Gromnir

am not sure how eldar is thinking that he is better quaified to draw conclusions 'bout the shift to cleric centric play in alfa when he not even seem to know what alfa is and has never spoken with alfa players. so, we helps. alfa gots lots of that homebrew stuff... is nearly 100mb of dowload material just to play on an alfa server, and most of that stuff is content added to makes alfa more like pnp than nwn. simple stuff likes no sleeping at will and healing kits that act likes pnp rules as posed to being little more than odd shaped healing potions is just tip o' iceberg. in any event, eldar won't be convinced by anything it seems. impressions of pnp players not work. trends in gameplay not work. we suspect that an appeal to authority wouldn't work... has josh cook up one of his crazy priest o' bane + PrC juggernauts. in any event, Gromnir ain't saying that the 3e core cleric is unbalanced. can indeed be made powerful, but as we noted before, the 3e version were far more balanced and sensible than the 2e specialty priest nonsense. however, there is clearly unbalanced domains and feats and prestige classes that can indeed makes a 3e cleric a nightmare... and choosing to downplay balance concerns related to clerics or any other class 'cause perfect balance is impossible is as foolish as downplay writing concerns 'cause perfect approval of story is impossible. nobody ever said that balance is the only concern for developers... or even that it should be the mostest important concern. however, balance IS a concern. bethesda's ham fisted approach proves the opposite of what you s'pose. bethesda used a particularly crappy and simple approach to achieve balance, and it kinda bit them in the arse. question: when d&d made the shift from 2e to 3e, they got rid of kits in spite of kit popularity. why? HA! Good Fun!

btw, take it for what it is worth, but Gromnir were involved with a couple of the larger pws for nwn and we watched how character choices... changed. alfa were one of those snobbish role-player pws... folks who s'posed didn't care 'bout powergaming. pws didn't interest us too much, but some of the folks involved with alfa were good people, and role-play is mostly bout the folks sitting at the table with you... more so than the rules, so we joined. anyways, were very few clerics when alfa got started, so much so that it were kinda tough for some folks to put together adventuring parties with a requisite healer. there were a character bank where folks had their starting character posted, and many had a bio attached... though people were not actually compelled to use their posted character to start play. the first character for very few people were a cleric. fewer bards. ... lots more people chose cleric for their second character... after character attempt 1 died w/i hours. even more chose cleric for their third try. lots o' clerics. HA! Good Fun!

"No, no. We're in different conversations. You must equate the statement, "You can't please everyone" to mean "You can't please everyone and therefore you shouldn't try to please anyone."" wrong. please reread. we never suggested that your observation meant that you thought balance should be abandonded. we DID note that the fact that everybody can't be made happy meant that balance concerns deserved LESS developer effort... which is what you just repeated. again, duh. you wanna talk cleric? as evidence of the fact that d&d core is more balanced than you suggest, there is loads of builds with all classes that is considered powerful. monks and fighters and wizards and others... not too many bards though. is hardly a cleric monopoly on power. HA! Good Fun!

"What are you on about?" thought it were kinda clear. you started rambling on 'bout how balance efforts can't please everybody. well, either this observation simply deserves a "duh," and an acknowledgemnt of its pointlessness, or we concludes that you thinks it were a relevant observation. so we gives you benefit and take from your post some connection between developer efforts directed at balance, and lack of universal approval. *shrug* and oblivion proves nothing 'bout balance other than the fact that bethesda used a particularly blunt instrument to achieve their goal... which suggests that bethesda had less concern 'bout getting balance right as 'posed to more. again, the mechanic bethesda used were 'bout as gross as could be conceived. HA! Good Fun!

last good space sim we played? tie fighter series? crimson skies were fun, but not quite fulfilling. we puts it in the space sim category 'cause gravity ain't really much of a factor in crimson skies. HA! Good Fun!

"Anyhow, I'll make a bet. Folks will be online complaining about how NWN2 is too tough, easy, or alternatingly tough and easy." so, is the argument that if perfect balance for everybody is impossible, then balance should be less important a conern for developers. ... what a funny sorta way to look at it. wouldn't the opposite be a more reasonable way o' looking at it? the fact that perfect balance is impossible does not in any way suggest or prove a diminished need for or benefits of balancing, but it does make such things harder to achieve, thus demanding more developer effort rather than less. let us apply same reason to a different aspect of game development. is it possible to please everybody with story? ever seen universal approval of writing in a game? no? well then obviously story is less important, right? nonsense. HA! Good Fun!

"oh, and for you clowns who says balance not matter..." how is that hyperbole? you should read again maybe. 1) you s'pose that we is only speaking to/'bout you with that statement? 2) does you suggest that there is NOT people who claims that balance is unimportant? bah. "Oblivion is undoubtedly unbalanced when judging different characters, and yet even folks with weaker builds still enjoy the game and most of the complaints I've heard have centered on the writing." ... is you chanelling ss? got to the es boards, even after the negativity purges, and sees just how many peoples complain 'bout the scale resulting in their gimped characters. am not just talking 'bout people who claimed that scale system resulted in their game being inordinately easy or hard, but people who claims that they had to flush character and start over. is bad design... is bad balance, didn't happen to you? great. the fact that more people complain 'bout hackneyed writing does not change fact that there is many folks who find oblivion unplayable 'cause of scale. we does admit that there is some folks who honestly ain't bothered by lack o' balance. fact that game is tre simple is okie dokie 'cause the only reason they play the game is to gain more loot and to makes their character more powerful. as long as there is lots of eye candy and the loot and abilities get progressively more impressive as the game unfolds, these people will be perfectly content to play for 40+ hours w/o no real challenges. "By the way, I thought scaled encounters really had more to do with balancing the character to his environment." am confused... or maybe eldar is. the one thing that oblivion does achieve is that it provides for incrimental increases in challenges throught game (until you surpass the munchkin levels.) so, in what way is you noting oblivion scale relevance? regardless, the whole point of the proble with oblivion scale is that it is a blunt level system tool. game challenges is balanced not for your character or Gromnir's character, but rather to our respective levels... no matter how disproportionately powerful or underpowered we may be. am not sure how you sees as somehow a divisible issue in the present case. *shrug* good balance should go largely unnoticed. bad balance always results in some signifficant number of gamers being flaming mad. HA! Good Fun!

"The bad idea is to pretend that balance surpasses all other areas of design." gotta love people who use hyperbole. where has anybody said any such thing anywheres in this or any other thread? "Oblivion's scaled encounters, anyone?" please explain... 'cause oblivion scale system is not, in any way, shape or form, an attempt to balance various character builds. in point o' fact, the #1 problem with oblivion scale we see is that it DOESN'T achieve anything even remotely resembling balance. scaled oblivion critters makes the game incredibly hard for some and incredibly easy for others... which is pretty much the opposite o' balance. oh, sure, some folks is simply complaining 'bout oblivion scale 'cause they can't get a super powerful sword or armour at real low levels, and others is bothered they they don't feels appropriately god-like at high levels, but those folks is hardly a majority... and they don't makes the notion o' scale flawed. keeps the game challenging from start to finish is a bad thing? seems that way for some folks. "So, keep balance, but don't fool yourself. It takes more than balance to make a fun game and the ability to create a powerful character shouldn't gimp the game." ah, see this is the crux of the problem. it does indeed take more than balance to makes a fun game... but that is ino no way related to your falacious statement 'bout powerful characters. ability to makes disproportionately powerful characters (unbalanced characters,) almost invariably leads to busted games. if an available character build is too powerful compared to challenges faced, then game becomes less than fun. if a character build is too powerful compared to other character builds, then mp becomes unfun. balance can't makes a game fun... but lack of balance almost invariably kills fun. HA! Good Fun! post script btw, eddie dane were a great character in a fantastic movie... pretty much stole every scene he were in, and that is saying something considering the folks he shared screen time with in MC.

sadly, we thinks that bio were pretty much doing what you suggest. they couldn't seem to do the caster level +1, so they altered the good and evil domain powers... and they adjusted the domain spell lists... and nwn were s'posed to support all d&d campaigns, so bio chose to simply go with the core domains. am agreeing that good & evil gots somewhat pointless bonus powers, but would wotc be okie dokie with josh changing for reasons other than technical reason? we can see wotc being ok with a change that were necessitated by tech limitations, but if only reason to alter good and evil bonus powers is 'cause josh thinks they suck... weren't you down this road before with the 3e ranger? now, that being said, we will assume that josh is gonna do more than did bio... if only 'cause there is a number 2 in the game title. Sounds likes you is gonna have more than simply the core domains? "Obviously I'd ignore any domains that weren't required for the deities the game supported." so that means that deities supported in game is gonna have their domains included... at least in some fashion? ... dunno if we would wanna touch bane or mystra. they gots some wacky powerful domains, and once you put in game you somehow makes your content "official." *groan* you know, as much as we disliked bg2 deity choice for specialty priests, we thinks that we would do something similar for nwn2. allows folks to choose to play a core rules priest, and mix and mingle do-mains as they so desired, but if folks wanted to play a priest that actually gots specific deity based content, then we thinks that they should have to choose one of a handful of possibilities... possibilities likes Tempus, who gots pretty much all core domains. regardless, we would not bother trying to get any FR specific domains into the game. do the core domains spells and abilities close to da rules, but where that ain't possible, as with some travel domain spells, adjust as needed... But keeps balance in mind as you do adjust. bio couldn't get the +1 for good domain casting... so they allow for turning of fiends? Yeah, there is balance for you. oh, and for you clowns who says balance not matter... *snort* is always some joker who claims that he played a gimpy character, and it were great fun. yeah, may-be, but you know how many sucky campaigns we has played in with spineless dms that lets a couple clowns get away with power gaming? gets kinda lame when you becomes little more than the impo-tent sidekick of some ubermensch character who can kill dragons at will or lay waste to armies w/o breaking a sweat. is no longer a party, but simply the Ultimate Warrior, and the three or four other guys who gets to carry the loot. like it or not (and this is a big not from Gromnir,) nwn2 is gonna be a mp as well as a sp game, and you unleash unbalanced nonsense likes the time domain on us and we won't be thanking you... and neither will many mp players as for sp... *shrug* am not gonna get much support on this pov, but we takes the paternalistic approach to balance... 'cause most o' you peoples gots 0 self control. you will ruins your own game if you can... 'cause games is meant to be won, right? is a natural reaction to make the bestest character possible, and when you does so, and your character breezes through game in 5 hours without ever having to use a potion, then you complains 'bout how easy the game were. even though it were your fault that game were easy 'cause you exploited stoopid rules, it is the developer's fault for making it possible for you to screw up your own game... 'cause they know that even the most reasonable seeming folks 'mongst you is gonna try to makes the Best character you can, even if you is certain that doing so will makes game too easy. you people is fools when it comes to making crpg characters, and obsidian develop-ers knows it. HA! Good Fun!

Half of the 2nd Ed. FR specialty priests would wipe the floor with their 3E FR cleric counterparts, domains and all. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Mr. Sawyer knows his stuff. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> he didn't mean it as a positive observation 'bout 2e. HA! Good Fun!

Half of the 2nd Ed. FR specialty priests would wipe the floor with their 3E FR cleric counterparts, domains and all. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> am not saying that the core 3e d&d cleric domains and rules in general were w/o flaws and balance problems, but they were far more sensible than the ad&d rules, and more balanced than the 2e specialty priest kits. however, wotc can't makes more money from d&d unless they keeps making new product, and wotc has sure added lots of new product to 3e and post 3e d&d. crazy powerful new domains and some questionable divine feats and those ridiculous kits they add to every new release. kits? oh, sorry, we were meaning PrCs. am wondering if any commercial rule system can survive its own success. HA! Good Fun!

am thinking that the point is that different folks take different 'mounts of time to play these games, so some number likes 40 or 60 becomes meaningless. in any event, vis coulda' said 200 hours and his opinion would still not be more or less valid. that being said, a long computer game is, 'specially in today's world, pretty darn short. can't try to do the sub-genre thing neither to makes a point... simply compare to crpgs don't work, 'cause as we noted, crpgs, for the most part is trying to be epic... so only choosing the long ones misses the point. gotta compare to all games, just as we compares epic poems to all poems and epic movies to all movies to be establishing some sorts measure for epic size... just compare to other works that claims to be epic and then saying that only the longest ones really is epic is kinda odd reasoning, no? HA! Good Fun!

don't be jealous. keep in mind that he is at level 46+ and has played the game for well over 100 hours. you really want that stuff bad 'nuff that you would play that long? ... maybe you would. HA! Good Fun!

planescape status is... odd. monte cook's pnp folks did a nice revisiting of planescape materials 10 years after the fact. no doubt he had to get some kinda okie dokie from wotc. however, we does agree that a publisher of crpgs would be real unlikely to wanna jump at planescape. as much as some of us thought planescape were the bestest d&d setting evar, many folks disliked it 'nuff to not wanna give planescape:torment more than a cursory glance. where were the elves and dwarves, and why did everything have to look so dark and dirty? also, chrisA kinda were hit and miss with his freshman philosophy approach to the game. sometimes folks try a little too hard to be profound... but as Gromnir is a minimalist by nature and training, we probably is not the best person to judge such things. regardless, the thing 'bout planescape is that it would be pretty easy to fix where it failed with fans. not have to dumb down the writing as some suggest... but you does have to shorten individual dialogue options, and it might be a good idea to try and rely on metaphor maybe a little more than the overt philosophizings of first year liberal arts students. sure, some people will miss your point, but they probably won't be bothered by it neither. too much ps:t dialogue? maybe, but you makes the dialogue options shorter as already noted, and add in more and better combat options and we thinks people would not be complaining. as much as chrisA disagrees with us on this, ps:t combat were pretty lame. also, am understanding that the bis guys wanted to capture the feel of planescape, but it turns out that many fantasy and d&d fans seems to need dwarves and elves n' such to enjoy... so why not give'em such things. sigil gots infinite doorways to infinite destinations... many of which gots dwarves and elves and wizards that looks disturbingly much like gandalf or saruman. planescape is a big 'nuff setting that you can give everybody a bit of what they want. ... if there is one thing we dislike 'bout bioware games it is that they does not try to makes the best game they can so much as they is trying to makes the best game they is able to with the broadest possible appeal to the largest segment of crpg fans they thinks they can reach. try to please everybody and you necessarily end up forced to embrace mediocrity. is maybe the result of bio listening too much to the fans. dunno. nevertheless, such an approach seems to be a necessary prerequisite if one is even willing to consider doing another planescape crpg with the current publisher/developer dynamic at work. regardless, is too many ifs and maybes. HA! Good Fun!

yeah, 'cause the old one made money. there is, as some will no doubt point out very soon, exceptions to the rule that only successful products gets sequels, but they is exceptions. as far as we can tell, fergie ain't the foolish gambler who goes all-in early. he is playing the odds and has been clever 'nuff to be getting sure money makers to starts his new development co. we not see some kinda polarizing shift in the immediate future from somebody who has been so cautious and sensible so far. HA! Good Fun!

... however, we does note that length can be a debatable attribute of a work described as epic. vis is not clearly and objectively wrong 'bout his 60 hours min. thing. HA! Good Fun!

the thread title is bad given the question. favorite game may not be the one we thinks is best... much as our favorite book might not be the one we thinks is best. HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* sorry vis, but no loopholes in the def for you. an epic poem is pretty short by game standards... more than one sitting is the rule of thumb for epic length of a poem and given the fact that 90-120 minute films is appropriately described as being movie epics we thinks you is gonna have a hard time holding to the 60 hour mark as some kinda minimum. crpgs, in the relative field of games, is almost all certainly long 'nuff. HA! Good Fun!

ever seen those nature shows where they shows chimpanzee behavior? is 2 kinds of chimps: common and bonobo. the bonobo chimps is 'possedley more peaceful. the bonobo females got more social status and sex occurs in pretty much every human varriation and with much frequency. however, the myth of the kinder and gentler bonobo is based simply 'pon the lack of everyday physical violence that occurs with the common chimps. instead, rates of fratricide and patricide and suicide seems to be higher with bonobo than with common chimps... and while common chimps is more likely to kill outsider males, bonobo chimps is the ones that seems to engage in prolonged emotional torment of their fellow troop members. oh, and bonobo females tends to have larger and more prominent breasts than common chimps (and other apes for that matter,) though not to the degree of human females. personally, Gromnir thinks that he would prefer to be a common chimp. sure, there would be less sex and more killings, but watching loner chimps gets emotionally brutalized somehow seems more cruel... and human. ... for those that not get our less than subtle chimp crap, Gromnir is saying that we is gonna let vis off the hook... for the time being. HA! Good Fun!

As it should be. If you are a priest, you must worship a god. In favor the god would grant you spells. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> doesn't really work well with core domains and fr gods. bane, as an example, gots hatred and tyranny as domains. sure, you still got choice of evil and law, but those would be only choices. valkur and aerdrie faenya, fringe fr gods at best, sudden becomes real popular 'cause they is only fr gods that offer air and good? poor josh gets stuck with his red knight priest having a fixed choice of law and war. nwn were creating a rules system that were gonna be for playing beyond fr... the toolset, as such, has been used for greyhawk and dl and a multitude of custom worlds... and since the bio developers had no hope of making all fr domains available, much less all d&d domains, they stuck with the core... and the core rules allow you to choose any two domains... and there ain't no requirement for worship o' a specific deity. makes sense to us that 'cause rulset had to work for more than fr core would be the default. however, they really screwed the core domains up badly. it not bother us that the domains and spontaneous casting rules ain't even remotely similar to da rules, but if you is gonna throw away the rulebooks, then how do you come up with the woefully unbalanced crap that is the nwn domains? the core d&d domains may not be balanced, but they is a damned sight better than the crazy fr nonsense. unfortunately, the biowarians really did a poor job of implementing the core domains... and numerous bio developers has admitted that even they were displeased with their implementaion of domains... didn't even put up a fight when Gromnir blasted 'em. HA! Good Fun!

"The only definition I need is mine and mine alone because the only person I have to live with is me." okie dokie... but you is complained 'bout how bioware uses the word and not how you uses. you can looks at a cow and say "dog" all you wish, but when you criticize others for failing to do the same, well then you is just being psychotic, no? such oddness can leads to all kinds o' confusion as you insist that dogs is a wonderful source of milk and that as a good midwestern boy there ain't nothing you likes better than a grade A ribeye steak cut from a corn fed iowan dog. ... if you is complaining that bio ain't following your telepathic orders to them that they ditch the oed and websters and instead use vis definitions, then we thinks you is being just a tiny bit unreasonable, no? HA! Good Fun!

am gonna note that based on chat and some other comments we seen recently, older dev comments 'bout how nwn2 were almost a completely different engine and game from the ground up is seeming likes a great deal of bunk. am recalling, in particular, that josh were quite critical of nwn cleric domain implementation... were something that came up during iwd2 development. nevertheless, it sounds like nwn2 cleric domains is gonna be less than accurate... in spite of josh desire to get the core stuff right. ... oh well. HA! Good Fun!

you are, of course, incorrect. "Did you see "Gleaming the Cube"? Dude, that was like so freaking Epic!" is not necessarily how advertisers and normal persons use "epic" in conversations. anybody wanna get a dictionary for vis? shows him a def. epicness of a work can simply refers to scope and size o' story. if you is saving the world or galaxy, then chances are you gots yourself more than 'nuff just 'cause to use overused epic label. advertisers and developers use Epic precisely 'cause wacky folks likes vis attributes a qualitative aspect to a word that don't really got one. developers and publishers is rarely fibbing or even stretching truths when they calls their storytelling "epic." how many fantasy or sci-fi game stories ain't epic in scope? is a few, but they is the exceptions. and as for predictability = lameness... that might be overstating. sure, we would much prefer if we didn't know what were coming, but predictability don't have to = lame if the characters and encounters in a game is well developed. ever read TDKR? is the closest thing to superhero comic art we ever has read, but if you gots even the most tiny shreds of a lit background you were gonna be able to see what were coming. in fact, the one lame aspect of TDKR were the end. for a comic fan, the end were predictable. batman survives. however, given the literary pparallels TDKR were drawing so heavily 'pon, we didn't expect for batman to survive... and that actually were the one real blemish on an otherwhise fantastic bits o' comic art. and 'cause it just wouldn't be the obsidian boards w/o devolution into a predictably lame tolkien battle, we feels compelled to note that lotr were pretty darn predictable, and some people here hold it up as the pinnacle o' fantasy lit. regardless, epic needs not mean what vis seems to insist on it meaning. u lose. r00fles. whatever. HA! Good Fun!

http://www.dragonlance.com/products/ looks like wotc still is making dl crap... though it not get much play at the wotc d&d site. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20060406a&o= oh well. HA! Good Fun!

in the mid 80s dl were popular... but am not thinking that it has the same selling power as does the frs. every month wotc releases a new fr product, in spite of fact that greyhawk is the official setting. *snort* not too many dl products coming out of wotc these days. maybe dl is more popular than wotc seems to think, but we doubt it. besides which, dl is kinda lame. HA! Good Fun!