd be used, anyway). Even taking into account player skill to determine the level of the droid's usefulness, why would a lower PC skill would allow me only to construct a standard protocol droid? A combat droid, or any kind of droid used for combat, in theory, should be easier to build than a protocol droid. A combat droid has to know how to operate a weapon, a protocol droid has to know how many languages? How many pieces of information regarding customs or geographical information? Still, I'm supportive of the concept, though. I think giving players a droid which can be customized for different needs would make certain elements in the game more interesting and possibly replayable. A droid could help in many things, some of which already described above. Also, to avoid getting a "be all, end all" droid, we could decide wheter to take a customizable protocol, or combat droid, instead of just taking one that could be all.

If thats true, i certainly could've used some of those robes whenever i had to take exams.

I don't think so. The romance felt contrived. It had its moments, but not enough to be called the 'best romance in any videogame'.

Thats not a bad idea. Although if its being based on a skill, then this suggests the higher the skill the better the chances of creating a better droid. This might lead to players keep on raising the skill to a point where they might effortlessly create an uber-droid, and worse, that by the time they make one, they won't need it. Regardless, the concept might work, still. Assembling a droid would be interesting. Perhaps even decide what kind of behaviour modules to install on it, or even decide to switch certain parts of it to handle certain situations (like inserting regular arms to hold weapons for combat situations, or give it work droid parts to do menial tasks like carry heavy items, etc).

I don't particularly feel Irenicus to have been good or bad. I think he had the potential. He had the motivation, and somewhat intricate at that; his actions, however, just felt somewhat erratic. As for villains one could sympathize with... i'd have to throw in the Master from Fallout, but also Kerghan the Necromancer from Arcanum. Ravel as well.

I don't think the romance should advance by means of full control of the PC, but neither do it i think it should solely depend on NPCs. A combination of PC-driven interactions, as well as NPC banter, would likely be best. I'm not keen on having to prod romanceable NPCs for reactions, just as i don't want them to be prodding me at inconvenient times. A combination of both methods (self-initiative and NPC initative) would likely provide a better development and timing of the romance. O'course, if you really want to improve them, ditch them all togheter. Best improvement it can get.

Nope, it is not ALWAYS bad, just must of the time. Quite true, unfortunately.

Aw, shucks Seriously though, i also like Briosa. While i haven't met him for that long, he strikes me as someone honest, credible, intelligent and humble. He's Portuguese also, and that's icing on the cake B) .... must not... unleash... unholy wrath....

You could point out that the Codex has an extreme point of view, and associated reactions (likely just as extreme as sites that do virtual handjobs to certain companies and devs). Then again, the site's theme is precisely that. The site has a staff, and various regulars, who tend to dislike mainstream games, and certain attitudes within the gaming industry, which pretty much is the reason why they (me included) tend to "crack down hard" on some people, and situations. But its not really about entertainment, as far as i'm concerned; its about a community with a certain attitude and outlook, like any other community with a certain attitude and outlook. That we get entertained in the process, however, is a different thing

Well, the lack of criticism on my part comes from a somewhat simple set of reasons. For starters i'm fairly new there and am not that much of a regular user. What little time i spend there hasn't given me any insight which would lead me to have criticism of it. Also, i don't know the vast majority of people who post there. Hell, off the top of my head, i only know Volourn, ShadowPaladin, slowtrain, taks, Zap$$ter and Gromnir. I probably know someone else, but can't seem to remember anyone for now. And what little time i have spent there hasn't been enough to give me knowledge of others' personalities either. (Note that i'm saying i know these people in the sense of knowing them as best as one can over the internet, and with minimal contact; aside Volourn, i don't talk much with the other people i mentioned, mostly because of a lack of points to discuss, or simply because i'm not exactly great "buddy" material, or even because i haven't spent enough time around them to loosen up.) This isn't to say criticism of the forums isn't warranted or not; alls i'm saying is that i haven't found anything there that could lead me to make criticisms. I could dish out some form of criticism if i was more acquainted with the forums. As such, i could point out some things i personally feel to be wrong with forums i visit more often, as i'm better acquainted with what goes on there, and with its posters. EDIT: Tried fixing quote tags. EDIT 2: Damn. And Azael is there as well Forgot about him

Your loss. I assume you'll unfortunately keep on repeating yourself instead of forgetting the matter, then? A shame, that.