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NSFW Best Thread Ever [No SJW-related posts allowed]

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
Hooray, a freshman tells us how it is. Great literature is about apposition, carefully chosen adverbs (Hee!) and inversions in sentences. Wonderful, just wonderful.

Never mind that he uses run-on sentences and fails to use spaces at punctuation marks appropriately, surely this lowly sort of concerns is for the editors to iron out.
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium

P. banal
Joined
Aug 14, 2009
Messages
13,696
Location
Third World
sgc_meltdown said:
7TkRm.jpg
God, those losers can't even afford decent costumes.

Look at tali, :lol:
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
.....FFFFFF...FU...I nearly lost it at the office...Oh gawd...

:bravo:
 

IronicNeurotic

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 2, 2010
Messages
1,110
DramaticPopcorn said:
Also... What. The. Hell. Is up with those ponys? No, seriously, what the fuck?!

I can see how some deem furry/scaly pics sexy but this?! This.. is just... insane...

You never even heard of the "My little Pony" meme?
 

sgc_meltdown

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2003
Messages
6,000
TBZWh.jpg






http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/975399-t ... s/59255750
Let me say first off that I've finished both games, and I've played all the great WRPGs, and most of the great (SNES/PS2 Generation) JRPGs as they came out, and in general I prefer what most people would consider the more oldschool RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Fallout 1&2 and Planescape. You know, the basics.

That said, I can completely understand why people don't like the direction that Bioware took with Dragon Age 2, and had high hopes for The Witcher 2. In the end though, the difference in the reception and even the anticipation of both of these games was more a matter of hype and marketing than the quality of the games. The first thing people need to realize is Bioware, having established their hardcore fanbase, is marketing their games towards a more mainstream audience, whereas the people behind the Witcher are marketing their game towards the same RPG purist/elitist crowd that made their first game a success.

None of you need to be convinced of the stupidity of the average consumer and how easily they buy into marketing, but suffice to say at least 50% of the people towing the same old line about Dragon Age 2 being garbage and The Witcher 2 being the saviour of RPGs have never really thought about it, and are really just parroting other people.

I'm gonna break this down into the most important aspects of an RPG (imo), and then compare the two.

Visuals:

I think this is probably the least important aspect of an RPG so I'm going to get it out of the way first. I'd say the Witcher wins here for the most part, some of the locales are really well done and it is clear a fair amount of care went into them, while everyone knows about the recycled environments in DA2. The truth is, compared to the Witcher, DA2's base engine seems a little dated at times.

I have a few issue with the Witcher's visuals though, first of all they seem to have frontloaded most of the impressive visuals (the siege at the start was amazing), and as the game goes on it loses a lot of its lustre.

Second, the same 8 or so faces and 3-4 bodies are recycled through the whole game. While DA2 has sort of the same problem, there is a lot more variety just by virtue of the fact that they had to make a character creator, while the Witcher 2 didn't need one. The truth is, after you have finished the first hour or so of the Witcher, you've seen every face in the game. While the game tries to conceal this fact with various kind of headgear and such, it isn't enough, and the repetition kind of destroys immersion.

tl;dr: The Witcher 2 looks better in general, though the recycling of characters hurts immersion. (Recycling of environments isn't as bad)

Combat:

DA2 destroys the Witcher in terms of the combat. The combat is flashier, better animated, there is more variety of attacks, opponents, and spells. There is also more of it, both in terms of regular battles, and in terms of special battles.

More importantly though, DA2's combat is better balanced, and just better conceived in general. Both games suffer from early games that are relatively difficult and then get fairly easy late game. The difference is that DA2's combat encounters continue to scale into the late game, so the game remains somewhat of a challenge (on higher difficulties) no matter your strategy.

The Witcher on the other hand starts off incredibly difficult and then becomes an utter joke later on. On the hardest difficulty setting (insane only prevents saving), once Geralt has upgraded Quen 95% of the encounters in the game can be facerolled through with two buttons: Q and mouse1.

Beyond this, the special encounters come from the laziest playbook of the laziest JRPG game designers. Seriously, attack the vulnerable spots on the kayran's tentacles for massive damage anyone? Even the dragon battle, while visually impressive, was structured in an incredibly cliche, almost absurd manner with the dragon moving around the edges of the tower lunging at Geralt like a hungry hungry hippo. Also quicktime events? What?

Sure, DA2 has scripted fights that aren't exactly original either. However, I'd say they are better just because of the diversity of strategy both available and accomodated for in the fact that you have four people in your party, each with more abilities than Geralt has altogether.

tl;dr: DA2's combat is far superior, and while both games are quite easy the combat in the Witcher 2 is completely trivialized by the game design (Quen). The special encounters in the Witcher 2 are also particularly cliche.

General Gamplay:

A word that gets thrown out a lot these days when it comes to game design is streamlining. DA2 is streamlined, it comes from a company with a long history of getting RPGs right, and DA2, and Mass Effect 2 both represent Bioware trying to pare away the inessential elements, and leave the core aspects of what makes an RPG a great experience.

Those core aspects to me are good writing, good characters, a good story, decent combat, and good visuals. An inventory simulator is not on my list, and i don't think I'm the only one who thought it was ridiculous in the Witcher. The worst thing about it is the fact that it just provides the illusion of complexity. There really isn't that much variety in equipment, the crafted items are negligibly better than their bought or found counterparts, and bombs/potions/traps are completely unnecessary.

So what exactly is the point in having so many different types of items to carry around? Someone made this point about the first Witcher, and it still stands with the second: the only alchemical ingredients that are remotely rare are aether, so much so that the game could get rid of every ingredient but aether and allow every potion to be made from that one ingredient and it would make no practical difference in the game. To some people this = complexity = good. For most people it is needless, artificial, and just poor game design.

And yet many would say DA2 is the simpler game, and requires less thought than the Witcher? I would direct them to re-examine the tactics system of DA2, which provides far more depth than a more fleshed out inventory system would, and without the utterly fun sapping experience of managing weight.

I would say the perfect example about how the streamlining of DA2 makes it better than the Witcher is travel between locations. Bioware, like most gaming companies these days realize that most players don't enjoy travelling between places where stuff actually happens, which is why in games like ME2 and DA2 there is very little travel, and you're placed exactly where you need to go.

The Witcher on the other hand requires you to run around for minutes between parts of quests, even when there is no reason why (and JRPGs have been doing this since the SNES) the next scene couldn't just cut to you being back in the town rather than in the middle of an empty darkened mine that will take you another 5 mins to get out of.

I suppose it could be said to help immersion, but when I spend 50% of my time dive rolling non-stop just to travel faster, it doesn't help me get immersed.

tl;dr: DA2's and (Bioware in general's) streamlined approach is a good thing, and the Witcher 2 has plenty of examples of oldschool RPG "complexity." That have been removed for a reason.

Story/Plot/Setting:

Both titles are made for a so-called "mature" audience, and both have pretenses of being dark and some might say, more intelligent, or at least literary, than your average RPG. Both succeed to an extent, and both fail; one thing is for certain, they are both far ahead of the average game in terms of the quality of the writing.

Both deal with themes of predjudice, revolution, and political intrigue. While it may not be a fair comparison, yet, I personally can't help but hold these games up to books that deal with the same subjects. Anyone who has read (or I guess watched now) George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, will instantly see the (superficial) resemblance with the Witcher. In comparison the Witcher falls way short. It succeeds in the content, sure, we have wars being fought, selfish and unscrupulous monarchs, behind the scenes manipulators, towns getting massacred. We also have the same thing in Dragon Age 2.

The thing about both stories, but especially the Witcher, since DA2 has a lot less pretense when it comes to the "maturity" of the storyline, is that it is incredibly unsophisticated. The players in the Witcher are playing the game of thrones too, but compared to the characters in Martin's work they are going about it like developmentally disabled children.

A note for developers and writers: while talking about rape and torture is definitely a way of signalling to the reader/gamer that you're dealing with mature/realistic subject matter, since these things are facts of war, talking about them gratuitously just makes you seem like amateurs. The way these things are dealt with in this game is a perfect example; in Martin's work, they are mentioned, and there is a tacit, if downplayed suggestion that they are occurring behind the scenes. In the Witcher, people just casually toss in how they want to torture this person, or how that woman was raped, or how after a battle everyone is going to be raped and enslaved. Yes, these things happen, but as far as the Witcher takes it, it just seems like they were trying too hard.

The problem is there is no nuance, not in that, and not in anywhere in The Witcher, and you can't have a -good- adult storyline without some nuance. King's don't just go raping captives, they don't lead from the frontlines. Professional armies invading neighbouring kingdoms don't rape and burn everything, and they especially wouldn't if they were putting down a peasant uprising.

Finally, The Witcher's approach to the idea of magic is about as sophisticated as Harry Potter. Need to protect from arrows? Cast a spell that turns arrows to butterflies! Not to mention all the other things that mages seem to be capable of but never use, even in situations that seem to call for it: calling fireballs from the sky, making a giant unbreakable wall, controlling people's minds, summoning everything from golems to dragons. Most modern fantasy settings at least put some thought into how and why magic functions, in the Witcher it just serves as a convenient and everpresent deus ex machina.

While DA2 definitely had problems with their story, it was obviously far more polished, and the product of better writers than the Witcher 2. The Qunari and their leader, for example, are more convincing despite their foreign-ness, and far, far more interesting than any faction in The Witcher. The characters, from the primary characters to the secondary characters are also more developed in DA2.

In contrast to Dragon Age 2, you learn next to nothing about any of the characters, and they demonstrate minimal personality. The characters are essentially just mouthpieces to disclose the mystery/plot in small portions, and when it essentially just boils down to a couple of factions trying to destabilize kingdoms in order to get more power and some mention of interdimensional elves, it isn't really worth it.

This is especially sad since the main character is obviously a Mary Sue/Gary Stu type figure. He is a powerful mage, a genius scientist (alchemy was essentially proto-chemistry), and a mutant made for swordfighting. And where the hell is his personality? I can't find it. Both his delivery and choice of lines were incredible bland. I'd choose Varric over Geralt anyday, and the rest of the cast, as subpar as they might be for a Bioware game, are better characters than Geralt too.

tl;dr: Both the Witcher 2 and DA2 have flaws, but the Witcher is especially unsophisticated in characterization and plot despite marketing itself as otherwise.

In summary, when playing the Witcher 2 I basically felt like I was playing a JRPG with a westernized setting. The characters were bland, the story lacked nuance, the combat was faceroll easy, and the gameplay mechanics were irritating and arbitrary. DA2, while a little lazy by Bioware's standards, is still far ahead of The Witcher in terms of the most important areas which are writing/plot/characterization and gameplay/combat mechanics.

Some people actually want to find a reason to replay an RPG--usually this revolves around trying out different classes, builds--you know, experimenting. You simply cannot do this in TW2. After you've beaten it once, with ANY build, you'll get practically the same experience on your next playthrough no matter which way you go. About the only way you could change it is if you were to not pick up any new weapons and armor.

TW2 easily has the best graphics, there's absolutely no arguing that. It also had more interesting characters (mostly) and did not feel so clausterphobic or cause a sense of deja vu by seeing the same recycled areas again and again. There is however absolutely no reason to replay it more than once, and that reason was to only see the alternate path. After that, you're not left with any reason to revisit.

DA2 had pretty disgusting graphics (on the PC at least), boring scenery, mostly boring enemies, over the top exploitation, yet it had one thing TW2 does not even come close in--good gameplay.

For a one time experience though (if you don't ever replay games), there really is no comparison. TW2 easily was the better single experience.
 

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
A certain historical event comes to mind, called Battle of Hastings.

Yeah, that one where Winston Churchill bear wrestled Mao. Fucking kids these days, don't know anything about history.
 

WhiskeyWolf

RPG Codex Polish Car Thief
Staff Member
Joined
Nov 4, 2007
Messages
14,755
Okey people, let's slow down because this thread is reaching critical mass of stupidity.
 

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