ramza

My mistake, but FF10 is as craptastic as 12...

Crap, I lost the BMP original. It's funny how you put FF12 among the good games, as it was craptastic, even for a FF game... I won't even comment about it being a RPG... Moreover, you say that Jade empire>NWN1... Are you crazy? Despite its flaws and older technology, Jade Empire is wayyyyyyy inferior to NWN1...

Volourn, please find yourself a cave for the winter and leave us in peace...

You forgot the following games: Planescape, IWD 1 and 2, ToEE, The Witcher, Kotor II and NWN II (with its expansions). I could have been playing Infinity Engines games for my whole life if they kept making new adventures for it. I am not a graphics whore and do not care much about cinematics. All I want is a similar experience as that of BG 2 and I have yet to see that. Some Bio games came close to it but never reached it. Don't get me wrong, BG2 was quite linear and the motivations of Irenicus were laughable. However, it was the way the setting (Amn) and the quests were designed that made it great and kept you busy for at least 100 hours. I am waiting to see what Obz' next project is and I will then decide if I will give up any hopes for this company... Bio is a lost case for me and I don't even want to talk about Beth (they are not getting my money even if they are the last western "rpg" producer left)...

I DMed a game a couple weeks ago and I admit I wasn't not extremely creative on that night. We had a party of 3 (I always play a neutral NPC everytime I DM so that my two friends don't get overwhelmed): a human bard, a half-orc barbarian and a dwarven cleric. What we usually do in our sessions is to let the DM tell the background story of each character (and the players play along its lines). The story was about a mysterious guild that had appeared in Neverwinter and that was causing all sorts of problems. I had to find a motivation for finding the guild's whereabouts for each character. The bard was part of the greycloaks and the barbarian was part of a rival guild. However, I was not particularly inspired for the dwarf. So, I just said their was a dwarven pandemic among its clan (facepalm) and he was sent to find a cure (a lone dwarf for the job!) and that he learned that the mysterious guild was all behind this. My players asked me suspiciously what kind of pandemic it was. I scratched my head and told them that it was a pandemic that made dwarves lose their beards... Yeah, I know, it's lame...

I would rather not get that crap at all, then... The only game I am looking forward too is Dragon Age and that is only because there isn't anything better...

Fallout 3 and Mess Effect don't count as RPGs. They completely fail to deliver what is expected from RPGs. While not perfect and being quite linear, the Witcher was on the right direction...

Decline of RPGs

I read somewhere that Sony planned to reduce the PS3's price by 100 euros. It's still a no-no for me. Too expensive... Moreover, my gaming habits have been on a steady decline since the whole industry stopped producing quality games...

It was also the huge thing that turned NWN single player into a horribly boring experience. If the henchmen were better done, this wouldn't have been a problem. You should have been able to control them just like in NWN2 but without being able to control their level up choices.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/Home Pathfinder SRD Some interesting ideas but I will never switch to these rules...

Even though say that NWN1 was crap, my overall experience with it was quite enjoyable. The OC and both expansions (which were ok), the fan-made modules (which gave a whole new dimension to the game) and the online gaming (persistent worlds mainly) kept me busy for hundreds of hours and plenty of years which is something no game has achieved so far. Moreover, the fact that you controlled only one character was the little thing that brought the game closer to the p&p experience. NWN2 was nice with its little parties of 4-6 characters but I admit that I grew tired of all the micro-management. NWN1 was more satisfying on this issue. Just as the Codex says, developers these days just talk about "dark, mature and gritty" games and "new-generation" gameplay. This is nonsense. The old recipes worked just fine and would not have alienated the core fanbase (which I am part of). If Obz decided to produce BG3 or TBH, I would be supporting them 100%, but their most recent projects are simply bleh... Same goes for the other companies...

I not making anything tragic. I just don't like today's rpgs. You cannot deny that there has been a steady decline after 2000...

But certainly you're gonna give AP a try? It's their first "real" game. No sequel, but their thing. Nope, I find both the setting and the gameplay to be appalling... I am not looking for pseudo-rpgs, yet it seems this is what the market offers these days... I am pretty disappointed with the way the rpg market has become. All I am looking for is to get a similar experience as in the IE games... To this date, among the most recent games, only NWN2 provided me this. I may give a try at Dragon Age but it will probably be the last Bio game I will be playing as the company is merely a shadow of its past glorious self. I guess sitting in a corner, crying and cutting yourself while listening to Linkin Park is way more fun. I have simply moved on from playing to RPGs to playing other games like Total War or adventure games. The RPG era has reached the end for me. There's simply no game that has managed to grasp my attention. I may try Mass effect trilogy when they release a triple combo pack in a few years but that's it. Moreover, don't count on me buying the next d&d game if it uses the dreaded 4E rules.

But certainly you're gonna give AP a try? It's their first "real" game. No sequel, but their thing. Nope, I find both the setting and the gameplay to be appalling... I am not looking for pseudo-rpgs, yet it seems this is what the market offers these days... I am pretty disappointed with the way the rpg market has become. All I am looking for is to get a similar experience as in the IE games... To this date, among the most recent games, only NWN2 provided me this. I may give a try at Dragon Age but it will probably be the last Bio game I will be playing as the company is merely a shadow of its past glorious self.

Obz, Bio and Beth are all dead meat to me... I do not enjoy any of their newer games...

Huh, what save point? You can save your game anytime you want to... I hope you did know that... The longest time I have spent in a battle was about 5-7 mins. How come you spent 30? Unless you just played the intro...

The Witcher is a hopeless case when it comes to loading times, even when patched up...

You know, you should finish it before Ramza finds a woman, gets married and sacrifices his first born to "Project Jefferson" to speed things up. But, you know, no pressure or anything. Is this the kind of things you imagine in your manga-like world? Get a life! More seriously, I have grown so tired of waiting that I started a couple months ago my own TBH campaign for my p&p group and it's kinda fun actually. Apart from the beginning, it's a whole different story but it's more satisfying when you get to tell a story yourself... The black hound is some type of spirit with extraordinary powers that is running loose in the Realms and some groups/factions try to tame it in order to achieve their own goals. Our group of adventurers just got mixed in this for various reasons: one character is seeking power, another is just curious and the last one wants send back the hound from where it came before it ends up in the wrong hands.

That is a good idea actually. I will suggest it to her.

You have my gf's gratitude! Thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot for the offer! The upload fails though on these boards and I get the following message "Upload failed. You are not permitted to upload this type of file". I uploaded it on rapidshare for ease-of-use: http://rapidshare.com/files/260752930/Pert..._FINAL.wps.html To keep things simple, I suggest you do the same after you are done converting the file. Thanks again!

Hi all, So, my gf got herself a new pc with windows vista on it and she is having problems sending her word files to other people. I haven't seen her pc yet but she is telling me that there's microsoft works installed on it. She needs to send a file to one of her professors but there's some compatibility problem. She sent it to me too and it was saved as a .wps file on my pc and shows some weird characters and symbols instead of text (this mostly happens in the footnotes). I tried to save the file as a .doc one but there were no changes. Can someone please help me with this? I have uploaded the file so that you may tinker with it. Thanks in advance! Cheers.

There so many recruitable NPCs in the OC that the developers couldn't take the time to flesh them out. There are not that many dialogs (maybe NWN1 did this even better) and they feel shallow as characters. Heck, when you lose one of them, you won't feel a thing. I expected an emotional drama just like in FF7 but I found nada... I just wanted to have the same feeling as when Yoshimo betrayed my party in BG2. That was drama as I had the character for so long. Maybe it's because today's games are way shorter than before and you do not have the time to be emotionally connected to your characters...

I did exactly the same thing with RE5. Youtube is really cool for that...