Gromnir

am thinking that a world without elastic is intriguing. imagine having no elastic in underwear or socks. really. genuine heroic sacrifice in a crpg is an intriguing idea. Player gotta make a sacrifice that he/she actually feels? is done rare in crpg and hardly more than a token sacrifice is made. take focus off of protagonist and let story be told through development of villains and supporting cast intrigues us. is tough to write a story 'bout a good/evil/amoral/indifferent/mercenary who is a man/woman/ameoboid from Tralfgar iv that who may be stoopid/smart/friendly/arrogant/sarcastic/serious... etc. am understanding the whole dream fulfillment aspect o' the crpg, but you is working with an inherent terrible protagonist. how 'bout create encounters and opportunities in game wherein the protagonist won't win. is a few ideas HA! Good Fun!

keep in mind that Major Consequences is always easier to do at the end of a quest/game. any yutz can create 4 different possible outcomes at the End of a game. tough part is giving the player to choose and change opportunities mid-quest. is one reason why the tangential side-quests is great fodder for choice illusion... has those end-quest choices affect the rest o' game in a minor way, but makes seem important 'cause it were a Big Choice relative to the individual quest. such stuff probably can be worked into game without having to worry 'bout possibility o' breaking the critical path story. HA! Good Fun!

am not a big fan o' eye and groin being returned to fo. as we noted, those targetable areas got some rationale for the hand-to-hand and melee folks, but otherwise they not make much sense. heck, it would be neato to give close-range fighters an opportunity to aim for knees and inside o' foot while we is at it, but is not always the case that more options is better. would rather see current vats system tweaked without adding complexity. HA! Good Fun!

"There should be some point where they can balance consistency and non-linearity. Is it impossible for Obsidian to realize FO2 level of NPC interactions? " ok, first of all, am hopeful that fo2 ain't the benchmark. second, is maybe a misunderstanding 'bout the complexity o' creating a coherent and compelling story that allows for individual player to choose opportunities and alter outcomes. is not simply a given that a satisfactory balance can be found. given loads of time and resources, obsidian could do a fair job o' achieving both aims, but is a horribly complex task.

What Twink said above, too bad twink weren't responsive. enoch weren't questioning how fo1 and fo2 used eye shots and applied damages n' such... he were questioning the rationale behind including such targetables. to answer enoch question, there ain't no sound reasoning for having eyes targetable for ranged weapons. melee is slight different. eye-gouging is quite effective in hand-to-hand. groin shots is more ha-ha than serious, as Gromnir would choose a couple other easier to target weak-spots before groin, but groin is a valid hand-to-hand target. the fo tb combat system applies to both ranged and melee/hand-to-hand, so is gonna be overlap and discontinuity. HA! Good Fun!

In the demo of Fallout, it was hilarious, though. As Chris Avellone mentioned in a relatively new interview, Van Buren was to have a twist in this scheme. From RPG Designer Hates RPGs

"Wait 'til the first scraps of story teasers get released... then the topic will light up." agreed. is some hardcore folks that simply hate everything, but am guessing that a majority o' people is waiting for something more than news that obsidian is working on fo:nv. is not much to be encouraged, disgusted, optimistic, enraged 'bout. at the moment, fo:nv is nothing more than the "prize" behind curtain #3. ... am wondering who is monty hall in such a scenario? HA! Good Fun! ps don't add no more skills. the world map idea actual has merit, but am not thinking that it is a practical use o' resources. maybe if there is a fo:milwaukee?

yes, it is a burden for Gromnir. oh, am s'posing you were talking to josh. *shrug* josh has gone complete undiplomatic on more than one occasion. in fact, some o' josh's most informative postings were ones that occurred after josh near complete abandoned pretense o' diplomacy. were some interesting stuff regarding actual obstacles facing HoW and how josh would do different if given second chance. the wotc and 3e ranger stuff were classic... though am guessing such stuff is verboten. is more than a few instances o' josh going sgt. hartman on some poor schnook who weren't expecting... am hopeful that high-profile nature o' this game Not makes josh too cautious. is always fun to see who is next to gets to play the part o' private pyle. HA! Good Fun!

Everything you wrote is true, but I would like to add that trade-offs in quest design (whether it's in Fallout, IWD, or another game) aren't always 1:1. I think where a lot of developers get in trouble is in x-treeeeeeme reactivity, where interconnectivity between quests and visible results becomes so entangled that two quests of N complexity require 4 times as much time as four quests with half-N complexity. it would seem that few things in game development is 1:1 proportional. that being said, how does a Lead establish clear and practical guidelines for interconnectivity? rely on commonsense o' individual developers seems like a risky bet. regardless, has obsidan decided on an approach vis-a-vis interconectivity and the critical path v. side-quest issues? seems like key elements and we haven't really heard much from developers re. such issues. am actually a little surprised to see the numbers o' people that seem to favor the kotor2 kinda approach. given the history o' the franchise we were thinking that the fanbase (the Faithful in particular) would be advocating the "non-linear" approach. one would expect that josh (personal as 'posed to profeshnul) would favor the de-emphasis o' the critical path, but that is simple conjecture on our part. HA! Good Fun!

"The reason I made such a brazen statement is because anyone can do that." and maybe also 'cause it were a rather brazen straw man. as you point out, "non-moving" does kinda limit the applicability in reference to your original statement 'bout head shots outta vats being the only "legit" variety. regardless, if you has backed off original statement, then all is good. HA! Good Fun!

huh? you clarified the opposite o' what you suggest. you did say vats weren't fraudulent, but you stuck by the illigitimate stuff. made some ha-ha comments 'bout how silly easy it were to kill without vats. "People who can't manually score a head shot against a still target in F3 or who can't build a character that can consistently score head shots in VATS have one thing in common: they are huge n00bs who should probably not play video games or operate a motor vehicle. I'm sorry if that attitude is disheartening to you." etc. am not sure if you really wanna keep this going, as you really did come across as condescending (at best.) HA! Good Fun! btw, "manual" does change tone and meaning o' your initial comment, but sadly that ain't what you said. 'course if it means you has gotten over your prejudice, am more than happy to pretend that you said "manual."

now josh, let's be honest. you did say that it weren't "legitimate" to use vats. reimagine if it makes you feel better, but... regardless, the importent point is that You seem to have overcome your personal prejudice. congrats. now you can move forward and make fixes without all those silly preconceptions 'bout how vats users weren't playing legit. HA! Good Fun! ps slight correction: actual word used by josh were "legit." head shots made with sniper n' such were only "legit" outside o' vats. should not have "legitimate" in quotes. our apologies.

I disagree completely: Main story should not be linear, and should be OPTIONAL. There should be numerous sidequests, both in quest hubs and "hidden" away in the wasteland. I'm all for memorable characters and choices with consequences. is this the right thread? in any event, we is faced with the BIG question facing developers... choice ends up resulting in two veruy different games. focus on making a strong critical path. or has loads o' well-developed side quests. choices in the side quest approach is easier to be making meaningful... but those choices will ultimately seem less... meaningful. quest that is tangential is gonna have consequences that developers can make as insular and discreet as they wish and so such stuff will be easier to implement without running into the endlessly bifurcating branches nightmare... can't genuine allow every player action to open up new opportunities... no mater how many times those old choose-your-adventure books gets linked as examples. linear v. non-linear is a terrible distinction, 'cause is all gonna be ultimate linear, but is easier to create the illusion of freedom with inclusion of greater numbers o' optional side quests. is axiomatic that with limited resources the more time spent on the optional stuff means less time spent on critical path. a game like kotor2 were leaning heavily towards critical path development. how much more resources and time woulda' been needed to makes a kotor2 with the strong critical path (save for the end) and allow for fo3 type illusion o' freedom via the availability o' optional and tangential material? HA! Good Fun!

I don't agree with this. While VATS is functional it has the capacity to easily become a "win button" because in many situations it makes skill stats practically meaningless, something Sawyer pointed out some time ago. If you're in VATS melee, for example, you'll never really get below, what, 90 percent hit chance? And the damage difference between a guy with a 30 melee skill and a 50 melee skill is fairly negligible. What's the point of tagging melee when all characters are basically the same with it? Similarly, the real-time nature of combat outside of VATS allows you to close distances between you and your target and similarly negate skill deficiencies with whatever ranged weapons you're using. How do you balance something like that? am agreeing that vats is far too easy to exploit-- becomes a win button. by the same token, w/o vats, you is presented with the "lose button" scenario. am not ceratin where the giant radscorpisons seems to spawn from in game, but am unable to count high 'nuff to recollect the number o' times Gromnir sudden realized that a giant rad scorpion were only a few meters away... in spite o' our super-high perception. w/o vats we would pretty much be consigned to a reload. the mudskippers, or whatever they is called, were also a pain outside o' vats. sure, if Gromnir can set up a nice sniper location, we can go for the near essential face shot on the crab-men... but in some o' those building locations... am recalling how josh sneered at fans who used vats... suggested that use o' vats weren't "legitimate." HA! Gromnir played most o' game sans vats, 'cause it were more challenging to do so, but am not anywhere near subscribing to sawyer level o' contempt for vats and vats users, particular in light o' the fact that vats saved our bacon more than once. heck, the real playing field leveler for us most o' the time were the victory rifle. knockdown effect made killing the tough critters easy... as long as you had some real estate to work with. make vats less over powereing... and take out some o' the game elements that makes vats a near necessity, but to say that anybody who uses vats ain't playing legit? as if these games got a "legit." HA! Good Fun!

"I think Bloodlines has very little to do with Anne Rice and all the goth stuff. It stroke me as more of a parody." if you say so, but it makes being a vampire seem fun/kewl, right? traditionally, being a vampire is s'posed to be a curse. no doubt you see nuanced difference, but for Gromnir it is easier to lump all the vampire stuff that romanticizes into one dismissive category. HA! Good Fun!

"Anything is better than simply following a map marker to somewhere, kill something and fast travelling back to pick up your reward." am thinking you have backwards. insta-travel and map markers may be an imperfect solution, but anything is better than wandering around aimlessly following terrible directions til you at last end up at a cave (a a cave which looks identical indie and out to 20+ other caves) simply to complete an ultimately uninspired and banal quest. even with insta travel back and clear markers, you still gotta travel on foot the first time before you can do your insta-travel trick... those folks who long for exploration still get... just w/o some o' the monotony and confusion. HA! Good Fun!

That's just part of the whole... Its [sort of] the same thing as as watching a musical and accepting that all the players burst into song. (It not exactly the same... but its similar). As for what fits and what doesn't... See I can accept a diner crowd breaking into a dance number, and an ex-fiance using a Light Anti tank Weapon at her ex-groom, and I can accept a blind pawn shop owner firing a pistol at a 13 year old as a warning shot, but I could never accept anyone in the film pulling a knife and stabbing someone with it. [i assume that most everyone here will immediately get the film reference ] Fallout had the RadScorpions from Damnation Alley, and it had a few quirks like pulling a minigun out of a skintight blue bodysuit... But on the whole it was quasi serious unless you were out in the wild [unexplored wasteland]. am having almost no idea of what you is trying to say. in any event, we thinks that the fallout setting has appeal in part 'cause it can be campy and deadly serious seemingly at same time. is a bad analogy, but we kinda see fo in similar manner as heavy metal, the movie. none o' the heavy metal individual stories were shooting for realism or plausibility... were going for kewl. regardless o' whether you like or hate heavy metal, it would be kinda silly to thinks the movie woulda' been improved with more realism. HA! Good Fun!

Often it is the believability of the minutiae that make that suspension of disblief possible when it comes to the larger impossibilities/implausibilites. Its a pretty basic tenet of fantasy/sf writing. some fantasy does strive for internal coherence... assume we got magic, then find plausibility once we makes that implausible assumption. fine. but notion that there is some inverse proportion function at work in sci-fi and fantasy is ... wrong. smaller the detail the bigger the impact on plausibility? uh... no. regardless, as we already note above, fallout is akin to flinstones where in the big and small is all silly. suspension o' disbelief is not something the fo universe honest not seems to strive for... is 1950's b-movie and pulp mag notions o' post apoc... is flinstones. HA! Good Fun!

you folks ain't trying to discuss fo population in terms o' realism, right? might as well point out that the sheer number o' large predators roaming 'bout pretty much invalidates the possibility o' you having a wasteland. you got giant insects, (impossible for multiple reasons) and super mutants (HA!) and miniguns as personal weapons (*groan*). am not sure why folks can stomach such stuff... and then get all twisted by minutiae. is the flinstones... is no more plausible than the flinstones setting. you wouldn't argue population density with flinstones, would you? would be silly to do so, right? HA! Good Fun!

... maybe you not believe us when we said first time, but we actually do prefer our current dynamic with twink... twink posts and then Gromnir can respond (or not) secure in knowledge that we won't have to deal with a canonical response. is win-win. no arguments develop. *shrug* guidelines is strange stuff. guidelines is typical useless w/o some kinda reference as to application. years o' posting in this place has given Gromnir some notion as to what is actual meaning o' the guidelines... but we suspect that the current new vegas discussions is gonna change the application standards. am okie dokie with the policy o' the Brave New World as long as such standards is applied predictably and uniformly... is only gonna cause problems if predicting application is akin to predicting lightning strikes. ... btw, am aware that you guys has a policy 'gainst bashing other developers... you have stated that more than once. however, troika is not a developer; they are deceased. am honest curious whether defunct developers and publishers is to be insulated from criticism same as current active developers. feedback would be appreciated. HA! Good Fun!

yeah. obsidan has done 1 quasi-sandbox game: soz. were the writing good? SoZ had no where near the same budget of say Oblivion, so that is a rather bad comparison. The writing in SoZ was far better than what was in Fallout 3. On topic: It made me LOL when people actually entertained the idea that Obsidian may try to add Turned Based combat in NV at the Bethesda forums. :cue Aerosmith Dream On: 1) Gromnir didn't compare to oblivion 2) you think nv is gonna have budget of oblivion? 3) the writing in soz was somewhere betwixt forgettable and meh. you ain't one o' those codex guys that is gonna use the malarite druid in the hunting cabin as an example o' great obsidian writing, is you? soz encounters were typical far too brief to develop any character, and those critical path characters (volo and the snake chick) were hardly better than your dad or even 3-dog in fo3. plot in both cases were typical wacky sci-fi/fantasy stuff, so am not really seeing a gulf o' quality tween fo3 and soz. "Well you are missing out." if troika couldn't grab or attention after we sacrificed a couple hours o' our time, we ain't so foolish as to keep at it in hopes the game will improve. am not a big vampire or anne rice fan. if we were, maybe we would take another stab at vm, but we ain't. HA! Good Fun!

am not disagreeing that bastilla ended shallow... but add some genuine heroic sacrifice and character woulda' been pretty darn good. not require major changes. yeah, she gets the ice-queen shtick, but again, that were part o' the necessary plan in mirroring star wars 4-6. would rather chew broken glass than take another stab at vampire. some ok writing at start, but nothing fantastic and for all the hassles we went through to get through +1 hour o' vampire silliness... *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

yeah. obsidan has done 1 quasi-sandbox game: soz. were the writing good? is new vegas gonna be sand box? if it ain't, then they gotta do something vast different than soz... and if they does more akin to kotor2, then they still end up with a complete crap ending. am kidding. even so, can you imagine a fo game that is organized likes kotor2.? there is tangential stuff in kotor2, but there is a single coherent critical path plot that dominates the game. Gromnir would be okie dokie with such a game, but try to do such a game with sand box and you got... problems. if was a huge development with 5 years and loads o' people working on the project, then yeah, we can see a game that successful merges requirements o' compelling critical path and sand box wherein the tangential side-quests is equal intriguing. keeps a relative small number o' key plot points, take focus off the protagonist, and develop those side-quests so that they is more than brief encounters; make them genuine mini-stories that can stand on their own. am worried 'bout nv writing in part because these guys is familliar with fallout and 'cause some o' them worked on van buren. is gonna be tough to be practical. HA! Good Fun!

" I really liked it at first, but the immersion breaking was too much. " see previous posts by Gromnir (and developers) regarding the near meaninglessness o' "immersion." "Also the general question of why am I exploring? A lot of the places just ended up being similar hallways filled with similar things in similar buildings." not in morrowind? brief inventory o' bioware games: mdk2 were fantastic-- not so much writing focused, but gameplay were fantastic and had loads o' humor. bg... sucked. (am not gonna rehash old argument) bg2 were somewhere between good and very good... relative to crpgs as a whole. (already discussed in part) nwn and expansions were a mix o' good and terrible. nwn itself ain't near as bad as some suggest, but the clunky party system and the weak villains really killed enjoyability. side-quests were often excellent, with charwood being the best. expansions were a mixed bag... bioware sorta half-developed the first expansion and game felt half-baked. SoU started off ok, had a terrible middle, and ended rushed, but with some good content. Never did play HoU, so we cannot say... anything? tob were to short to sum up bg. some o' the wrting were pretty good, and we especially liked the additions Gaider eventually made to balthazaar via ascension, but the actual release o' tob were simply so-so for writing. were too fragmented 'tween the boss battles and the core story to be genuine compelling. the fire giant and swamp stuff were not bad, though coulda/shoulda' given more regarding Gorion during this stage. kotor were damned clever. do a game that complete parallels major plot points and characters from first 3 films? is only an obvious approach After kotor is released. in a post phantom menace world, is not so intuitive. jolee is an excellent character and bastilla coulda' been good. mix of good and bad. with all the terrible sw games, it were surprising that bioware were able to work within lucas restrictions and produce an enjoyable game. me? again, a mixed bag with some good and bad... 'least they finally manage to get some genuine element o' heroic sacrifice into a game. very intriguing universe, but with some wackiness and implausibility that made tough to swallow. generally interesting characters, but none that were genuine good or great. they has done considerable number o' games, so if you want a complete rundown you is gonna need to ask in another thread... and chances are we still not give a complete answer as you is asking for details on something like a half-dozen games. bio writing? generally better than fo 1 and fo2... and anything done by troika. played a bit o' vampire, so am not able to genuine judge complete game, but unless it got substantial better after the first hour o' soul-crushing buginess, we not feel as if we missed anything. some ok stuff were seen in vampire, but toee and arcanum were Horrible insofar as writing were concerned. HA! Good Fun!

bgii is seeming invariably under or overrated. the macbeth stuff were excellent and is a shame that so few folks played bards as the bard stronghold were particular well done and reinforced parallels 'tween and twixt the bg2 main characters and those from macbeth. irenicus were an excellent antagonist, but sadly he were underdeveloped at crucial end part o' game; the lazy reader could easily see irenicus as the typical mad-for-power wizard. blame not on lazy players but on lazy writers. the circus tent quest were well-done, if brief... does a fair good job o' foreshadowing without being ham-fisted 'bout it... get more macbeth. generally we enjoyed the party npc dialogues. etc. (we can go on considerable with a number o' the good quests... some o' the dream sequence stuff were actually pretty good too, if not really our kinda shtick.) side note... am gonna agree that the romances were terrible, and am sad that they were so popular as the tangential and optional romance became a bioware staple afterward. even worse, horrible and abbreviated romance in bgii were so popular that other game developers began to adopt similar models. terrible. Thats what I was getting at, and why I mentioned the art style. Oblivion just look like generic fantasy land I've seen in games and movies a thousand times before. Shivering Isle was still pretty bad, but at least it looked interesting, and I mantain art style is orders of magnitude more important to a game then pretty graphics. and again, even if we ignore writing complete and go with gestalt regarding setting, we still wonder how one can laud morrowind and sneer at fo3. bethesda did a fantastic job with the fo3 setting. HA! Good Fun!