GarfunkeL said:
That's like arguing that using still-pictures and voice-overs is a good way to transit the plot in a movie. Sure, it's a good way to recap events or do an introduction but using it to convey plot points?
As well, you argue that meaningful C&C has increased in Bioware games - well, KoTOR and Jade Empire surely are evidence on the contrary so I guess your "recent" only includes ME and DA:O and as we all know, the former has nothing but hack/slash in the classic Bioware-binary mold while the latter was slightly better but still mostly same - as Formorian pointed out.
Just to be clear I'm talking about the dialog and not the ending slide show. I consider the dialog half the game so If something effects it and changes it based off your choices I think that's valid.
And yes the trend on Reactivity (I'm going to say that instead of C&C for the rest of this post. I think it's more descriptive) has been mostly since ME and DA. Kotor and JE were mostly twiddling with different endings at the last second.
Also you must have gotten something different out of what Formorian wrote. I got that his point was that DA didn't often very many different ways to use different gameplay aspects to resolve quests but instead offered different outcomes. Which is mostly true. There is no stealth gameplay. All they have to offer is combat and the ability for dialog to effect the combat to a degree. That's what I got out of it but maybe you read it differently.
They offer plenty of different outcomes. And the majority of the major plot decisions have in game consequences (despite how much you want to maintain that it doesn't). I'll give two examples since it angers Circ so much that I don't. Although to be honest you express yourself better than he does so I don't mind. The landsmeet. How you handle several sidequests winds up effecting how difficult it is to achieve different things there. One way not everyone is aware of is the part where you get arrested rescuing the queen. It's possible to win that fight and not be arrested and kill the wench minion (her name starts with C or something) using some cheese tactics. You skip the entire break out of prison sequence and then during the landsmeet you don't encounter the wench when you try and enter. Logain also uses that you murdered her against you during the debate.
Also how you end the allies quests determines what kind of help you get at the final fight. Granted you can win the fight without any help but depending on the help you have can adjust how easy/difficult it is.
A lot of the choices either wind up not coming up again in the game or in someway or another winding up back at the same plot point. but like I said, You're not going to get a complex branching narrative in a mainstream CRPG. The best they can offer is to adjust how you experience the set story. DA is far from the best example of this but bioware has been consistently experimenting with different ways to implement reactivity.
It sounds like with this 10 year span they are continuing to try different things. And if they also focus on a more personal story (as they seem to be doing) I think it will be interesting to see what they wind up doing.
GarfunkeL said:
It's a shitloads better than DA:O, especially if you only take into account the core-rulebooks of 3.5 or 2nd edition, without some of the retard stuff introduced in their printed version of DLC
Anyway, their combat mechanics have enough options to make the combat both decently fast and decently interesting no matter what your build - especially in 3.5
What were the glaring flaws there that I'm blind to?
Fight battle, Blow all spells making fight easy, rest, Fight battle, Blow all spells making fight easy, Rest.
Pen and Paper systems aren't balanced for the amount of combat CRPGs are capable of doing and typically require quite a bit of adjustment the system or how the game is structured to take this into account
DA works better because it is designed as a CRPG system. I'm not claiming Real time is better than turn based here either. Either can work well if they are designed well.
GarfunkeL said:
And again JA2 - not an RPG.
It's just as much an RPG than ME1/2 are so cash in your claims, please. Oh wait, you haven't even played it so of course DA:O combat seems fine to you and TB-combat outside of strategy/war-games is shit. Yeah, sure.
Nope. JA2 is still not an RPG. Squad based Tactical/Strategy game. I'm actually more of a fan of Strategy/Tactical games than RPGs, actually.
Best Tactical gameplay I've seen in any game is the Close Combat series BTW. That game is a great example of how Real time in no way limits Tactical Depth. People always want to bring up starcraft or Diablo every time people argue Real Time vrs Turn Based as if that is all real time games are capable of
GarfunkeL said:
I had to adjust my tactics for quite a few of the boss fights
Oh sure. I guess it's better than Oblivion but then again, that's not saying much. I can wade through all of the "dungeon" on automatic, using the same abilities and spells in every encounter and then just switch from AoE to DD for the boss and that's combat in DA:O on hard. Granted, I haven't finished the game but I find it hard to believe that the combat changes enough in the latter part of the game, either mechanically or encounter-wise, to make any difference. It's shit, no two-ways about it.
I Didn't phrase that sentence very well. I abstracted it to keep the point short. I had to adjust tactics on quite a few non boss fights as well. I'm not quite sure what you are looking for in a combat system and it seems it might be different than what I look for in one.
I enjoy combat systems where I have to react to situations and try and overcome them. DA provided this for me. I would develop a strategy and it would work for a while and then an encounter would come along where it no longer worked and I would have to think up a new system for overcoming them. This happened several times throughout the game and I was pretty satisfied. It wouldn't be as enjoyable if I did a second play through since I already figured it out. But Like I said I'm not playing RPGs for the combat anyway.
Extra credit- Best Turn based combat I've seen is in Blood Bowl. I think making the goal to score as opposed to killing people greatly expands the tactical possibilities.
GarfunkeL said:
But then again I'm usually not to worried about Combat in RPGs.
You should be, considering how large part of gameplay it is in all the AAA-titles. I'd LOVE to be able to play an RPG where combat isn't a major part of the game, but...
I too wish combat wouldn't be the focus of so much gameplay in most mainstream RPGs. That's why Torment still remains the best CRPG I've played.
GarfunkeL said:
Many of the things you want aren't going to happen in a mainstream title. You know this. I know this. Most of the people here know this. To sit here and keep complaining about it is bitching and moaning.
Well, should we just lobotomize ourselves so we can enjoy the shit-sundae served to us, then? Maybe follow the example of
Idiocracy?
No you just find a different Ice cream parlor. Like I said there's a lot of exciting things going on in the indie World right now. And I only see it becoming easier to achieve relative success in the future due to the rising costs of main stream games.
Continuing to be angered by mainstream AAA titles attempting to be mainstream AAA titles is a little silly. This is the reason the codex invented "It's good for what it is".
GarfunkeL said:
Oh, hey look. I'm running out of arguments so I'll just resort to the classic "millions of flies can't be wrong, shit must be good!"-tactic.
I don't go around bashing NASCAR-fans since I can follow Formula 1 or Rally or Le Mans or any other motor sports. Unfortunately, no-one is catering to my tastes when it comes to RPGs...
People don't have to defend why they enjoy something
Yeah, I'm not defending my habit of listening Christina Aguilera. I'm also not going to forums where people compare Aretha Franklin songs to write how they are whiny bitches who should get on with times.
That was in response to you remark that people come to defend something because they need to justify the time and money you feel they have wasted. I never said that it must be good because so many people like it.
GarfunkeL said:
Tracking so many decisions and having them all have some reactivity in the next game
See, in the Army I'd have you do push-ups for sprouting stupid shit like that.
"Yeah, we couldn't be arsed to dig proper trench-lines, so we only dug out these holes barely big enough to shit in but hey, I'm sure no-one has ever dug so many holes before so it must mean something, right?!" Complimenting Bioware for doing the bare minimum necessary to be able to claim that they have any sort of mutated C&C between ME1 and 2 is stupid and merely does a disservice for the whole genre as you are giving a free pass for half-assed job.
Shitty analogy. Trenchlines usually do start out as a series of hasty fighting positions (Holes barely big enough for you to shit in for those of you who don't know). We'll discuss the rest of your comment in a later part of the post.
GarfunkeL said:
They hard to go through and rebalance all the encounters for the console version since it was harder to control the gameplay with a controller.
Fuck that, they did nothing like that. They slashed monster hit points across the board for easy and normal in a patch because they had somehow managed to overestimate the average consoletard. Maybe they had to change a single variable? Maybe they had to change the blueprints of their four common monsters in the campaign files? Sure sounds like an epic job.
And now you expect me to believe that in DA2 Bio will keep the DA:O style for PC and implement ME2-style for consoleversions?
Nope. You are just flat out wrong. On the consoles, most encounters had fewer opponents. This was also due to graphical capabilities as another fine member of this forum pointed out.
It was easier to rebalance than will be required for two different systems but it is still well within bioware's resources to pull off.
Let's see.
They have said they will do this.
They have done something similar (although less resource intensive) in the first game
It is not outside the scope of their resources.
By doing this they will achieve better game reviews and (as they believe) better sales as a result
I'm inclined to believe them.
Also the reason ME dialog was they way it is was because it was written as Bad Cop and Good Cop, But all the choices were still Cop. Not because of the wheel.
DA wasn't written this way and the conversation wheel will not change it to this writing style.
GarfunkeL said:
They ret-conned stuff from ME1 to ME2 and all of those decision touted in ME1 turned out to be worth an email or a 1-minute encounter with an NPC in ME2. Fucking great.
The scale with which they did this hasn't been done before. You ran into it constantly. And, as was stated earlier, 2 is mostly setting up for 3. Also you seem to be discounting how decisions made throughout the game have effects on the final mission. Of course it was make a retarded decision and get a retarded result but I think with better application it could lead to some great things. That's another example of bioware experimenting with reactivity in their games by the way.
I assume your referring to the ammo for the retcon. I'm okay with retcons that improve gameplay drastically.
GarfunkeL said:
Either you design your game so that it can handle a lot of variety in player-actions and choices OR you don't advertise it including such things in the first place. And the former is not impossible, as the fucking JAPANESE have shown us in their fucking P0RN-games FFS:
That's 7 different endings, branching and re-connecting lines, quite different plot lines. Check out the LP in Playground. So it's not impossible, it's not incredibly resource-demanding - you only need good designers with enough time and the common sense of not making them slaves of VAs and the marketing & graphixxx-departments.
Really? That's your argument.
Assuming this game plays like most Japanese dating sims (erotic or otherwise) then the only resources they used were drawings and some written dialog. The game also probably isn't very long.
If they could only manage a linear story with that they would have to suck pretty mightily.
When RPG's only have to worry about those aspects and not attempt the game length most fans seem to demand from RPGs is the day that will be the norm.
I bet the combat system in that game sucked anyway.
GarfunkeL said:
For sure since you have so valiantly shown us the proper way of Internet Argumentation. You are a retard for starting one, I am a retard for replying and we are both double retards to have kept it up. So, now that we got that off the way, please answer my points or then just take solace in the fact that even in Retardation, there are somewhat retards and then Super-Retards.
I only strive to teach. You may refer to me as sensei (or The Great Sensei if you prefer) since you seem to be into that Japanese crap. Anyhow, sadly Life is about to interfere and I may be without internet for a while in the future. Also less boredom so I'll be a lot less inclined to post on forums. I'm a lurker by nature. Nothing is certain however and I will do my utmost to be able to continue to provide you guidance that gives you a sense of fulfillment in your day to day RPG lifestyle.
