Gromnir

well, no, it ain't natural selection. is unnatural selection. there is a gap which 3rd world countries cannot close w/o help. takes lots of money, resources and time to go from being a resource producer to a capital producer. western nations went through the industrial revolution a long time ago. study the transition of england from being a wool producer to a textile producer. were a very complex process but far less complex than would a similar transition would be today. the enclosure acts and rise of mercantilism ain't nothing compared to complexities of modern world economies. where is sub-saharn africa gonna get the money to makes the shift from resource to capital production? make process even more difficult when you got drought and war constantly sucking away what little money you got. feed starving children and protect boarders, or develop an infrastructure capable of supporting a capital production economy? not matter how smart or able the people in sub-saharan Africa is. is just no way they can close the gap w/o help. is completely unnatural. HA! Good Fun!

2 reasons for hating drizzle... 1) drizzle is superman the drow ranger is a superhero with superhero powers. super speed and balance and super skill, and he is wise and a shining beacon of goodness in spite of having been shown so little goodness in his life. ack. sew a big gawdy "D" on the front of his tunic/shirt and take the hood of his cape and you could drop him into any comic book. 2) drizzle exploits losers drizzle has so much beauty inside, but he is misunderstood by most of the world. the beautiful misunderstood loner crap is so damned insulting... and so damned effective. all the geeks and nerdlings who reads escapist fantasy to avoid their own inability to successfully enjoy mainstream society is given a hero they can easily identify with. bah. HA! Good Fun!

one wonders if tig notices how much he/she had to qualify in his/her last post. oh sure, ps:t is so obviously unique compared to kotor... but when you start actually trying to explain its uniqueness you notice that it ain't. essentially it gots MORE of certain crpg aspects that tig likes. great. unfortunately, Gromnir already noted that what kotor does is give those things that tig likes in ps:t and gives LESS... and made more money. kotor has shorter dialogues and less dialogues, and it intersperses dialogues with more combat more often. it keeps the themes and characters and the quality of dialogues, but it gives less... on purpose... which is Gromnir's whole freaking point. typical complaints re ps:t: too much dialogue. too grim. reads like a book. sucky combat. where are the elves? i hate tno, why can't i play a character i created? etc. so yeah, ps:t and kotor is similar

"as to other aspects, you keep ignoring all the stuff that we noted as being same/similar... which is fine. is your prerogative to say "no it isn't" every time we says "yes it is." makes debate kinda pointless though." again, your approach leaves us at a bit of an impasse. we can note similarities in plots and characters and themes and yeah, even in approach to dialogues, but if you simply disagree then there just ain't anywhere to be going with a debate. *shrug* some hardcore fans of ps:t see qualities in it that other folks do not... and Gromnir just cannot fight that. HA! Good Fun!

ps:t and kotor combat gots similarities: they both is horrible. as to other aspects, you keep ignoring all the stuff that we noted as being same/similar... which is fine. is your prerogative to say "no it isn't" every time we says "yes it is." makes debate kinda pointless though. HA! Good Fun! "Melissan's entire dialogue database was over-the-top, etc, doesn't mean that every IE game evar was the same with different reception." why is it that folks gotta beat the crap out of the scarecrow to try and make a point?

I didn't understand what you were trying to say. I've had groin pulls that were more fun than KotOR combats, but otherwise you're right. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> as crazy as it sounds, the fact that josh and Gromnir hated kotor combats did not keep many gamers from enjoying seeing and hearing star wars lightsabres and blasters battles. lord knows that we cannot explain why so many folks liked kotor combat, but there it is. HA! Good Fun!

galaxies is also a crpg, though it is a mmorpg. however we does recognize that while there has been loads of star wars games made, there has only been a couple of single player star wars crpgs made... regardless as to how hades or Gromnir would rate them. HA! Good Fun!

much like d&d forgotten realms, there has been good crpgs made in star wars, and bad games made in star wars. am not a fan of star wars or fr, but am recognizing that a talented and creative bunch of developers can find or create something of value in settings that Gromnir is nt a fan of. *shrug* people like fr and star wars, and games is getting too damned short nowadays for a developer to honestly create a genuinely new world that can really capture the 'magination of the average gamer anyway. if a player isn't imagining himself into your game before he plays it , then you, the developer, is probably doomed. as short as they is, and as they needs include a substantial 'mount of gameplay that ain't gonna reinforce story and worldbuilding efforts, crpgs is gonna be more likely to stick to tolkienesque archetypes and to established settings. HA! Good Fun!

"Same with the setting of Sigil, and how it was executed. Maybe it wasn't popular, but it was one of the reasons for why PS:T became so critically acclaimed. " ... who cares about critical acclaim? in the grand scheme of game development, all the accolades mean nothing if people do not buy your game. sounds like you is a fan of planescape setting. great. unfortunately, many people was turned off by the setting... period. is not really a debatable point. there is this perception of ps:t that doesn't really match reality. the writing of ps:t was, at times, fantastic. the story as a whole was pretty average, but various encounters and characters were/are unmatched. example: ravel, in all her incarnations, was absolutely incredible... and is still unique as far as complexity and depth o' character in a crpg goes. unfortunately much of ps:t were simply coming 'cross as narcissistic bellybutton contemplation and childishly oversimplified philosophizing. kotr managed to explore many of the same themes and characters w/o all the pretension and hackneyed writing. *chuckle* the funny thing is that what some ps:t fans laud in their favorite game, they despised in kotor2. some of the same kinda crappy over-the-top and lugubrious dialogues showed up in kotor2 and such stuff made people wince. no doubt some of the bis/obsidian developers were surprised by the different reception their fantastic writing got. and yeah, we is selective in noting the parallels

wait what <{POST_SNAPBACK}> josh ain't a slow guy, so we thinks he is playing dumb for effect. ps:t had some really terrible writing in places, and a setting that did not appeal to mot gamers, and individual dialogues that were too long and there were not enough combat. however, those things that ps:t fans claimed that were so great, including the highly developed character interaction, were things that kotor managed to do as well... and kotor were succesful. like it or not, bioware essentially remade ps:t in a more popular setting and simply added more appealing combats and shorter individual dialogues... and they made lots of money doing it. HA! Good Fun!

kinda funny that fergie is more concerned with rpg codex opinions than your or Gromnir's, eh? HA! Good Fun!

given: ps:t was a commercial failure is some clowns that will argue this, but they is just doing the denial thing to a ridiculous degree. however, looks at kotor and compare to ps:t and see just how many similarities the games had... including lame combat. similarities in character development and havings a single identifiable protagonist and similarities of themes and even the dammed amnesia thing. kotor were successful or no? would kotor have been less successful if the combat had been improved or the rule-system were made more robust? maybe, but we ain't convinced. ps:t + good combat = commercial failure bs the bis developers and the ps:t fans has been lying to themselves and making excuses for years. HA! Good Fun!

plano should take a look at what the biowarians claim to be doing for da. in any event, while we recognize that multiple potential antagonists got resource costs (though you seems to be confused as to where the cost would be,) such an approach would also result in a considerable savings of resources that would otherwise be devoted to achieving the impossible twin aim of making a compelling protagonist character/story & maximization of player freedom. developers waste so much effort on antagonistic goals related to protagonist development. is kinda insane really. HA! Good Fun!

in pnp we needs just 'nuff strength and coordination to be able to lift and toss a handful of dice. while a single-player crpg is NOT pnp gaming and should not treated as identical, we choose to believe that arcade control combat ain't necessary to be making games fun. yeah, we know that a true melding of squad-based tactical combat aspects from a game like ja2 and the character interaction and story development of a game like ps:t is probably too much to ask for... but that is what we is asking for. ... regardless, a crpg that tests the manual dexterity of our character is ok, but one that tests Gromnir's physical attributes is... annoying. am too old and grumpy for such things. HA! Good Fun!

I thought we were only nominating people we could have in our party. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> sure don't seem that way from a number of the lists put forth... and keep in mind that the "npc" term applies to joinables and non-joinables alike. HA! Good Fun!

rare is it that Gromnir is genuinely surprised when reading message boards for games... but for not a single person on the Obsidian boards to be advocating ravel puzzlewell is disturbing and unexpected. oh well. HA! Good Fun!

btw, we is all in favor of josh's factions notions... but the complexity increases with each faction added, and while that complexity affords more possible gameplay choices, it does make for writing compelling stories/characters more difficult... 'specially as you got multiple writers working on games. HA! Good Fun!

we were ambiguous 'nuff that your mistake were understandable. as such you gets a pass... this time. HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* we get that nwn scripting is relatively user friendly. however, that link that the swede showed us... weren't. HA! Good Fun!

call us crazy, but wouldn't a goal of a moddable game marketed to the masses (i.e. nwn) be to offer something relatively user friendly? HA! Good Fun!

lord knows that we generally loathe viewsonic... but the g90fb is a very good and very affordable monitor... one of the best dollar:quality 19" gaming crts we has seen. on the other hand, di might keep in mind that a 19" lcd actually got more viewable area than a 19" crt. if size matters. ... disturbing. not immediately disagreeing with sargy feels... wrong. however, as this is technical advice maybe we can bear the realization. HA! Good Fun!

which again completely ignores the story building strengths of crpg villains compared to crpg protagonists. is the static nature of villains and other npcs that is allowing a writer to makes them compelling. a stark raving madman villain is NOT really mad. the writer ain't mad. the writer knows exactly what the madman is gonna say, and there is reasons for the madman's speakings... otherwise you gets nothing but gibberish, and in spite of the ridiculous ss example of the madman villain, a truely unpredictable mad man character would be 'bout as fun to interact with as would vis is on the boards. sometimes developers get so caught up in trying to makes kewl features that they forget that story offers the actual raison deter. choice for the sake of choice is rather cold and stale. morrowind had lots of choices

"The reason I'm not as fond as having a "murky" antagonist that gets defined somewhere along the way is that I don't feel the player is necessarily making an informed choice. Having different gameplay experiences is cool, but unknowingly making very important choices doesn't necessarily seem great to me" understood. however, consider kotor2. that game offered some early dialogues to "fix" whether or not revan were male v. female or good v. evil. weren't really murky at all. not need be shy 'bout clubbing folks over the head with the choice. as it stands now, you get no choice at all. an albeit somewhat murky choice v. no choice? HA! Good Fun!

no offense, but we think you ain't looking at this from a writer's perspective. predictability is exactly why villains in crpgs can be developed to a much greater degree... they is static. you cannot write a compelling character that is unknown to the writer. come up with all kinds o' wacky randomness and then tell somebody else to write good dialogues to match the situations... and advance a story that is meant to capture the imagination of the player. HA! end up with 4 very different villains who signifficantly alter the choke point encounters and the ultimate resolution of game? is a bad thing? HA! Good Fun!

is no real different than any other crpg. kotor/kotor2 light v. dark quests gets triggered by what? toee opening vignettes were even worse. those were based simply on character generation choices... and yielded no real divergence anyways. *shrug* compared to the typical manner in which limited crpg bifurcation takes place, 20 minutes to an hour of initial gameplay to be resulting in games which affords at least some meaningful reason to try replaying seems a vast improvement. HA! Good Fun!