Lady Evenstar

I think you missed the key "for me" at the start of my post. Out of curiosity did you significantly retune IWD based on the QA testers' experience or is the game they played essentially the game I've played? My thoughts on combat are similarly rooted in personal experience (as well as comments that I've read over the years). Indeed, in your talk you say that tuning IWD for folks familiar with D&D (i.e. rewarding those with that skillset at the expense of other players) resulted in a game that was frustrating for some. It's only the reverse that you deny as being a valid issue. And as someone who has been playing CRPGs since the early 90s, and who now has the sorts of reflexes you might expect in a woman over 60, I can say that introducing twitch mechanics into RPGs can definitely make a game less fun for some players. I understand that I'm no longer part of your target audience and am actually OK with that. That doesn't make catering to different skillsets any less problematic for developers who continue to want to make games that can be enjoyed by old fans, even those lacking in the twitch department. It took me about 20 minutes of ME 1 to decide that cover shooters were not for me, so I've no opinions about that series.

For me the issue with Icewind Dale isn't being tuned for folks familiar with D&D. It's things like offering club as a weapon skill and then offering this assortment of clubs http://mikesrpgcenter.com/icewind/weapons/clubs.html I also think that RPG combat is as tricky to design as it is, because the genre has traditionally appealed to players with a different skillset than FPS players have and unless your choice is to write off old fanbases in hope of attracting new audiences, you need to design combat that will feel good both to players who enjoy twitch mechanics and players who don't (either because they just don't find them fun or because they have slower reflexes). Everyone wants games that they play to reward the skills they bring to those games. The trick is making both groups feel rewarded (and not overly penalized for lacking the skills prized by the other group)--and I don't see adopting solutions that work in FPSs necessarily accomplishing that.

That's an excellent idea. How's the wait for the Mass Effect 2 Ultimate Edition going? I'm doing the same with DA II. And the approach works perfectly if your interest is sufficiently marginal that you're willing to accept the absence of an ultimate edition as a sign that you weren't meant to play the game.

I think a lot of it comes down to pacing and balance. And recognizing that if you want to nudge folks out of their comfort zone, seduction generally works better than bludgeoning. A little more empathy and less condescension towards the player base might also help if he wishes to design games for a broad audience.

A lot of the art in GI seemed very "painting-like" to me rather than photo-realistic. Sadly, I suspect it will be too shooter-like for me, but I do find the look interesting.

Except Zenimax bought Arkane, so like Id they're now family. Hard to say whether that will make a difference, but it could.

It's more art in video games, not video games as art. Which is why ME2 (have you seen some of the concept art for that?!) is on the list, and torment with it's palette of 64 shades of gray isn't. They pretty much said this in their announcement broadcast--that the list would have been different if their focus had been different.

And at what price. If the game's pricing reflected its short development cycle/limited resources, folks might be more willing to enjoy what's there and give them a pass on what isn't.

That's... eye opening. Throughout DAO I had the feeling that they had set the right stage to tell some tragic, dark tales... and then they had gone out of their way to introduce a HeRoIC (read: win-win) way of solving quests that reversed that effort completely. Connor is a good example of this. You can have his mother sacrifice herself to perform a dangerous ritual that can save her son. Or you could risk going to the Circle to get them to do the safer version of the ritual. Only... there is no such risk. Apparently all the abomination aspires to is turning his uncle into the court's buffoon and isn't threatened at all by the heroes' actions, so it'll wait patiently for you to go get some reinforcements. Hell, you can solve the rest of the plots before going back and dealing with it and despite the sense of urgency you get through the quest, nothing ever happens. Eamon doesn't kick the bucket. Undead hordes don't ravage the countryside. The kid stays patiently in his room. This effectively renders Isolde's sacrifice meaningless. The scene of the bargain offered by the desire demon is similarly cheapened. You can learn the single most overpowered specialization in the game from her, for the fair and reasonable price of an innocent's soul. Or you could, you know, unlock the specialization for that and subsequent playthroughs and then reload the game and be a hero (a dark hero if you become a blood mage). Same with the Reaver spec, etc. The game is full of these cheap choices that allow for the player to win all scenarios no matter what, paving the way for an "optimal" way through the game, and a suitably chirpy epilogue. Of course you can still roleplay and purposefully make calls that get people killed needlessly, but then when you are told by Alistair that "there could have been another way!", you know he's telling the truth. He's not na

It probably depends on which spells you chose. I wanted my Hawke to be a healer. Doing weak dps with my staff while waiting out the *60* second cooldown on my Heal spell was neither interesting nor OP. I can't imagine why they even unlocked the spell for the demo. It might be OK as part of a larger arsenal, but made for extremely dull gameplay at low levels.

As for the DLC. I was hoping for something more interesting. I wouldn't expect them to release "most wanted" DLC as a platform exclusive.

I think that New Vegas has lengthened Alpha Protocol's legs so it may eventually do a bit better than its initial reception would suggest. I also think they made some design decisions (not having the option to play a female character, the emphasis on quick decision-making) that narrowed its audience. I'm not saying that those decisions weren't necessary in order to make the game they did--or that it wasn't a good game--but while my husband loved it, it wasn't a game for me. Rather, it was the first Obsidian game I didn't buy. Hopefully, another Obsidian original would aim to be more inclusive. "Not going there" needn't mean second-hand IPs. It just needs to mean designing gameplay that appeals to a broader audience.

I imagine they're just happy--happy that many people seem to be enjoying the game and happy that it looks to be a commercial success.

I think that reviewers/publishers of first impressions owe it to their readers to share the glitches, as well as the things they've enjoyed. So far, I'm mostly pleased that I've read nothing that makes me think I won't get a lot of enjoyment from the game. It may need patching. I may need to avoid the quicksave key. But the good stuff seems to be there.

Back when the major challenge of druid healing was dodging princess priests who thought themselves entitled to that innervate ;-)

You dont typically see mages gem for Int, is that due to the recent patch? Except for weapons, casters now get spellpower from Int. Runed Cardinal Rubies all turned into Int Rubies.

Well, my druids were pissing and moaning about having to re-buy abilities (bear form and swipe) they've had for 70 levels. Haven't actually gotten them specced yet so I don't really have an opinion on the gameplay changes--although a druid in my Horde guild was have an indecent amount of fun creating Efflorescence in Thunder Bluff. I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic about both resto and moonkin and badly informed concerning feral. I'm guessing that my resto shaman main has been nerfed a bit but not dramatically. Mostly she seems to lack fun new toys. In any case, it's much too soon to get terribly excited one way or another as it will take time to settle into changes, and I'm sure Blizzard will continue to work on balance.

There are apparently security loopholes which may allow addons to expose your real name. http://www.wow.com/2010/07/06/security-fla...fe-names-witho/

I'm fine with disc checks. I'm less fine, but still willing to buy, games that require a one-time online authentication. If you want to requre online play the benefit *to me* of being online needs to outweigh the inconvenience. So far only WoW has managed to pass this hurdle. Part of the appeal of single-player games is being able to play when and where I like. There are games I might buy, regardless, I can't be sure since nothing I've really, really wanted has been published with what I consider to be overly restrictive DRM, but there are definitely otherwise "might buy" games that I definitely wouldn't buy if I didn't like the DRM. I expect to buy FO:NV. I wouldn't buy it if it required me constantly to be online.

That sounds like a reason to ignore the score, not to stop reading reviews. So long as the actual text is accurate, it can supply useful information.

I think this post gets at the heart of the conflict between folks who love Bethesda games and those who don't. What is "peripheral, unimportant stuff" to some players is a source of delight to others. In principle you are right, but that's not what i meant. A nice perk, a beautiful vista or a funny pop culture reference may be a source of delight for me as well, but it's still peripheral. I meant i would note bigger things as pros of fallout 3. And cons, of course, as i have done to a ridiculus degree here and elsewhere. Ah, we're talking past each other then. For me "Consistently being rewarded for exploring the environment - there was always at least three things to see on the horizon that you wanted to go check out" is the heart of the matter. I love Beth's visual approach to storytelling, the sense of living in the world their games give me, but I understand that if you're looking for different sorts of stories told via dialogue trees, you'd be frustrated.

I think this post gets at the heart of the conflict between folks who love Bethesda games and those who don't. What is "peripheral, unimportant stuff" to some players is a source of delight to others.

I'd like FO:NV to be a fun game and a critical and financial success. My guess would be that they think that talking to Pete will do more to assure folks who bought and liked FO 3 that they should be excited about this game, too, than would talking to someone from Obsidian. I realize that folks who were fans of the original Fallouts and/or Obsidian would rather hear from them and that the actual devs would likely have more interesting things to say, but there's plenty of time to hear those things, and I think Obsidian needs a blockbuster a lot more than they need initial "credit." And the article including FO:NV in the top ten games in 2010 in the last issue of PC Gamer gaved very nice credit, explaining why they were excited about the game's pedigree.

This begs the question: why make a sequel to a game that has a small hardcore group of fans, and change it to appeal to more people? Then why make a sequel in the first place? (Beth gets bonus points for making a sequel to their own game and disguising it as another.) My take was that they liked the original games and thought a new generation of gamers would enjoy the Fallout world as well. I think that the existence of a hardcore subset of the fans of the original games was neither here nor there from their point of view. There are quite a few folks, myself included, who enjoyed the original games and Fallout 3. From time to time Bethesda reps have commented that they seek input from gamers who do not frequent their forums. I'm guessing that the disconnect arises from certain groups of fans feeling that they represent "the" voice of Fallout fandom, and Beth viewing theirs as one voice among many.

Does the dev treat his cows well?