@\NightandtheShape/@

NEXT POST That is obviously subjective. I disagree harshly... Perhaps it would be fair to say, every character you play basically ends up as the SAME character? NEXT POST Are they poorly design or poorly implemented, as at the end of the day implementation and initial design ain't the same thing. Some things just turn out bad when they're eventually realised, The game is well enough designed that most people will experience the game and enjoy the game without suffering from the same irks of annoyance that you yourself do. I don't bother with oblivion mods, I don't feel the need to. If something was bothering a player, most likely there would be a mod to fix it, hence beth's approch is a good one. I don't agree that your "logical" flaws are that prevelent you also have the advantage of playing the game for a very long period of time, somethings during development become unchangeable, sometimes things go unnoticed. All games have logical flaws, some are just more frustrating than others. The game design never force's the player to do anything, this is again a good example of how your style of play effects your characters progression and why you have the feelings you do. I tend to for example, switch out my equipment, opposed to repairing, and make use of certain equipment at certain times. Not everyone can do that, but it's fair to say that naturally some people are indeed able to, frankly I always saw the lockpicking skill as a aid to the player. It's a middle of the road solution, it isn't perfect but then again, I don't believe like yourself that it should be impossible, just highly unlikely, and fact of the matter may be that for most people they don't have an experience akin to your own. That you don't have to even pick the locks at all you can just use a scroll, you don't need to heal, you can use potions etc... Basically options options options, which are used in different styles of play. Well for you that indeed seem's to be the case. So basically what your saying is that if a player adopts a different approch they're LARPing, please! Your major complaint is that you don't feel the game forces you to do certain things, well that's my impression atleast, I find that ironic for a game which is obviously defined by the play with the design itself actually coming from the perspective of letting the player choose how to play the game and not forcing anything on the player. I suppose it's an attempt to simulate small talk and social interaction, speechcraft helps with the minigame, that's the only point of it, and how much a NPC likes you does effect what they tell you. The cutting of short blade and spears which does suck, but clearly the had the idea of the minigame thought it was cool and used the skill to complement the minigame, high speechcraft does make the minigame easier, for alot of people the game will seem pointless and annoying but that is a matter of opinion.

I don't even know where to start with this, you've made so many points crash girl that are at first glance logical and unflawed. Like I say you've alot of points, but I'd like to start with my initial response which basically stated that your analysis was piss poor, which was only in response to that particular post, it doesn't hold true for everything that you've said since. Style of play is important, a melee based character and a magic user do play very differently. Naturally if you aim to max everything out you end up with a generic character that can do everything, but lets face it, the only people who would set out to do that would be a hardcore clique. Style of play dictates function from my experience. Really? I could have swore that a skill level had an effect on success rate. Sure they do they clearly define the players progression along those skill paths, the more a skill is used the faster it progresses etc... As major and minor skills effect the starting statistics of a skill this obviously then effects the success rate. That's an absolutely different system that would result in a totally different game, heck dungeon siege basically use's a simplified version of that method and thus as you may have experienced the result is that focusing on a single skill yeilds the best results. As with the previous statement this would result in a dramatically different experience. To be able to go from swing a sword to casting spells to whatever would be a different experience. I don't believe that is in line with oblivions design at all as basically you're encouraged to work on a variety of skills. NEXT POST Firstly you should consider that the fact that tools have been provided to the fan community for modding as a good thing. It's fairly simple really, as it's frankly unlikely that any game will ever be released in perfect condition. By handing over abilities to fans to improve upon, change and modify the game benefits, which means the developer in essance benefits. You mention thousands of problems, but it's hard to actually define a problem sometimes as occasionally this can be influenced heavily by opinion. That said, do you honestly believe that a company should spend X amount of cash fixing extremely minor bugs, sometimes the option itself isn't even available.... I would like an example of these problems. Isn't that the whole point of the ease-to-mod approch taken by Bethseda? NEXT POST An exploit that has different effects on the resulting gameplay anyway, seriously though... You say most people, I would say powergamers, and folks who enjoy exploits. Even knowing that exploit doesn't mean I would use it, I personally don't see the point. All's said if you can't help being a bull to a red flag then by all means use a mod. I believe the approch you outline would infact spoil the gameplay and increase the starting difficulty, and break the gameplay. NEXT POST This I can agree with 100%, no system is perfect though hence why they're often revised and imporved. LOL, like Oblivion is the first game ever to have something akin to that. Heck, GTA4 scored 10 out of 10 in alot of reviews, that game makes me smash my face against the wall due to the WTF THAT'S STUPID! Moments. They'll always exist in many games, good, bad or ugly. It's sad when it breaks immersion, but it's not really something worth getting wound up about.

The reason for that of course is that all "classes" and any player character that you custom design are functionally identical and they become more so the longer you play. During development, we were told that this problem, which also plauged Morrowind, would be fixed so that different characters would actually be different. This of course didn't happen and the problem was actually made worse. In Oblivion's design there is really no need for skills. It would have been more efficient for Todd Howard to eliminate the major/minor seperation of skills since the difference is cosmetic only and has zero effect on gameplay. Rather simply start all skills at the same level and let them all develop at the same pace. Or, even better and more in line with Oblivion's design, woudl have been to eliminate skills all together and simply approach it as an FPS: players can do whatever they want and skill numbers are not neccessary. Oh please, that's a piss poor analysis of the games design. You've convinced me! Your analysis is off. edit: read a few more of your posts and understood your opinion better. Edit2: I am working on a response.

My problem at the moment is that I'm trying to play everything all at once, but I will say that I have mostly been playing Supreme Commander.

The only reason people moan about vista is the cost of upgrading, I swear there isn't a damn thing wrong with the OS, and frankly from my own experience it's been infinately more stable than XP. Sure you have a perf hit with some stuff, but then again there isn't actually much of a notable cost. What can I say? Bunch of fracking whinerz.

The reason for that of course is that all "classes" and any player character that you custom design are functionally identical and they become more so the longer you play. During development, we were told that this problem, which also plauged Morrowind, would be fixed so that different characters would actually be different. This of course didn't happen and the problem was actually made worse. In Oblivion's design there is really no need for skills. It would have been more efficient for Todd Howard to eliminate the major/minor seperation of skills since the difference is cosmetic only and has zero effect on gameplay. Rather simply start all skills at the same level and let them all develop at the same pace. Or, even better and more in line with Oblivion's design, woudl have been to eliminate skills all together and simply approach it as an FPS: players can do whatever they want and skill numbers are not neccessary. Oh please, that's a piss poor analysis of the games design.

It's a pre-alpha build, don't expect too much eh? Heck it shouldn't look really pretty until Beta anyways.

Heh.... Yep sounds like someone broke the renderer. The answer is fairly simple, nobody sleeps till its fixed, pizza and red bull for all!

Dissertation huh, tell me more, length, topic, content, findings blah blah you get the point... BTW, Congrats DrTaks... Some mod should change your sn for you i r be reckoning

Nice informing little fact for you, reviewers are all a waste of space.

*pokes thread* HELLO YOU DEAD!

Better I agree, but the enemies need o be a slight bit tougher and the AI is a little dumb. The balance seems slightly too much in favour of the player.

Thing is, I tend to hate racing games as a rule, GTA is about as much of a car game as I can stomach, now if I'm saying GTA IV is easy, then it is most likely too easy... I found the previous GTA's (excluding 1 and 2) to be easy aswell. Which is probably my main problem with the series since it's big "3D" shift, it's too easy.

Regardless of if an individual likes achievements, they sure as hell ain't going anywhere, they're a requirement for any XBOX 360 game. Achievements can add longevity to certain games, and a certain level of competition with friends... But it doesn't really matter, it's just an extra rewards system which some gamers will enjoy, I personally like it, gives me something to aim for if I'm on a secondary run through, as I often find after the initial play through of a game doing the exactly same things isn't entertaining, but say setting out to unlock a bunch of achievements while I play can increase a games replayability.

GTA IV, it's like any other GTA just more polished and prettier with some nice new and inventive additions, such as the whole friends thing... Though if anything I'd say GTA IV is easier.

There are pleanty of watchable movies based on games, but no good movies, but even the watchable ones are usually crap. Some could perhaps be considered good B movies heh, but for the most part they suck. For me personally games based on movies for the most part tend to suck, and movies based on games tend to suck. A general rule, with the odd exception.

One of the main problems with the games industry is that some companies are populated by elitest s***s, riding off the glories of yesturyear... I'm not going to name names in regards to that but I've had my run ins. Though, that attitude isn't displayed by every company. I'm certainly not finding it easy to break into the games industry in regards to OOOOoooo I wanna work for X, and it happends. Sometimes you just have to take a job when it's on offer, which can be a double edged sword, but in regards to making a start its certainly not been my experience so far that you can just target a single company, or group of companies and expect to get hired. Naturally I have a prefered shortlist . I think most devs do, but then again... I've met alot of folks who would also be quite happy working for blizzard, as part of the WoW community... *shruggs* whatever that's about. I wish I had some advice for breaking into the industry, but as I'm just about done with my degree, its hard to say, I'm not quite there yet, just another face in a sea of faces shouting HIRE ME! While trying to get something togeather to make me stand out... I certainly don't know what to do past continuing to make indie games, I plan on applying to lots of places, but that won't certainly get me a job, but it may.

It's going to be great to see the kind of technology the folks at obsidian can come up with, I have my concerns, as Electron as a render engine was heavy on perf in regards to shadows and lighting. It's a big undertaking, but I also imagine alot of middleware will rear it's head, Havok, perhaps Granny... I expect to see Bink, potentially Speed Tree... So on, unless the intention is to develop a 100% middleware free engine, which would certainly be a huge undertaking... Anyways, final result will be worth seeing. The two new projects, Aliens and Alpha Protocol may turn out to be the make or break of Obsidian as a company, seems like there is alot of investment going off... I'll be honest mind, I've no clue of how things are panning out in regards to finance.

Even as bad as it looks it'll be better than the original, gawd what an awful movie... No. The original is a work of art. You fail at life, sorry. Man talk about low standards. Isn't this your woman? OH ME GAWD!

Even as bad as it looks it'll be better than the original, gawd what an awful movie...

It's all good judging by the general framerate of NWN2, that'd be just about right....

... None of the console's are ABLE to produce cutting edge graphics. alright PC fanboy get the heck out of here if you aren't going to say anything worth reading. Interesting I own a 360 and a Wii... It just happends to be a fact, they're not able to produce cutting edge graphics, so why try...?

... None of the console's are ABLE to produce cutting edge graphics.

It's most likely to be voxel based effects engines with ray-tracing for geometric rendering, though this depends very much upon how many CPU's we end up finding in systems, or if they're are any great progresses in RPU's. We may see voxel-based stuff inbetween, but the days of raster based graphics are coming to an end. I had a very neat discussion with a guy from Rockstar Leeds, about this very topic.

I didn't even care about Mass Effect till I played it, I'd kept myself so ignorant... It has flaws, but it is the first game EVER that the moment I finished it I literally started again, that's never happend to me before. I look Forwards to Mass Effect 2, they've crafted an awesome world, that's nice and freeform just like Baldurs Gate. The only thing that bothers me really are, that the Inventory is a bit naff, you tend to end up a bit overloaded, and the mako sucks.