good and bad from Arcanum

[Michael_Galt]

Well, without revealing anything, yes, I too think the story was rather excellent.  I really liked how you were essentially a detective, scouring the continent for all the information you needed, with every city and culture having a piece of the puzzle- there was a relation between everything.  Also, unlike in most RPGs, every area had some sort of connection with other, adjacent areas (the fading power of Cumbria, the competition between Tarant and Caladin, the sisters of Quintarra and the Dark Elven city, etc).

[Gromnir]

arcanum were a fresh and intriguing game... before we played it. were all downhill from the moment we loaded it onto hard drive. from magazine articles and board discussion, arcanum setting were something we was much looking forward to seeing realized. as a fan o' fallout, we were anticipating a game that were developed by some key fallout developers-- a big, open world with falloutesque character generation were sounding kinda fantastic.

 

...

 

game were never better than when it were just so much expectation and hype. the reality were complete disappointing.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Michael_Galt]

I am not sure if English is not your native language, you are using tongue-in-cheek humor, or you are just trolling...

[Gromnir]

I am not sure if English is not your native language, you are using tongue-in-cheek humor, or you are just trolling...

 

feel free to imagine an inserted eye-roll emoticon here if doing so better conveys our mixed derision and exasperation.

 

*sigh*

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps unless you wanna get thread chopped, please add something thread-relevant to your posts. is bad form.  

 

example: arcanum, in addition to being a snooze-fest with wildly unbalanced combat mechanics, had no memorable characters. 

Edited August 24, 2013 by Gromnir

[jethro]

example: arcanum, in addition to being a snooze-fest with wildly unbalanced combat mechanics, had no memorable characters. 

 

 

But it had a fantastic memorable world to explore. Ah well, tastes differ.

[jamoecw]

 

I am not sure if English is not your native language, you are using tongue-in-cheek humor, or you are just trolling...

 

feel free to imagine an inserted eye-roll emoticon here if doing so better conveys our mixed derision and exasperation.

 

*sigh*

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps unless you wanna get thread chopped, please add something thread-relevant to your posts. is bad form.  

 

example: arcanum, in addition to being a snooze-fest with wildly unbalanced combat mechanics, had no memorable characters. 

 

 

 

while you are right, you also have to realize that baldur's gate has revolutionized how we judge rpgs, after it had percolated and other rpgs that would have been considered fairly good were tossed in the gutter developers knew that character development and interaction was necessary for rgs from that point on.  gone were the days of throwing a generic warrior, rogue and wizard together and then focussing on the lore, story, and mechanics.  it also came at a time when publishers were putting pressure on developers to release an unfinished product so that it can get fixed later via patches on a shoestring budget.  once you account for all of that you realize arcanum was a really good game, it just happened to be made at the wrong time.

 

while i enjoy watching the playthroughs of arcanum by sawyer, he would have taken away much more by reading the rulebook (which he didn't do given his issues with the interface).  it had great fluff and told how it was envisioned, which is really good, and has pretty much what was lacking from the game itself.

[Leferd]

"while i enjoy watching the playthroughs of arcanum by sawyer, he would have taken away much more by reading the rulebook (which he didn't do given his issues with the interface). it had great fluff and told how it was envisioned, which is really good, and has pretty much what was lacking from the game itself."

 

You're actually confusing Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone.

[Gromnir]

josh is the one with the religious motif tattoos.

 

that being said, we agree that one probably gets more outta arcanum  by reading rulebook or even game manual than an actual play-through of the pc game. such a reality should be taken as a damning criticism o' arcanum, but folks at codex seem to thinks that gets tim cain bonus points. weird.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps in response to some poster above. arcanum were getting something like an extra +6 months o' qa time that most games do not. am assuming it were sierra that decided at the 11th hour that game would get a simultaneous europe and North America release. game were actual gold, but then release gets halted so game can be translated into polish and german and whatnot. all that extra time did not result in a more polished release

[jethro]

while you are right, you also have to realize that baldur's gate has revolutionized how we judge rpgs, after it had percolated and other rpgs that would have been considered fairly good were tossed in the gutter developers knew that character development and interaction was necessary for rgs from that point on. 

 

You sound like all RPGs have to have specific features or they have no chance. Which is simply not true. Look at Grimrock or Skyrim/FO3. No companion interaction, no preset history for your PC necessary and still a lot of people had fun with these games many years after the "revolution". Wasteland2 will also have blank party members for you to (role) play. And Arcanum (if we ignore the combat) was loved by many people exactly as it was, even after BG. There is more than one way to do an RPG.

 

 

@Gromnir: Rulebooks were the rule before context-sensitive help was invented/possible. Whether that information is in the game as tooltips and in-game manual screens or externally as a book there are games that simply need it. Even with the best user interface you can't avoid having to read auxiliary information in games like Civilization or a war game for example. So when codex praises arcanum for needing a book they are probably not refering to the UI descriptions but to the underlying mechanics that are described in the manual.

 

PS: I can't remember to have had any problems with Arcanums UI when I played it. It might be different if a camera is behind my head and I was forced to do it inbetween designing new games.

Edited August 25, 2013 by jethro

[Gromnir]

 

while you are right, you also have to realize that baldur's gate has revolutionized how we judge rpgs, after it had percolated and other rpgs that would have been considered fairly good were tossed in the gutter developers knew that character development and interaction was necessary for rgs from that point on. 

 

You sound like all RPGs have to have specific features or they have no chance. Which is simply not true. Look at Grimrock or Skyrim/FO3. No companion interaction, no preset history for your PC necessary and still a lot of people had fun with these games many years after the "revolution". Wasteland2 will also have blank party members for you to (role) play. And Arcanum (if we ignore the combat) was loved by many people exactly as it was, even after BG. There is more than one way to do an RPG.

 

 

@Gromnir: Rulebooks were the rule before context-sensitive help was invented/possible. Whether that information is in the game as tooltips and in-game manual screens or externally as a book there are games that simply need it. Even with the best user interface you can't avoid having to read auxiliary information in games like Civilization or a war game for example. So when codex praises arcanum for needing a book they are probably not refering to the UI descriptions but to the underlying mechanics that are described in the manual.

 

PS: I can't remember to have had any problems with Arcanums UI when I played it. It might be different if a camera is behind my head and I was forced to do it inbetween designing new games.

 

you says you is responding @Gromnir, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

we responded to this: 

 

"while i enjoy watching the playthroughs of arcanum by sawyer, he would have taken away much more by reading the rulebook (which he didn't do given his issues with the interface).  it had great fluff and told how it was envisioned, which is really good, and has pretty much what was lacking from the game itself."

 

we replied thus: 

 

"that being said, we agree that one probably gets more outta arcanum  by reading rulebook or even game manual than an actual play-through of the pc game. such a reality should be taken as a damning criticism o' arcanum, but folks at codex seem to thinks that gets tim cain bonus points. weird."

 

your response that codexians like complexity such that secondary sources become necessary for game comprehension is not... responsive.

 

*shrug*

 

arcanum plays better from the manual or from rule book than it does on monitor using mouse or keyboard. were a conceptually very ambitious and intriguing project that fell short o' goals and claims of developers.  were not polished. were not balanced. were not well-written. were not... *shrug* too many folks laud arcanum for what it aspired to be as 'posed to what it actually was.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[jethro]

that one probably gets more outta arcanum  by reading rulebook or even game manual than an actual play-through of the pc game

 

Right. Now I get what both of you have been saying. Needless to say I don't agree.

[jamoecw]

"while i enjoy watching the playthroughs of arcanum by sawyer, he would have taken away much more by reading the rulebook (which he didn't do given his issues with the interface). it had great fluff and told how it was envisioned, which is really good, and has pretty much what was lacking from the game itself."

 

You're actually confusing Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone.

drew a blank, guessed, failed.  thanks for correcting me (not sarcasm), i hate it when i get specifics that wrong.

 

 

while you are right, you also have to realize that baldur's gate has revolutionized how we judge rpgs, after it had percolated and other rpgs that would have been considered fairly good were tossed in the gutter developers knew that character development and interaction was necessary for rgs from that point on. 

 

You sound like all RPGs have to have specific features or they have no chance. Which is simply not true. Look at Grimrock or Skyrim/FO3. No companion interaction, no preset history for your PC necessary and still a lot of people had fun with these games many years after the "revolution". Wasteland2 will also have blank party members for you to (role) play. And Arcanum (if we ignore the combat) was loved by many people exactly as it was, even after BG. There is more than one way to do an RPG.

 

 

@Gromnir: Rulebooks were the rule before context-sensitive help was invented/possible. Whether that information is in the game as tooltips and in-game manual screens or externally as a book there are games that simply need it. Even with the best user interface you can't avoid having to read auxiliary information in games like Civilization or a war game for example. So when codex praises arcanum for needing a book they are probably not refering to the UI descriptions but to the underlying mechanics that are described in the manual.

 

PS: I can't remember to have had any problems with Arcanums UI when I played it. It might be different if a camera is behind my head and I was forced to do it inbetween designing new games.

 

well first off i didn't say arcanum was bad, only that it is compared to BG which means that people end up thinking less of it.  and as for rpgs that would have been considered good being in the gutter, if you thought that arcanum was just good when in a world without BG then you don't think too highly of it either, i was talking about pretty much all the rpgs that you can't think of because they flopped and died (okay maybe not, but they didn't see the kind of following previous RPGs of similar caliber, pre BG), arcanum would have been considered much better if it had come out 5 years prior, and probably would have had an equal or better reaction if it came out 5 years after.

 

i am not saying those games aren't good (skyrim, etc.) but pretty much all of those lack a party (aside from grimrock, which is indie, like P:E), and the NPCs in the world pretty much all have something to say, like in BG how when you interacted with NPCs and they said things, instead of being eye candy.  in fact you have done nothing but reinforce what i have said.  you'd have to name a AAA title that lacked character interaction fluff like gossip and rumors from non essential NPCs or a strong narrative.  yes arcanum had this, but what did the game offer other than this that was really good?  pretty much just noncombat options in the game, which amounts to a few dialog choices, but nothing earth shattering.

 

look at age of decadence, the demo is out and combat is costly and hard.  the big appeal is character interaction, and non combat options.  a lot of people don't like it, the combat has only a few limited options with steep advancement.  that same commitment to dialog options results in a relatively easy game.  pretty much it ends up like arcanum, a lot of the game mechanics introduced for combat are good and innovative, yet due to the way that you have to approach it means that you don't notice the mechanics.  the intricacies of the noncombat side of things becomes little more than play the bonuses game, which then you leverage those bonuses to offset the fact that you are avoiding innovative side of the game, and thus all the descriptors and text all boil down to what bonuses you get and how well it helps to avoid combat.

 

arcanum isn't nearly as polarized as AoD, but for now they have the same failings:

innovative mechanics without the content to support them.

[jethro]

 

 

while you are right, you also have to realize that baldur's gate has revolutionized how we judge rpgs, after it had percolated and other rpgs that would have been considered fairly good were tossed in the gutter developers knew that character development and interaction was necessary for rgs from that point on. 

 

You sound like all RPGs have to have specific features or they have no chance. Which is simply not true. Look at Grimrock or Skyrim/FO3. No companion interaction, no preset history for your PC necessary and still a lot of people had fun with these games many years after the "revolution". Wasteland2 will also have blank party members for you to (role) play. And Arcanum (if we ignore the combat) was loved by many people exactly as it was, even after BG. There is more than one way to do an RPG.

well first off i didn't say arcanum was bad, only that it is compared to BG which means that people end up thinking less of it.  and as for rpgs that would have been considered good being in the gutter, if you thought that arcanum was just good when in a world without BG then you don't think too highly of it either, i was talking about pretty much all the rpgs that you can't think of because they flopped and died (okay maybe not, but they didn't see the kind of following previous RPGs of similar caliber, pre BG), arcanum would have been considered much better if it had come out 5 years prior, and probably would have had an equal or better reaction if it came out 5 years after.

 

i am not saying those games aren't good (skyrim, etc.) but pretty much all of those lack a party (aside from grimrock, which is indie, like P:E), and the NPCs in the world pretty much all have something to say, like in BG how when you interacted with NPCs and they said things, instead of being eye candy.  in fact you have done nothing but reinforce what i have said.  you'd have to name a AAA title that lacked character interaction fluff like gossip and rumors from non essential NPCs or a strong narrative.  yes arcanum had this, but what did the game offer other than this that was really good?  pretty much just noncombat options in the game, which amounts to a few dialog choices, but nothing earth shattering.

 

look at age of decadence,...

 

arcanum isn't nearly as polarized as AoD, but for now they have the same failings:

innovative mechanics without the content to support them.

 

 

I might not remember Arcanum correctly after all this time, is it really the case that you could not talk to any non-essential people on the street? Even if not, many RPGs just have a few standard phrases that even different NPCs say repeatedly. That is not interaction that is a bunch of parrots walking around. Examples: Fallout3, The dark Eye: Drakensang. That might be slightly better than mute NPCs, but far from an essential feature.

 

I don't get what you want to say with "find a game that ... lacked a strong narrative. yes, arcanum had this". Why should I offer you a comparable game if it isn't comparable to arcanum? It seems you try to put arcanum in a box together with failed RPGs, then point out that they all failed because they lack different "essential" features and thereby you showed something lacking in arcanum.

 

Haven't tried Age of Decadence, can't comment on it, but what does that failure say about arcanum? I'm not sure. AoD doesn't sound like Arcanum at all

 

Arcanum had the best world building together with torment, it had the best crafting system I ever saw, it had the best intro and the most fitting music of any RPG, see above poll for even more features I concur with. Its combat was lacking somewhat mostly due to balancing issues. It may have had non-essential features missing like chatty companions, but I don't remember missing them and I played Arcanum after BG. I'm simply not buying your sentence that these features you miss are *essential* (your words). They may be essential to you, granted. Obviously not to many other people or Arcanum wouldn't have such an enduring fan base.

Edited August 28, 2013 by jethro

[Leostoa]

I really liked those fate points. It's a classic thing to succeed picking lock and open that perfect safe that no thief can open. Or to succeed any other as impossible task. Arcanum was a nice game, but that's about it. I just found out about Project Eternity, and I am very happy that consumers are finally heard in matter of having these old-school rpg's again. I loved BG, Torment, Fallouts and Icewind Tales too. Arcanum wasn't that good, but there were some good ideas, like trainers. It's absolutely great that funding via kickstarter makes it now possible for us consumers to donate money for making such games we really are missing. I will donate my modest share for every decent rpg that skillfull programmers are going to develop. 

[jamoecw]

 

 

 

while you are right, you also have to realize that baldur's gate has revolutionized how we judge rpgs, after it had percolated and other rpgs that would have been considered fairly good were tossed in the gutter developers knew that character development and interaction was necessary for rgs from that point on. 

 

You sound like all RPGs have to have specific features or they have no chance. Which is simply not true. Look at Grimrock or Skyrim/FO3. No companion interaction, no preset history for your PC necessary and still a lot of people had fun with these games many years after the "revolution". Wasteland2 will also have blank party members for you to (role) play. And Arcanum (if we ignore the combat) was loved by many people exactly as it was, even after BG. There is more than one way to do an RPG.

well first off i didn't say arcanum was bad, only that it is compared to BG which means that people end up thinking less of it.  and as for rpgs that would have been considered good being in the gutter, if you thought that arcanum was just good when in a world without BG then you don't think too highly of it either, i was talking about pretty much all the rpgs that you can't think of because they flopped and died (okay maybe not, but they didn't see the kind of following previous RPGs of similar caliber, pre BG), arcanum would have been considered much better if it had come out 5 years prior, and probably would have had an equal or better reaction if it came out 5 years after.

 

i am not saying those games aren't good (skyrim, etc.) but pretty much all of those lack a party (aside from grimrock, which is indie, like P:E), and the NPCs in the world pretty much all have something to say, like in BG how when you interacted with NPCs and they said things, instead of being eye candy.  in fact you have done nothing but reinforce what i have said.  you'd have to name a AAA title that lacked character interaction fluff like gossip and rumors from non essential NPCs or a strong narrative.  yes arcanum had this, but what did the game offer other than this that was really good?  pretty much just noncombat options in the game, which amounts to a few dialog choices, but nothing earth shattering.

 

look at age of decadence,...

 

arcanum isn't nearly as polarized as AoD, but for now they have the same failings:

innovative mechanics without the content to support them.

 

 

I might not remember Arcanum correctly after all this time, is it really the case that you could not talk to any non-essential people on the street? Even if not, many RPGs just have a few standard phrases that even different NPCs say repeatedly. That is not interaction that is a bunch of parrots walking around. Examples: Fallout3, The dark Eye: Drakensang. That might be slightly better than mute NPCs, but far from an essential feature.

 

I don't get what you want to say with "find a game that ... lacked a strong narrative. yes, arcanum had this". Why should I offer you a comparable game if it isn't comparable to arcanum? It seems you try to put arcanum in a box together with failed RPGs, then point out that they all failed because they lack different "essential" features and thereby you showed something lacking in arcanum.

 

Haven't tried Age of Decadence, can't comment on it, but what does that failure say about arcanum? I'm not sure. AoD doesn't sound like Arcanum at all

 

Arcanum had the best world building together with torment, it had the best crafting system I ever saw, it had the best intro and the most fitting music of any RPG, see above poll for even more features I concur with. Its combat was lacking somewhat mostly due to balancing issues. It may have had non-essential features missing like chatty companions, but I don't remember missing them and I played Arcanum after BG. I'm simply not buying your sentence that these features you miss are *essential* (your words). They may be essential to you, granted. Obviously not to many other people or Arcanum wouldn't have such an enduring fan base.

 

yes there are plenty of people wandering the street that you can't talk to, guards that can teach you stuff you can, some give gossip, but there are others you can't talk to.  i didn't say it failed, i said that it isn't considered as good as it should have been due to the same reasons other rpgs failed that shouldn't have.  ultima has a great world, and excellent crafting, in fact everything that ultima had arcanum pretty much beat, yet the ultima series is considered a greater classic than arcanum.  why is this the case?  bad combat, poor balance between skills, large tracts of useless empty land, limited non combat options.

 

why is the manual a good source of what was done right in arcanum?  well the world is nearly always something that is cited as a positive for the game, which the manual describes in a very well done and immersive manner.  crafting?  yep the manual describes that decently well, without having the dumpster dive for hours or save up for schematics (in other words if you want to know about how crafting works the manual does a very good job of it).  music, well you don't have to play the game for that.  intro cutscene?  again you don't have to play the game for that.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7jvpU6lR5E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy7H-AcpXJM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjbWuXZA5w&list=PL0D3CF5B4F2C44A2D

 

so that takes care of half of what you cited as wy arcanum is good, the other half can be gained from reading the manual.  again i am not saying that game is bad, in fact it is good, but it has some severe weaknesses.  as for chatty companions, i never said anything about that, other people have been arguing that i have a problem with that, i said character interaction, which can be NPCs talking to each other, or you talking to NPCs, or reading signs, or picking flowers, etc.  the point is that if combat sucks, then the game has to stand on noncombat almost alone, and so there is a greater burden on that side of things, in ultima you could chop down trees and fish and stuff.  in arcanum you simply have a skill and a script behind the scenes does a check to see if it is high enough for a dialog option, which can get messed up due to previous actions/conversation (just look at chris's playthrough of the bandits at the bridge).

 

here's a good review of the game even states that if you like older games (than when arcanum was released) you'll like arcanum, as long as you can get past its rough spots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ4Bne_9YKA

[Gromnir]

another bad of arcanum: gender stat difference. females got -1 str and +1 end. this clear misguided choice alienated a goodly number o' female gamers. troika developer arrogant response to female gamers who complained further alienated women.  

 

such a small thing, but am understanding why some women not wanted to be bound by developer's notions o' realism in a fantasy game. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Michael_Galt]

I suppose, beyond the fact that it could essentially be recognized as "truth".  I mean, I think the choice of increasing endurance was somewhat arbitrary, but all the world's fastest and strongest people are men.  The Olympian equivalents in the women's fields are substantially slower/weaker.  That clearly does not mean that an Olympic woman power lifter wouldn't be as strong as an ordinary man, but just that when she is compared to a man that is at the same competitional level, she won't be his equal.  That is just physiology.  They could have made it more interesting by perhaps making female half-orc/half-ogres/dwarves stronger, as some sort of indication of the different physiology, but then again, I am not even sure that you had the option to play as the female variants of all of those (half-orcs, certainly, but don't know about half-ogres and dwarves). 

 

Now, personally, I didn't like that there were effective caps on intelligence, and I would venture to bet, charisma and beauty.  My half-orc genius could not obtain an intelligence of 18, which prevented me from having access to a wide variety of very useful schematics.  I suppose it could be argued that maybe he literally does not have the brain hardware to get there, but I believe that is a much more tenuous argument.

[Gromnir]

*groan*

 

you is so not getting it. tell woman that she gets gimped in a FANTASY GAME 'cause God/The Universe chose to make her sex weaker in reality is hardly a good idea. the fact that real-world women is not as strong as men (on average) is precise why they not wanna see a Game-- a game in which they gets to play a role impossible in real world-- impose a similar penalty on them. this is a matter o' empathy and psychology, not physiology. 

 

troika made matter worse by being rude to women who complained. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[jamoecw]

i thought the difference was kinda cool and a plus for the game, but the severely limited selection for races was pretty bad.  pretty much if the races was a different size, then they weren't allowed to be female.  as for the gender penalty and bonus, males were neutral, and the females were given modifiers, if you know how the caps work with bonuses this become an issue late in the game, so that means that a human male (base line, no modifiers) can get 20 in anything, the most important number as it gives bonuses (and strength keeps giving bonuses beyond 20).  now a human female can get 20 in all but one stat, strength, she can of course even get to 21 in constitution (though that extra point doesn't mean much).  a half orc negates the strength penalty, being the only female able to reach 20, ends up with 6 attribute bonuses, a male on the other hand gets 7 as strength keeps giving its bonus for every point after 20 as well as 20.  as a result females are never equal (even if you give up your background to negate these you are missing your background).

 

so while i applaud that they gave a mechanical difference between male and female, making the decision more than just eye candy, they didn't think it through and needed some polish to get it right (which is pretty much the whole bad point of arcanum, in bad need of polishing).  had they sat down and thought about it, they could have made con worth double past 20 (as str was worth double past 19) or something that made it so that con could keep getting bonuses past 20, then changed it so that both genders either got bonuses or penalties (not both on one).  now if they wanted to use up dev resources making equal content between the genders, they could have added some female races at this point so that they had an equal selection, but they could have stated that they didn't think it would have been worth it as most gamers are guys or something like that and it would have been fine.

[Michael_Galt]

No, I get it, I just fail to see how that is really SOOO bad.  If Troika had also put a -1 penalty on male characters' intelligence, beauty, wisdom, dexterity, whatever, I wouldn't have cared.  Even if I had cared, that certainly would not have been a sufficient reason for me not to play the game.  Now, if they had made it so that if you created a female character, that you would constantly have to fight to avoid being raped by NPCs, or made it so the majority of the male NPCs wouldn't talk to you because you were a female, and they considered it beneath them, then I could understand some real level of outrage/anger. 

 

Fantasy games aren't a promise that you can do whatever you want with character development, though the "better" ones tend to give you more latitude than others.  In that regard, Arcanum is much better than most, because you can fine tune your character in a huge variety of ways that you can't in most other CRPGs (races, backgrounds, attributes, skills, training, schools of technology/magic, and blessings).

 

And, I admittedly don't know many female gamers, but of the few that I do know, they don't play RPGs.  So, I sincerely doubt that there were that many women which were "turned off" to the game, back when it was released.  I also find it difficult to believe that someone would fail to play a game for as petty of a reason as what you stated, though I suppose there are people which fit that category.

[jethro]

fact everything that ultima had arcanum pretty much beat, yet the ultima series is considered a greater classic than arcanum.  why is this the case?  bad combat, poor balance between skills, large tracts of useless empty land, limited non combat options.

Never played Ultima so I can't really compare. But let me make a wild guess, Ultima was more main-stream with its fantasy universe.

 

why is the manual a good source of what was done right in arcanum?  well the world is nearly always something that is cited as a positive for the game, which the manual describes in a very well done and immersive manner.  crafting?  yep the manual describes that decently well, without having the dumpster dive for hours or save up for schematics (in other words if you want to know about how crafting works the manual does a very good job of it).  music, well you don't have to play the game for that.  intro cutscene?  again you don't have to play the game for that.

I never read world descriptions in manuals, so at least for me it was the game world itself. I surely read about crafting in the manual, but sorry, if you can have all the fun just reading about crafting mechanics without doing it in the game, you would be a pretty strange gamer. And music is designed to be a part of a game, it often doesn't work standalone. Most film music is pretty boring on its own as well.

 

so that takes care of half of what you cited as wy arcanum is good, the other half can be gained from reading the manual.  again i am not saying that game is bad, in fact it is good, but it has some severe weaknesses.  as for chatty companions, i never said anything about that, other people have been arguing that i have a problem with that, i said character interaction, which can be NPCs talking to each other, or you talking to NPCs, or reading signs, or picking flowers, etc.  the point is that if combat sucks, then the game has to stand on noncombat almost alone, and so there is a greater burden on that side of things, in ultima you could chop down trees and fish and stuff.

Remember that I only cited what I found good besides all the stuff upvoted in this threads poll. Do you also find all that in the manual? And since you say that "can all be gained by reading the manual" [sarcasm]did you really play the game or was reading the manual enough for you?[/sarcasm] Because really, I can't remember that just through reading the manual I lost interest in crafting in the game.

 

I thought you meant companions when you said character interaction simply because I didn't find any fault in the interaction with NPCs in the world. The language, the dialogs were a strong point of the game to me. Naturally if you expected 100% of NPCs had to have something to say to you, your impressions was different.

 

Ultima and fishing. First test of what would become a main stay in all MMOs. Let me make a second guess why Ultima became a greater success, maybe it was the precursor to the first MMOs, especially Ultima online. Whether that is a sign of quality or just compatibility with a typical teenagers taste? You tell me.

Edited September 1, 2013 by jethro

[jamoecw]

 

fact everything that ultima had arcanum pretty much beat, yet the ultima series is considered a greater classic than arcanum.  why is this the case?  bad combat, poor balance between skills, large tracts of useless empty land, limited non combat options.

Never played Ultima so I can't really compare. But let me make a wild guess, Ultima was more main-stream with its fantasy universe.

 

why is the manual a good source of what was done right in arcanum?  well the world is nearly always something that is cited as a positive for the game, which the manual describes in a very well done and immersive manner.  crafting?  yep the manual describes that decently well, without having the dumpster dive for hours or save up for schematics (in other words if you want to know about how crafting works the manual does a very good job of it).  music, well you don't have to play the game for that.  intro cutscene?  again you don't have to play the game for that.

I never read world descriptions in manuals, so at least for me it was the game world itself. I surely read about crafting in the manual, but sorry, if you can have all the fun just reading about crafting mechanics without doing it in the game, you would be a pretty strange gamer. And music is designed to be a part of a game, it often doesn't work standalone. Most film music is pretty boring on its own as well.

 

so that takes care of half of what you cited as wy arcanum is good, the other half can be gained from reading the manual.  again i am not saying that game is bad, in fact it is good, but it has some severe weaknesses.  as for chatty companions, i never said anything about that, other people have been arguing that i have a problem with that, i said character interaction, which can be NPCs talking to each other, or you talking to NPCs, or reading signs, or picking flowers, etc.  the point is that if combat sucks, then the game has to stand on noncombat almost alone, and so there is a greater burden on that side of things, in ultima you could chop down trees and fish and stuff.

Remember that I only cited what I found good besides all the stuff upvoted in this threads poll. Do you also find all that in the manual? And since you say that "can all be gained by reading the manual" [sarcasm]did you really play the game or was reading the manual enough for you?[/sarcasm] Because really, I can't remember that just through reading the manual I lost interest in crafting in the game.

 

I thought you meant companions when you said character interaction simply because I didn't find any fault in the interaction with NPCs in the world. The language, the dialogs were a strong point of the game to me. Naturally if you expected 100% of NPCs had to have something to say to you, your impressions was different.

 

Ultima and fishing. First test of what would become a main stay in all MMOs. Let me make a second guess why Ultima became a greater success, maybe it was the precursor to the first MMOs, especially Ultima online. Whether that is a sign of quality or just compatibility with a typical teenagers taste? You tell me.

 

ultima is held up for its sandboxiness, which means a lot of non combat options.  everyone existed in the world and wasn't just eye candy, i think that maybe when people say how great arcanum was for its non com stuff haven't played many of the older rpgs (the ultima series started in 1981), which had more than just killing things.  i remember when everquest didn't have any crafting, ultima online sprung forth as the first mmo, and every mmo has fallen in its shadow, so naturally they feature ultima features (even if they don't start with them or use an engine meant for them).  if arcanum had a staff to continue to work on it like a mmo then i'm sure you would have seen influences from bg and better combat mechanics and balancing.  as for not reading the manual and learning about the world through the game, well that probably made the experience better, as i read the manual and was never really surprised except when something that should be there wasn't.  like when fighting your through the canyons right after the blimp crash, then ending up in complete open country with no creatures till i got close to town.  when i decided to grind on my first play through to take on the weaponless bandits without resorting to dynamite and ran around the wilderness looking for things to kill only to find trees (no plants to grab either might as well of been empty grasslands), and then seeing the bridge being constructed and trying to find a way to help with that to no avail.  after the fight auto traveling and encountering a bear on my way to the only other settlement on the map, which killed me off and i had to do the bandit battle all over again.  then getting to town and kept to the sewers to kill rats, gathered up as much xp as i could then wandered off into the slums only to get killed by a bum with a knife.  the manual hinted at loads of possibilities beyond just killing things, and i have yet to see play through or guide that takes that path without heavy meta knowledge of very specific things (kinda like old games and 'easter eggs').  the only random creatures are random overland encounters via auto travel, and you only get xp from damaging things, therefore once you can fight the creatures placed in the world you can then focus on non combat stuff, until then it is a combat game with some of the wrst combat mechanics around.  though once you've reached this point the game starts to open up and you can go around and check out the work the devs did, which isn't the best way to do things, since until that point the game is poor, and if you decide to continue down a combat heavy path then ten game is poor after that, but right in the middle the game shows what it can really be with an open world and plenty of options and things to strive for, if that was the game from the start there might be an active modding community for it today and a desire for an enhanced edition.  currently it is a game that is looked at to learn from and a fun game if you can get past its weaknesses, though it shouldn't be considered something more in its whole than say divine divinity.

[Jarmo]

Tried to get into arcanum twice before and failed both times.

 

The first time I quit after the first fight with the first wolf, the flap-flap-flap-flap combat animations were just too awful.

The second time I got to shrouded hills, then lost interest and left it on indefinite hold.

 

This third time, is ongoing and I'll finish it unless I meet a game breaker I can't dodge. Been close a couple of times already, for similar reasons.

 

Shops with restocking and changing inventories.

 

Basically a fine idea, but leads to frustration.

 

You need a specific gem type to make a pair of spectacles, if you already collected all the gems and sold them, you can't get them anymore.

This is despite the gem being "relatively common", it's not available in any shop in all of the world. And you can't get back to the island for no particular reason.

Luckily I had an older save, so I could go back and murder and loot the spectacle guy, I didn't want to, but I couldn't know if I'll ever find the gems otherwise.

 

Also.. I just finished an epic quest of finding a shovel.

The first two towns didn't have a single shovel in them, farming towns and all but not a single shovel to buy or steal.

(a funny thing, after finding a shovel from the capital I realized I had one already, just not in the inventory but in the quickbar). 

 

Other than that, it's great to visit shops and see if they have something new and interesting. Shopping in Arcanum is fun!

 

 

Talking with people and just walking around is fun! I have a hate or love character and I've had people attack me for no particular reason.

Even half botched one (side)quest when an important NPC got angry and had to be sliced. There's a definite element of danger around all the time!

(some of the danger comes from the possibility of running into a game breaking bug, which is not all that neat).

 

I do dislike it how the lore doesn't actually match the game.

IE, there's a kingdom that's being ruined because they didn't embrace technology.. but the gameplay doesn't reflect this.

Being an armored guy with a gun, doesn't actually make you better than and armored guy with a sword or spell.

 

Exploration.

Yeah, it's fun to travel the world map... but really.. you don't know where any of the towns is? Neither does almost anybody else.

Even in the capital city of Tarant, there's no maps of any kind to be found? Maybe one person in each town who can tell where another town is,

despite there being a railroad and ships all about. Maybe I could at least try to follow the rail tracks maybe? Come upon them in the wilderness?

 

Character creation.

One of the games where you know how to make a character when you're halfway through the game already.

You know how to have fun playing a technologist once you've played one already.

 

It's a horrid mess of a game, full of problems and bugs.

But I'm having a lot of fun with it, more than most of the new rpg's I've been playing lately.

[jethro]

I do dislike it how the lore doesn't actually match the game.

IE, there's a kingdom that's being ruined because they didn't embrace technology.. but the gameplay doesn't reflect this.

Being an armored guy with a gun, doesn't actually make you better than and armored guy with a sword or spell.

Well, the difference could simply be that technology enables everyone to wield that power while magic can be used only by some and after much study. This doesn't make a single tech-user better than a magic-user. But a tech-kingdom can produce tech-fighters to replenish the ranks in months and can reuse gear to save money, a magic kingdom would need years to get new mages trained and say only 1 in 30 has the talent to train as a mage.

 

History has lots of examples of this. Where individual soldiers weren't any better or worse between two waring factions. But a tactical advantage (examples roman empire, english longbowmen at agincourt) or better production capacity (example World-War II) decides the fate of empires.

 

Exploration.

Yeah, it's fun to travel the world map... but really.. you don't know where any of the towns is? Neither does almost anybody else.

Even in the capital city of Tarant, there's no maps of any kind to be found? Maybe one person in each town who can tell where another town is,

despite there being a railroad and ships all about. Maybe I could at least try to follow the rail tracks maybe? Come upon them in the wilderness?

To be fair, RPGs often use this trick to seal off parts the player shouldn't go to yet. I know it was the same in NWN and NWN2, I think also in some of the IE games.

Edited September 5, 2013 by jethro

[Lephys]

Exploration.

Yeah, it's fun to travel the world map... but really.. you don't know where any of the towns is? Neither does almost anybody else.

Even in the capital city of Tarant, there's no maps of any kind to be found? Maybe one person in each town who can tell where another town is,

despite there being a railroad and ships all about. Maybe I could at least try to follow the rail tracks maybe? Come upon them in the wilderness?

I could've sworn that, very early in my playthrough, I spoke to someone, who then marked the location of a big city on my map (didn't see it there before they described where it was in dialogue).

 

The only thing I hate about exploration in Arcanum is that, just in trying to travel to even Shrouded Hills from the Crash Site, you can potentially bump into anything from like level 1 pansy wolves to level 5 kill-you-in-one-hit enemies. I'm all for the randomness of weaker/tougher foes, but, especially where you HAVE to world-map-travel merely to progress the narrative, the range of potential toughness of the foes you can encounter shouldn't be quite so great.