Gromnir

we compared bio to bis? sure we did. so, in spite of all the games both developers made (or failed to make,) you limit to iwd v. bg? come now. as to offering an alternative to your Hype + Luck nonsense? ... you is kidding, right? here is a thought: bio is a competent game developer. what a novel notion eh? the notion that bio managed to make games that people wished to buy is so strange that it not even occur to you? HA! the OBVIOUS explanation for why bio has been succesful over the many years is that they is good at what they do. duh. HA! Good Fun!

btw, Gromnir did attempt to point out that for a game that had been imagined out of existence by obsidian boardies, the bio developers were spending lots of time talking 'bout it. most obvious reason for lack o' news is the lack o' a publisher... 'cause otherwise we gotta prop up some grand conspiracy theory that involves Biowarians pretending to develop and discuss a game they got no intention of actually releasing. HA! Good Fun!

Both are parts of the answer. BIO got lucky with the BG thing. If you want to offer another explanation then feel free. How long did BIS have to work on IWD ? You cant compare BIS because BIS didnt have the same development times alloted to them. Certainly didnt have the same advertising budget either. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> where did we compare iwd to bg? you noted that bio got lucky when they hooked up with interplay, and Gromnir pointed out that bis WAS interplay. if the interplay connection were such a major factor, then why did the bis games do so poorly compared to the bio games. you still ain't answered that. really, you is just being silly now if all you got is luck and hype. HA! Good Fun!

Look how hyped games like BG/II were compared to IWD/II. Theres your answer. Dosnt really matter if NwN wasnt under interplay it was still with whoever had the rights to D&D. Biowares rep was built on such properties and that started with the lucky break of doing an AD&D game. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> luck AND hype. well, there's your answer then. *snort* you is bugnuts... honest. bio got lucky, but bis didn't. yup, that's the explanation. HA! Good Fun!

bethesda really shoulda' made enchanting weapons & items more intuitive... or they shoulda' done a better job of explaining in the game. HA! Good Fun!

No it's really very simple. Who else was there? The reason is easy. There was no one else around to it and Bioware owe their RPG rep to the lucky break they got with IP. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> who else was there? were all kinds of crpg developers back then. looks at all the mediocre games and complete failures that were made...games like revenant and darkstone and arcanum, to name just a few. bio got lucky and they only got sales 'cause of d&d... those were your reasons, right? HA! your insanity is unassailable when you continue to refuse to acknowledge that black isle didn't enjoy the same "luck" working with interplay that bio did. if bio got lucky to be working with the amazing Interplay publishing co., then black isle sales shoulda' been downright fantasmalicious, no? forget the fact that bio severed ties from IP and ignore reality that bio's biggest sellers came after leaving IP if you must ('cause you will,) but please, explain to us how bio could be so lucky to hook up with IP, and black isle, the development arm of Interplay, could be so preternaturally snake bit. well, at least you seems to have abandoned the notion that bio owes fame and fortune and continued sucess to wotc or lucas. were making d&d games, 'cause oddly 'nuff, nobody else has been able to reap any such benefits from d&d logo. so much for that theory. some of you people is nuts. the funny thing is, some clown over at codex were parroting sp... but he were trying that tired bird song to explain away fergie's early business success. fergie simply got lucky to land kotor2 and nwn2, and now that such luck has obviously run out (based on lord only knows what evidence,) obsidian is doomed, DOOMED! see, the argument goes that fergie wouldn't be nothing w/o bioware. gets both sequels 'cause somehow he happened to be first name lucas and atari could think of, or 'cause fergie hooked up the kanadian bio docs with $1000 hookers whenever they were in LA... or some other equally implausible reasoning. luck? blame on luck is so much bs. blame on luck is like blaming on magic fearies or sunspots or the illuminati... 'cause you not need no proof for such things. in fact, the absence of proof is all that makes such arguments plausible. bah. congrats on out codexian the codexers. HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* "How many non D&D tiltes have failed ? How interesting did Biowares original idea for the game (name I completely forget) sound ? " "Why was Bioware chosen for NwN ? Because of BG. Why were they chosen for KOTOR ? BG/BGII. "Jade Empire you can see as Biowares first attempt to escape from doing licenses. And as you yourself said it was hardly a spectacular success." by pointing out that both non-d&d games & d&d games fail you has acheived... what? you prove our point: regardless of the recognizable logo on the box, games sometimes fail. now name the d&d pc crpg sales success made in the last 8 years that were NOT bioware titles. iwd? yeah, that is real strong evidence that the d&d logo makes for big sales. 1 title NOT bioware's that were making money. on consoles bg: dark alliance dropped in price real fast... am not sure how much of a winner that were. in either case, using sp logic, the only reason that either of those titles made any money is 'cause of bioware's work on bg... so bio gets credit for those 2, right? as to why bio were chosen for kotor and nwn, that is a more complicated issue than you would makes it appear to be. btw, nwn outsold bg1 and bg2. from a sales standpoint, and possibly from publisher perspective, nwn were the big winner from bio. sp is one of those insane bio haters... has dogma 'stead of reason. HA! Good Fun!

I am ? Whether or not Bioware jumped ship dosnt change that they had a very lucky break. Interplay had D&D at the time so I'd definately call that lucky.Biowares name was made with those two titles. MDK isnt really well known. Read the bits I've bolded. What that says to me is the big sales have been of known properties. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> you is being silly as vol, but opposite. how many d&d titles has failed? more than has made money... in fact, before bg1 the franchise were often described as "dead" as far as crpgs were concerned... and the pnp game weren't far behind. bg1 resurrected d&d, not the other way 'round how many star wars games has failed? more than has made money... etc. and again, you misses the point. if bio success were simply luck in being tied to IP, then why did bis and IP end up in the tank? bio is still 'round. bio is making games. bis, which were the development arm of the publisher bio were so damned lucky to be involved with, died... and their games didn't sell near as well even when they were still around. HA! Good Fun!

we keep within 10 years. anachronox were better and diablo 2 were better at being the kinda game oblivion tries to be. other than bg1, iwd2 and how, we prefer every crpg made by bis and bioware to oblivion.... which is quite a list in and of itself. add in fallout as it were pre-bis. we took the dare and named far more than 1. HA! Good Fun!

Sometimes they fall for thier own hype. There are two factors when it comes to Bioware though. 1. They got very luck with Interplay and BG1/2. 2. They have had the CRPG field more or less to themselves for quite a number of years. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> you ignore reality. bis didn't have as much luck with interplay as did bio? HA! and there weren't a flood of crpgs following diablo, the game that resurrected the genre? most of 'em is so bad that you don't recall maybe. and let us not forget that bio released far more than bg1 + bg2, and sales for almost all has been very good... excepting mdk2 and je. the bio fanboi thing is as incomprehensible to us as is the people who insist on ignoring what bio has accomplished. you both gots your dogma. HA! Good Fun!

"So let me help you with the thinking part. It means that it looks like Bioware is wasting a lot more resources on marketing/developing their next console action RPG than on their next PC title. " and you arrive at such a conclusion 'cause the me site has more stuff on it, right? *snort* again, as we noted only a post ago, the da undertaking is Huge in scope, and they not even has settled on a publisher. they not necessarily have neither 'nuff material to be worth revealing, and they very likely got reasons to not wanting to step on toes of the eventual publisher... a publisher who typically handles the release o' such info. is all kinds of likely reasons for not making more info readily available, but somehow a handful of smart guys reach the most dubious of conclusions. the way some folks arrive at conclusions w/o any kinda support save for their gut boggles the mind. *shrug* you can't fight the conspiracy theorists. HA! Good Fun!

am not sure what that proves. spend 20 minutes reading the da boards and you can see that the developers is working on the title... and actually responding to fan questions. the fact that the da site is offering ups a paucity o' info means what to you? means that bio ain't working on da? heck, bg3 never had a site, so we guess josh should quit bitching 'bout that title getting killed 'cause it never really existed and nobody were really working on it anyways, yes? that being said, Gromnir does wonder if bio is trying to become the sisyphus of the game development world. nwn were not the failure some suggest, but it were not the game bio hoped it would be. even so, bio spent 5 years on a game that were incomplete in every aspect. the biowarians, post nwn, admitted that they tried to do too much in creating a compelling sp crpg & a toolset & dm client. too much... somewhere maj. general stanislaw sosabowski were turning in his grave. so what is they doing for da? the same damn thing. 'stead of trying to makes a really good sp game or mp platform, they is again trying to do both... but this time they is gonna improve sp campaign by making it shorter. ... we like the biowarians well enough, but sometimes we wonder if they is completely oblivious... kinda likes how they insist that je were a wonderful selling game and the start of a grand new franchise. HA! Good Fun!

am not sure we needed 'nother oblivion thread... not for this. in any event, we is not a huge fan of oblivion, and we see some major flaws in it, but it were not a badly made game... not for what it were 'posed to be. it were kinda a diablo 2 + sidequests... and given the popularity of diablo 2 we not see that as a bad thing. also, right now there is 0 single player crpgs available other than oblivion, so bethesda gots that going for 'em too. is not a terrible game for what it trys to be... but even so, it has 'nuff Big flaws that we has a hard time understanding the typical reviews we seen from most notable sites. is too many reviews that is claiming that oblivion is perfect or near perfect. worst game evar? not even close... though reading codex might make you think so. best game in 10 years? again, not even close... though reading the reviews might give you that impression. is an okie dokie action-rpg at a time when nothing else is on the menu, and for those famished fans who is seemingly hungry 'nuff to thinks that those cheeseburgers with the grey meat and stale bun served in your average public school cafeteria is gourmet fare, oblivion is a satisfying morsel. it is what it is. HA! Good Fun!

"This is not balance, this is creating a pointless game mechanic." well actually, in point o' fact, the point of the mechanic is to keep the game challenging regardless of level... so yeah, the mechanic does have a point, and it is balance. however, we recognize a problem or two... 1) the balance is such a blunt and inelegant tool that it leads to often ridiculous results that put too much strain on the credulity of many players. 2) it doesn't work. the first problem ain't an issue for Gromnir, but it coulda' been easily avoided by bethesda even so. scale encounters has one key use: to keep game challenging throughout the lifespan of game. the tool they use to achieve their end is to scale EVERY encounter. fight in the arena at level 1? fine, is a level 1 encounter. fight a highwayman who wants 100gp from you when you is level 20 and the brigand is likely to be wearing a king's ransom in glass armour. these kinda results bother some folks. so, how you avoid? add a basement and/or a ceiling on various encounter types. maybe the random brigand encounter never becomes tougher than an encounter scaled for level 10... but it can scale down to level 1. the arena, on the other hand, might start scale at minimum level 10... and go up from there so that a level 20 character would still feel appropriately challenged, but that a level 5 character would probably have to cheat to make it through the arena. implementation of such a simple measure would, for most people, solve the big issues they gots with scale... while some peoples would still complain that they were not feeling appropriately invulnerable at late stages of game, and were unable t find disproportionately powerful equipment at low levels

after playing 20 minutes with an archer/mage, we realized that w/o sneak such a character would pretty much be a waste. start over. HA! Good Fun!

christ had the good fortune and foresight to be killed thousands of years ago... so that the Truth 'bout his life will never be a matter of certainty. all religions require the Mystery aspect, and too much reality can spoil that for people. am not gonna resurrect the scientology thread, but we thinks that one reason why a guy like l. ron hubbard could never really get his religion to be mainstream is that too many people have access to too much info about him and his church. there is court documents and school transcripts and military records and all sorts of other bits o' info that most of us consider to be beyond reproach that suggest that l. ron hubbard were possessed of more than his share of petty human frailties and shortcomings. is much harder to deify somebody today than it is to deify somebody who lived long before 60 minutes and the washing post. regardless, is the idea we has faith in far more than it is the men. is gonna take far more than a single really old manuscript to change the idea of christianity. now maybe if christ had been a teenage girl we could possibly find his diary

am not sure we ever saw a +5. maybe we gots a +4 once... or twice, but usually it were +2 and +3. typically we used conjure, alteration, restoration and destruction... though we had a hard time getting destruction to level up at anywhere near the rate o' the others. blade and light armour did not advance at quite the rate of our other skills 'cause we typically were running away and our endurance and health stank so we could't afford to engage in combat to improve those skills and their linked attributes... 'cause we would be dead if we tried to do so. wasted some few points on personality 'fore we realized how useless it were... and how using speechcraft were actually hurting us. am not quite sure how the level-up process worked, so we couldn't really meta if we wished to. seemed likes we gots more quick leveling for using weaker destruction spells many times than we did for using powerful destrucion spells to kill enemies quick. on the other hand, we seemed to gets conjuration to level more quickly by conjuring as powerful a critter as possible. summon one of those bipedal crocodiles once were getting us more juice than summoning skeletons over and over. the whole process were... odd. HA! Good Fun!

is a poof detection device. you cannot imagine just how many people before you has tried to do the mockery through mimicry thing. congrats. so, why not share with us your list o' interesting characters from oblivion. is a huge game so there should no doubt have been a few opportunities for some characters worthy of noting... characters that gives you your apparent hope for da future. as we said, we didn't finish, so perhaps we missed the good stuff that they no doubt saved for the last 2/3 of game. we can points to characters from all kinds of crpgs that we has not played in many years as being examples of intriguing characters, but the game we only were playing last week we cannot recollect a single beastie or personage we would hold up as the kinda character we would like to see more of in a future game... which is very odd for a crpg, 'cause story being advanced through character development is kinda a traditional approach for such games. heck, even crpgs we don't like almost always gets one or two characters right. llyranor mentions nwn as an example of a game where the story underwhelmed, but we can names bunches o' characters from that game that were good in spite terrible Revenge of the Evil Mutant Lizards thing they had going on in that game. we won't ridicule your choices... honest. but if you thought patrick stewart or the grave robber or mythic dawn acolyte #305 were an interesting character then we can simply recognize and accept that your notions of "interesting" is a little different from Gromnir's. no harm done. HA! Good Fun!

I wonder if it's just that 'they suck' at making interesting characters, or that with ES there are simply too many to give any real attention to. Hence why I wonder what they can do with a smaller game like Fallout with MUCH fewer NPCs. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> the thing is that in the last couple games by bethesda we gots pretty much 0 evidence that they can write good dialogues and create interesting characters. we concede that with really big games likes morrowind and oblivion the chances are that you is not gonna be able to makes all of your characters compelling, but is that an excuse for making none of them intriguing? we don't think so. honestly consider your argument. Gromnir is 'posed to consider that 'cause we ain't never seen no good characters from bethesda we has reason to hope/believe that they could populate a future game with such characters. ... sounds like you is asking for a leap of faith. *shrug* we save our faith for things like God and love and Notre Dame Football. bethesda not yet merit such sacrifice. HA! Good Fun!

"so I guess some games do quite well without great and memorable characters." is no doubt about that. diablo is a good example. is all 'bout the addictive gameplay, right? diablo were 'bout as succesful as a pc game could be getting at the time. 'course, Gromnir never really liked diablo. we got tired of playing pac-man in the early 80s, but blizzard brought it back for us in the 90s... run 'round a maze, occasionally powering up... not much of a story 'less you imagine one. *shrug* regardless, pac-man and diablo were very popular games... no question 'bout that. very good games... just not our cup' o' kool-aid. HA! Good Fun!

we thinks you take the "memorable" aspect too literal. memorable carries with it an element o' being worthy of remembrance... is a qualitative aspect. this is why we phrased our query thusly: "for those who has played oblivion all the way through, will any of the oblivion characters makes your personal Best NPC Ever list?" for instance, we will have a hard time forgetting the terrible dialogue that patrick stewart had to vomit forth with his character, but he sure as heck not gonna make our list o' favorite npcs any time soon. HA! Good Fun!

If they use the same engine as Oblivion, true to SPECIAL rules and setting. Oh hell yeah! I would love to see a screaming alpha burn and die dancing in the graphical detail of Oblivion. Or setting the timer of a nuclear bomb, then bravely running away over the hills and through the city and watch from a affar a blossoming mushroom cloud. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> oblivion is already havng a little too much of a fps pov for us to want to see the engine repeated for fo3. we want a party and we wants a little more opportunity for tactical sophistication... neither which seems particularly well suited for oblivion engine. again, the thing that bothered us mostest 'bout oblivion is the fact that after reaching level 13 and having played more than a dozen hours, we had not met one honestly memorable character... which for Gromnir is an unforgivable flaw in a crpg. the quests were better in oblivion than in morrowind, but nothing particularly noteworthy. even so, if we had met some intriguing characters we mighta' stuck it out for the long haul. but perhaps we did not give the game a fair chance. for those who has played oblivion all the way through, will any of the oblivion characters makes your personal Best NPC Ever list? HA! Good Fun!

No. Trust me, I have closed enough gates to know that there are no acrobatics skills needed to close them down. The route to the main tower is not always obvious, but it's always possible to walk (without any other skills than walking skills) to the Sigil stone. I guess you didn't have the patience for it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> there were a cave that might have led somewheres. poked 'round a bit, but every time we tried to re-enter we got a ctd. in fact, we had to save every attempt we made at taking a sigil stone, 'cause that would typically result in a ctd. not a big deal, but were kinda an irritating lesson to learn: always save 'fore taking a sigil stone. also, is Gromnir the only person that almost never were able to close oblivion proper? would almost always get some kinda error message... and we ain't being hyperbolic. am talking like +90% of close attempts resulted in error. weren't no big deal as we were exiting the program after saves, but were kinda odd. HA! Good Fun!

... there is always those folks that lose the forest for the trees. ss is one of those. you admit that the goal of traditional crpg level schemes is not realism, but you quibble at notion that th0se developers did such a thing purposefully. ... wacky. "If you want to say "bows made of iron makes no sense and isn't realistic," I'd agree. However, the implementation of horses isn't really unrealistic, as much as it is just plain flawed." 'cause it couldn't be flawed & unrealistic. again, the quibble over whether it is MORE unrealistic than flawed or vice versa is just plain idiotic. is flawed and unrealistic and you trying to play with the < or > crap is just nuts. HA! Good Fun!

can't keep trying to have it both ways. if being incrementaly more realistic is worth noting in level system, then surely the complete disregard and distracting lack o' realism of other aspects o' oblivion should also be noteworthy, no? again, the funny thing 'bout your realism comments is the admission that the traditional rpgs you is comparing oblivion to purposefully eschew realism as far as levelling goes. and if some people like sl is happy with horses regardless of their near total absence of practical usefulness n' such, then so be it... but 'least be honest 'bout it. try to convinv anybody that oblivion horsies add anything more than some limited and fuzzy "immersion" value is nutty. HA! Good Fun!