Diogo Ribeiro

The same kind of respect you show to others, right back at you.

Chances are it's all incoherent gibberish, anyway.

I just keep a medium to long distance and shoot while on the run. I don't always hit, but I don't always fail either. Metagaming would be making calculations and tests to see where the bullets fly off (if you remember bullets would go into different directions in a small arc that represented his chance to fail) at different skill levels so I can adjust accordingly when using the weapon. I don't do any of that. In real life I'm in control of myself, not overseeing an avatar that is meant to be its own individual. JC can't properly handle Assault Rifles whereas I can. JC is his own character, he isn't aware of what I know. The very existence of such a blatant recoil is to suggest that the character of JC is separate from me in several ways.

Not that safe of an assumption, really. In Realistic, hostile perception is somewhat more accurate than on lower difficulty levels.

I agree somewhat, and hence why I said to remain as separate as possible. I know full well it can't be completely separate. Your point is fine but I must confess I don't understand why you're telling me this. Even forgetting the past conversations we've exchanged about this, I also mentioned in this thread that I have no qualms with this. What I am pointing out is that if you want to have the player's own skills factor into the game, then do so without some arbitrary character system that skews their efforts or that renders it partially useless - or vice versa. This is why I've mentioned Deus Ex was a good example when it came to movement, since the absence of a character statistic permitted a much better flow between the notion of character improvement and player skill. There is never the case when JC is too slow to move or dodge because he has an 8 in Dexterity. JC is as fast as the player that controls him, which is fine. Not everyone's cup of tea but then again no game ever is. And it certainly won't stand the test of time since at one point older gamers may not even come back to the game at all since they no longer required the necessary reflexes to get into it (which is another plus when it comes to separating both player and character, but I digress). But if you're going to build a system where the player's skill is going to be directly tied to a character's own statistic or skill, then you should be aware that this might bring problems. In the case of Deus Ex this is manifest in several weapon skills, due to so many time tested gameplay realities that I'm surprised some people still have a hard time understanding. All I'm saying is - the parts that work are good, the ones that don't entirely work need some revision.

I mentioned two distinct scenarios, firefights and stealth, in two different ocasions. In fact, the possibility of firefights was brought up before stealth and when stealth came into discussion it was to illustrate a point, it wasn't particularly related to the previous example. You were the only one who assumed as much. When fighting any opponent with a ranged weapon at a fairly close range in the game, reflexes are always present because dodging enemy fire and targetting hostiles depends on the player's reflexes - since the notion of fighting implies action between opponenets and the very simple concept that opponents' reflexes are present in their reactions to each other's movements. Unless a player is standind still and trying to shoot someone, and even then they're shooting back at hostiles. If neither reflexes nor skill are required to shoot back at enemies, then do explain what is. His proficiency is not at stake. The player's ability to override restrictions to limits in those proficiencies is. If the game tells me JC can't handle a weapon's recoil, I - since I am perceiving the gameworld and it's rules through JC - shouldn't be able to handle recoil as well. And I can't to an extent, true, but I also can - oblivious to the game system - override it myself by pushing the mouse back down as the Assault Rifle goes up, producing a motion that nullifies most of the recoil penalty. Or I could trace a projectile path on a hostile's body so that the bullet trajectories get most of the body (ie, aiming at the legs and firing so the bullets will go up and through legs, torso and head as the natural recoil movement is applied) instead of just aiming at the torso and see half the bullets sprayed fail their intended target. Simple fact is that if restrictions are necessary then the system should allow the player to negotiate these restrictions through the game, not through actions that the game cannot recognize - and Deus Ex can't, at least in this aspect. If the game system tells me that the avatar is weak at handling a particular weapon group, then why am I able to use them just fine by going around the penalty applied? If I can negotiate the recoil penalty with my reflexes for a specific type of rifles then where is the penalty or the notion that the avatar is weak at this weapon group? You were the one that bestowed me with Counterstrike skills, not me. I always said this was open to everyone due to its ease and obviousness. I doubt godly skills or a PhD is required to figure out that if the weapon recoil makes a weapon go up then I might just counter that by moving the mouse down. Moot point since I didn't question that the system was working as intended. I'm quite sure it works as intended by the developers - just not as it should for players since there is no reliable limitation on a specific weapon skill handling. The character restriction is in place, the player penalty is in place - yet it's lacking something that prevents the penalty from being compromised by players. You were the one who claimed I had leet uber skills, not me. Why should I present evidence of something you claimed of me? I guess this must be another of those newfangled attempts at wittiness or originality I've been hearing about. May I expect some of those avant-garde "your mom" jokes from you next? When someone isn't answering my points in spite of them being clearly laid out, chooses to selectively read what I write only to try and make some half-hearted amusement out of it, and goes for unappropriate innuendo when they're confronted with the fact that they're (repeatedly) lying about what others are saying, they're very much acting the part of the troll. Or they may just be idiots who think their bloated egos deserve some kind of audience, but I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and consider you to be the first rather than the second.

Funny thing, I just searched the page for entries of "unaware" and it turns out I only see one such entry and it's in your post. Show me exactly where I wrote 'unaware'. Or alternatively, provide some actual argument instead of assuming how I am playing the game - especially when you flat out ignored that I said moving now, but managed to remember I said moving further down the line when you find it funny to claim I have Counterstrike skills. But not always, which is my point. I would, if the required skill wasn't at the hands of just about everyone. And there's nothing but your word to support its inefficiency. I tried it and managed, and can repeat it whenever I want to. Anyone that has hands instead of stumps can do this since it doesn't require greats feats of dexterity. So, whatever? I would suggest getting some game capturing software myself so I could show this within the game to everyone but I know you all too well to even accept the possibility you're in this for actual discussion and not pedantic and puerile trolling. I'd like it better if you stopped assuming you're wittier and funnier than what you really are because judging from the lack of poor judgement and selective reading that permeates your posts, nothing justifies that smugness. Then how did I get by the majority of the game with stealth and taking advantage of these blind spots most of the time? Why is it often impossible considering it was designed that way to allow stealth players to advance through the game? Let me guess - you tried it and it was inefficient and there's nothing to go by this except my word, and the words of everyone who can do - and has done - the same as me.

Shooting at moving targets is not reflexes? If you say so. A system that is meant to limit a character's choices because his skills are low shouldn't allow players to bypass it. Otherwise there is no point in such an arbitrary limitation because it's either not working or is working against itself. Yes, I could shoot moving targets that way. And I spent no points at all into firearms other than the game automatically allocated (which was one point for Pistols, if I recall correctly). Nothing to do with supplementing his poor skills with some degree of player ingenuity. Unless you want to tell me that countering the machinegun's recoil and accuracy by simply dragging the mouse down - in the opposite direction of the gun's recoil - and thus removing any deficiency associated with using it at poor skill levels is some form of "strategy"? I made no complaints about Denton not being an 'unstoppable killing machine', so I'd appreciate if you wouldn't try to stuff my mouth with your words. So, your claim it was often impossible simply isn't true.

You'll note I'm not asking for player skills to be removed altogether nor for a PC in a CRPG to be automated; the simulation of personality is always required and that requires player input. While we would probably disagree on just how much player skills are required in order to infuse personality in a CRPG character, I'm simply pointing out that there are issues when both things are allowed to clash together and that they usually tend to bring down the importance of a character's role. Because of this I'm suggesting that there should be an attempt made to at least make the entity of the character to remain as separate from the player as possible so as to avoid this issue.

There's always LARPing, I guess.

I think it's unreasonable that the game gimps the character because he hasn't enough points into a skill but the player can go around that point shortage by way of reflexes. I remember steadying the sniper rifle by forcing the mouse on a circular pattern that did away with most of the wobbling given to portray lack of skill. In the earlier levels I could easilly do this. Enemies have certain blind spots in their line of sight and general perception, so much that I can be crounching and walking right behind them without them ever noticing me. Not so much in the later levels, but still. I feel otherwise based on the examples I gave throughout the thread but to each his own.

All firearms had a given amount of reloading time along with other modifiers (speed, accuracy, etc.). This could be improved via Denton's increased expertise with firearms and/or modifying firearms to become better. I didn't found a problem there, it felt fairly balanced. I had more issues with the game telling me Denton was weak with pistols but I could just run up to an NSF trooper and compensate for his lack of skill with a close range bullet to the head. Not much of a point in improving a weapon skills if I can just circumvent the skill system entirely by running up to an enemy at close range and whamo his weak body parts.

Spoken like a true Obsidian board patriot. Which is to say like a self-serving jerk, jerk.

Troika did a lot of things right in their CRPGs but breaking new ground wasn't one of them. They only thing they broke was their games by allowing ambitious design to get in the way of planning, playtesting and meeting deadlines. And I'm as close to a rational and fair Troika fanboy as you can get.

Having discussed this very same thing time and again, especially with Hell Kitty, I have to agree that immersion is largely in the eye of the beholder although I suspect if we went by the word's definition we'd probably shatter many of the ideas surrounding what it actually is. However, I can never find any kind of coherent argument that proves the triumph of firstperson over thirdperson as a more immersive factor in videogames. Even disregarding that 'immersive insofar as videogames are concerned simply denotes the quality of something that captivates the player to a point where the line between fiction and reality blurs, I find there's absolutely nothing that firstperson does better than thirdperson when it comes to interaction, story presentation, roleplaying, or much else. Crafting a role is achieved by making meaningful choices, interacting with characters, developing a personality - not by watching the character's arse or only seeing his desembodied arms or floating sword flailing in combat. A firstperson shooter has no merit or improvement over a thirdperson one if the underlying game mechanics are still the same, and the ability to roleplay is likewise uncompromised by wheter I'm looking at - or through - an avatar. Deus Ex was a great game that would work all the same in thirdperson. Trying to save Paul's life from a MJ12 raid would mean the exact same thing in first or thirdperson, and would not be better or worse in terms of character development because of how the player looks at the characters playing through the script. Fallout was a great roleplaying game that would not gain anything from a roleplaying perspective by showing the Master in firstperson. I'm sure someone is going to say 'realism' but that remains a pretty superficial analysis, much like that of realtime being more 'realistic' than turnbased - window dressing for the mechanics buried behind the facade. Realtime is rather unrealistic if the opponents in a combat situation present unrealistic behaviour like shoothing themselves face to face until one's hit points drop to zero, just as firstperson in itself doesn't suggest to me one speck of realism as it's just a different kind of way to look at the same unreal worlds of always.

Boas Festas!

Funny thing, the third time I played the game from start to finish I used bleem! to play it on PC (the first and second were on the original PSX with a japanese and later PAL version) and it worked very well aside some minor graphical artifacts (caused, I believe, by my then older than Mick Jagger hardware in the form of a Voodoo 3 PCI card at 16 MB).

Yeah but, Bill Gates and all that laffo. Awesome I am thinking of getting PoR as well though I've heard it isn't quite as good as DoS. But that preorder package sounds - and must look - great.

I had one... Right until Symphony of the Night, even. After a while the lack of games that interested me was almost non-existent, so I sold it off. I do have a PS2 though so running SH1 on it should be fine, except most places I turn to people tend to overprice the game (like SotN, which is usually at 200+ euros). I'll keep tracking it down, though. After all I've waited to get my hands on an official version of Wizardry 8 for years and I managed to get one just in time for the short Codex retrospective I did on it, so not all is lost.

I'm trying to get the Silent Hill collection. Unfortunately, this edition does not seem to feature the original which is what I was really looking forward to get.

On the other hand, I should have the right to sue my PC for every single BSOD it's been giving me lately.

Then it's even more astounding how Oblivion got nominated.

A game where we can travel back in time to kill the time travelling lizards from NWN... With all that time travelling creating more paradoxes and plot twists than the Blood Omen and Soul Reaver series.

The Bard's Tale. Sharp things thrown at my eyes may not be as painful.