Sylvius the Mad
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Everything posted by Sylvius the Mad
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I think it would depend on the game, and the team developing the game. It would cause a stir, but if done right I could see an Ultima or Wing Commander getting the funding. Do you think gamers would trust EA to assemble a good team to make an Ultima or Wing Commander worthy of the name? They're making an Ultima right now, and their public statements on the gameplay are cringe-worthy. -
I completely agree. I love rolling stats in the IE games. Also, rolling stats allows players to have optimised or gimped characters as they see fit.
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A text box for combat feedback and dialogue history. And let us scroll back through both of those quite a way in case we miss something.
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While I don't particularly need different body types, I will point out that NWN had overweight models available for the player.
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Ahh, the Vampiric Wolves east of Beregost. Yes, those were cruel. Encounters like that are why games should offer us tactical retreat (running away) as an option.
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The poll brings to mind two very different games: Dragon Age 2, and Questron. I think there's a 27 year gap between them. DA2 showed exactly how not to do this. On Nightmare difficulty, basically everything was immune to some type of damage, and for no good in-game reason. That was idiotic. Questron (again, released 1984) offered a variety of weapons, with clear progress from one to the next. In general use, it was easy to say weapon A was superior to weapon B. But some monsters in the game were highly resistant to all damage, except that dealt by a specific weapon. The Phase Spider was resistant to everything except Whip damage. The Stone Axe Beak was resistant to everything except Sling damage. The Piercing Pungie was resistant to everything except Club damage. The Masher Whale was resistant to everything except Hammer damage (I just pulled all these from memory - what is wrong with my brain?). You could still kill these creatures with other weapons, but it was far more difficult. Thinking back, I would estimate that they took 10% damage from normal weapons, and 200% damage from the proper weapon. And the knowledge of which weapons to use could be gleaned from conversations with NPCs or reading lore. This was a fun system, but it was a bit contrived (that sort of thing didn't bother me as much when I was 10). I would rather a system where weapons do different kinds of physical damage, and creatures were susceptible or resistant to different kinds of physical damage. Something as simple as piercing/slashing/blunt would do fine. Some weapons could perhaps do more than one type of damage, making them more versatile.
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I once had a similar system for tabletop RPG magic, with different runes. Each rune had a corresponding skill value, and gave its value to the spell's value total. As you grew in level, you could use more runes in a single spell, and individual runes became stronger because your corresponding skill increased. Combining different runes altered the spell's effect (eg. Fire + Blood was a blood boiling spell, but when you added a Blessing rune to it, any time an attack drew your blood, it became a little gout of flame, damaging melee attackers). The different features of the same spell (range, damage, AoE, duration, etc.) was influenced by the order of the runes (if you put Blessing in the first place, the duration increased, if Fire, the damage, if Blood, the range... etc.). Players had a lot of fun experimenting. Problem is, it would be too much work to implement such a system to be worth it. That's basically Ultima Underworld's magic system.
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For the record, I really dislike the first person perspective for roleplaying games. I played FO3 exclusively with the third-person camera. But on its own, it's not a useful goal. What is it about the game that makes it immersive? People should ask for that. Just saying "immersion" is about as informative as personal ads that say "I like having fun." Well of course you do; everyone likes having fun. But what constitutes fun differs from person to person. Similarly, all players may not find all of the same features immersive, so simply asking for immersion is pointless.
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Kivan and Viconia would also eventually come to blows. Though it was possible to have both Edwin and Minsc in the party long-term. If you didn't speak to Edwin in Nashkel until after you'd rescued Dynaheir, he would ask to join so he could "keep an eye on her." On-topic, I'm hoping for several more companions than we can use at once. Otherwise we'd be badly limited in terms of our overall party design. Unless, of course, we can make more than one PC to start the game.
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"The revolution will be livestreamed."
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When souls were first mentioned in the pitch video, I thought they had potential. Reading the Souls paragraph of this update, I cackled with glee. This sounds terrific.
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Placing traps and drawing your enemies into them is loads of fun. I used this extensively in DAO. And KotOR's final battle with Malak could be won without any traditional combat at all, and just laying mines instead.
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I reject the notion that there is one specific way to "beat" a roleplaying game. I deny that roleplaying games have winning conditions at all. As such, I voted old-school. I like consequences, and I like consequences to flow credibly from my character's actions, but I don't like hand-holding. If I make a choice in chapter 2 that makes some aspect of chapter 5 exceedingly likely to kill me, then in chapter 5 my character will die. His story is complete, and I can start another.
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I have received one, but I deserved it. I don't find BioWare difficult or heavy-handed at all. I think they've made progressively worse design decisions for the past 13 years, and I've been really vocal about that on their fora (both the old BioBoards and BSN), and never have they complained about the content of my posts.
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Eyeballing the curve so far, I'd say we're heading for something around $3 million. KickTraq assumes a big jump at the end because there's a sense of urgency there among the backers (or potential backers), and many projects do see such a boost. But many projects also need that boost in order to realise their funding goals, and others have genuinely appealing stretch goals (the Order of the Stick reprint Kickstarter is the best example I've yet seen of this). Given the nature of Prroject Eternity, I'm not sure such popular stretch goals will be possible by the time we approach $3 million. So, if we get that boost at the end, we might approach $3.5 million, but I think something closer to $3 million is more likely. Really, the constituencies likely to support this already know about it - this isn't like that recent D&D documentary project that needed Paizo to direct traffic to them on their final day to reach their goal.
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It's skill-based, which makes it GURPS-ish, which makes it good. Honestly, GURPS was a great system. Why didn't it get more use in CRPGs? Was Steve Jackson just being difficult? I still remember my sense of wonder when I realised that the real world was moving from Tech Level 7 to Tech Level 8.
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I'm basically taking Skyrim's alchemy system and applying it to all magic (so spellcasting then carries an inventory management component, like several Ultima games). This is barely more complex than Skyrim's alchemy system, something many players engage in recreationally even when they don't need to.
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Regarding international shipping and the lack of multilanguage support, two points: 1. Many countries both enjoy gaming and speak English, despite not being the US. I'm in one of them. 2. Multilanguage support can actually create significant restrictions on how the game is written. For example, if different verb conjugations differ based on the level of familiarity between his speaker and audience, that information then needs to be recorded somewhere, line by line, so the localisation teams can translate directly.
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EA doesn't appear to know that, though. I contacted them about licensing the Aurora engine, and they wouldn't talk to me.
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I like this idea, but I also like the idea of having to prepare spells in advance. So, imagine a crafting system where spells need to be mixed before use (by combining magical components), and you can only cast the spells you've previously made. But you can invent new spells by mixing together different components in new ways. I'm not talking about discovering pre-designed spells (like Ultima Underworld), but by having each component and means of preparation impart different abilities - like how alchemy works in Skyrim. Then, as the mage grows more powerful, he might learn new methods of preparation, or might become more effective at preparation, or might gain the ability to use more different ingredients in combination at a time. You know, I really like this idea. You could build a whole game around this.
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I was a reluctant convert to Windows. I preferred DOS, and then when DOS was no longer adequate I tended to use OS/2 to emulate Windows rather than actually install Windows. I didn't run Windows until Windows 98.
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As mentioned before, "memorisation" was a poor word for it. You were effectively, using meditation, building a specific lattice of magical power in your mind, which, at the moment of casting was released. To cast the same spell again, the lattice needed to be rebuilt. In earlier editions, the amount of time required to "memorise" spells was really quite onerous, plus the spellbooks from which the spells were "memorised" were massive. As such, a mage typically had to choose, before even embarking on his adventure, which spells he would have in his travelling spellbook (as his main spellbook was too large to transport), thus limiting his strategic options each day. It was a much deeper system than CRPG translations made it appear.
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For the record, I loathe 4th edition. Also, it broke the pattern of quality. 1st edition was great. But 1.5 (Unearthed Arcana) was unbalanced. 2nd edition was great. But 2.5 (Skills & Powers) was grossly unbalanced. 3rd edition was great (though I continue to lament the loss of dual-classing). But 3.5 was broken. 4th edition was terrible. Pattern broken.
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Unless of course there were mana potions like 99% of games with a mana pool. Read further down. There are ways around that, as well.
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The spell preparation and reagent system from Ultima IV achieves many of people's desired objectives, as well. Mages must plan ahead, they cannot mindlessly spam powerful abilities, but there's no incredulity stemming from memorisation (personally, I don't think memorisation actually has this problem, but, again, many do - I think documenting it better would help).
