Dhruin

The lockpicking mini-game is easy...in fact, too easy. You're just off on the wrong tangent. The persuation mini-game I hate, however.

Well - be surprised. Oblivion runs AI updates for *every* NPC across the world. I was wrong on the number (it's 1500) and there's a better post than this one but I'm too tired to find it. Here's Gavin 'kathode' Carter arguing about WoW :

Might it not just be that it's harder to do some things when the engine has to accomodate tracking 3000 NPCs? Oblivion does AI updates for *every* NPC right across the whole gameworld.

Simultaneous PC and X360 release...I would think most US stores would have it by now. What exactly do you want to know? Everyone will have different opinions but if you want a specific area(s) covered, I'd be happy to answer as best I can. For the record, I played Morrowind for around 40 hours before putting it aside - I was satisfied with that but I'm neither a fan nor a hater; it did some things well and others not so. Oblivion has obvious improvement in many areas...but it feels very much like Morrowind 2.0...if you hated MW I doubt this will convert you. For anything less than hate, it depends on your priorities I guess.

Might as well provide some actual impressions, cross-posted from elsewhere... Really quick impressions from two hours play... Seems to perform quite well on my P4-3Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 6800gs...detected as "High" settings, first dungeon ran very well and outside seems fine most of the time, although the grass texture on the hills opposite the river look pretty plain. The graphics are...great and underwhelming at the same time. The textures are nice and things like sword hilts and so on are incredible but the dungeon internals tend a little to shiny plastic and the faces are god-awful. First dungeon gameplay is fun in an action/RPG way. I didn't think the physics were as solid as HL2 but it is an RPG, so no problem. Enjoyed archery and fireball throwing quite a bit but melee didn't feel that much better than Morrowind at this early stage (probably just me). I dislike the interface and it annoys me that PC interfaces are dictated by consoles. I'll get used to it but the icons are meaningless at the moment, there doesn't seem to be any tooltips and it doesn't use the screen real estate efficiently because it was clearly designed for consoles - not a big deal in the whole scheme of things but a AAA product of this magnitude should be better, IMO. I was asked on another board to articulate my concerns with the interface, so here goes. I don't want this to look like a big whine - it's one element out of the whole game... - UI doesn't scale. Everything is within the "journal", which is the tabbed box you've seen in screens. It's only about 40%? of the screen area, so lots of scrolling regardless of your super 1920x1600 resolution or whatever. Things you might want nice and large, such as inventory or map, all fit in this box. - Because of the lack of space, there's a dozen tabs and you have to switch between 4? screens just to get complete character info, let alone spells, inventory, etc - Everything is indicated with icons - no text and no tooltips. Few of them made any sense at first glance until I had experimented or checked the manual. They look very stylish but aren't intuitive to me. - As far as I can tell (and I'd love to be wrong) there's no hotkey access to specific screens - I can't hit "M" for map or "I" for inventory...hit TAB for the journal and navigate the tabs. Did I miss something here?* - Journal seems pretty basic (although there's a map reference, which is nice) *Turns out the F1, F2 etc keys go straight to the map etc but that simply isn't in my manual. Surely "M" for map and "I" for inventory are RPG standards? Anyway, I was incorrect on this point.

I think you might be surprised. If you said "no Euro RPG developers", I'd agree but in other genres...

Exactly. Why would they want to do that again?

It's been a while since I played Eve but I don't think the world really changes. There's some factional policking via the guilds (corporations) but I don't think that counts much more than capturing some territory in DAoC or Shadowbane.

I agree - this game is just begging for the Guild Wars model (not that it would happen). Without crafting, solo content or a persistent world to explore, it's just too hard for many people to organise grouping regularly enough to justify the subscription. I understand why they did it and in part I admire their attempt to remain true to D&D's small group roots but I just don't think this makes for a game that will find a large enough audience when the initial honeymoon has worn off. And even if it maintains modestly good subscriptions (say 200-300,000), watch for the deluge of negative press just like SWG, because this a brand that demands huge success or the vultures will begin to circle.

I didn't find the translation much of a problem and I liked the text - I found it very descriptive with entertaining background stories, which was what made them more interesting for me than the simple underlying puzzle. Each to his own. Edit: the black holes? You can get lots of unique artifacts, so they are worth doing.

My review. Probably the best game I played last year - but it won't appeal to everyone. I really disagree the text adventures were that bad - they were one of the things I liked the most. They were a little uneven but I think they played an important role in breaking up the main gameplay so it didn't get repetitive.

It will be interesting to see what you think over time. I think the focus of D&DO is far too narrow to hold subcribers in the med - long run, not to mention the ones that don't sign up in the first place.

Technically, that would be because it isn't an expansion - it's a free standing game. You don't need GW to play it at all.

I don't know this magazine and you'd be naive to think it never happens...but it doesn't happen as often as you might think. Most scores fall into line with aggregation systems like Gamerankings and those that don't are usually just different opinions - or perhaps a stuffup. Have you ever spoken to mag writers and editors? Anyway, what does the "brutal" refer to? Game difficulty?

I think it will be a good fantasy action game with a few (very) light RPG elements - enough to give it a bit of texture. Arkane did a great job with the atmosphere in Arx and I think they are perfect for this. It's a new game world, new developer...the old M&M is irrelevant to how this will turn out.

If you primarily follow the main quest, occasionally pursuing something you find interesting, you can "finish" it well under 40 hours. All the complaints are entirely valid, although the lore is deep and things like alchemy are worth a few hours.

The Planescape setting is too weird to have wide appeal, unfortunately. It just wouldn't sell enough to interest a publisher.

No such implication, I'm sorry. Bio probably does make the games they want but the fact that they want to make games with a wider appeal will always make it easier for them. And why would either Troika or Bio disagree with their publishers and why would Troika whine about it more? Could it be because the gap between what Troika wanted and what the publisher wanted was bigger than Bio vs publisher? Thanks for agreeing with me.

Now, I didn't say that killed Troika, did I? Again, I was referring to their business sense and the fact that a "hardcore" (whether people agree with this tag or not) cRPG developer will find the modern games market increasingly hostile unless they diversify the market they address and/or change the type of games they make - and their core fans would accuse them (and did for Bloodlines anyway) of selling out. @Volourn, so Bio makes the games they like. ...And?

I wasn't talking about licenses or the industry but rather the gameplay style Troika wanted - but since you raise the point and ToEE, I'll run with. Troika made a bunch of decisions intended to appeal to "hardcore" fans - people like themselves - such as prioritising turn-based combat over virtually everything else, such as sticking with rules like 100gp to identify items every time etc etc. BioWare would never include such things because they know this restricts the audience. I'm not trying to make a value judgement - that one is better than the other - but BioWare put effort (to some degree or another) into trying to accomodate a wider audience that Troika never seriously considered. BioWare's way is smarter from a business sense - Troika wanted to make games they liked. Those design decisions are completely separate to whether they were competent in trying to achieve those goals.

Troika would have "died" one way or the other, anyway. It's a sad (?) reality that the type of hardcore RPG Troika liked to make is going to find it difficult to sustain the sales required for modern AAA titled, particularly as time marches on. I often see comparisons between Troika and the success of BioWare - a quick look at BioWare's forums will reveal plenty of "BioWare isn't as good anymore" type threads as old hardcore PC fans become disgruntled with BioWare's movement into consoles and games with broader appeal. That's how BioWare sustains their growth and it will continue as they grow larger. BioWare has always had a better eye for a wider audience than Troika...which is one reason I always liked Troika's games. The best business decision Troika could have made would be to make a different style of game...in which case many of us would be complaining they "sold out" or went all console. That doesn't mean they didn't make plenty of mistakes that made the situation worse, btw.

I found that original post rather hard to navigate. For my personal tastes, each Troika game had something I enjoyed that is hard to find elsewhere (at least in full commercial products). Definitely a loss for me.

It's not the slightest bit of evidence and you know it.

D'oh! I'll keep this one in my "Hall of Idiotic Moments" for 2006. The quotes in our database for #3 aren't anywhere near as interesting. "

Seems to me that PNJ is signed...unless I missed something. Of course, the link doesn't work anymore but it did when I posted this at RPGDot in July, 2004.