The Direction of Gaming

[kingcomrade]

i no u r rite, tho

Arcanum was ridden by a ton of fun killing shit, like a poor and clunky interface, ugly ass gui, and tons of horrible filler combat in one of the worst combat engines I've ever seen.

 

[mister lamat]

and that differs from the fallout's combat and interface how?

 

[DiverNB]

the combat in Arcanum is on some serious speed, that's for damn sure. The dialogue between characters has been interesting thus far though (I'm at the town). Those wolves are still raping my face though. 2 Big ones just come out like they've snorted 6 lines of coke and 2 shot my guy, he's got about 50 health

 

[kingcomrade]

and that differs from the fallout's combat and interface how?

By being horrible. Fallout's combat and interface were not poor. The only complaint I can come up with is the skilldex, and it had hotkeys.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

and that differs from the fallout's combat and interface how?

There wasn't ever any pointless forced killing after the rats outside of Vault 13 if I recall correctly.

 

[Fez]

The RT combat was insanely fast and uncontrollable. You really should be playing it in TB mode if you want proper control.

 

[DiverNB]

Aye, after I found the switch for it I turned it down to TB. Finally I get some control

And IMO, BG2 was the only real game to get Wizard classes done correctly. Maybe a tad overpowered when you consider the Sorceror's greatness once he got "Wish" and project image (Or whatever the spell was that cloned you so you clone could cast all your spells). And time stop....and Improved alacrity...whatever. It was damn time spell casters got to be the hot shit and hand out the hot dickings to everyone else.

 

[mister lamat]

naw, fallout's combat and ui were shit too. no big deal though.

if you thought the bg2 sorc was overpowered, go with a max charisma and willpower mage in arcanum. i'm pretty sure there's no cap on summons to fight for ya, alongside your companions. completed the blackrock dungeon wearing just a pair of fancy shoes and a top hat.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Nothing really beats Time Stop+Improved Alacrity+Unload entire fucking spellbook+Wish then repeat until everybody dies.

 

[Fez]

You can get some mods to improve the difficulty of the mage battles and make them use their spells more sensibly.

 

[Mayday]

Fighting with a mage PC should be like a good logical puzzle instead of rocket launching. Etherlords comes to my mind.

 

[Raapys]

I loved the Summon Dark Planetar uberspell thingy. That guy sliced up everyone except the nastiest of the bosses. The Mordekeinen's(sp?) Sword spell was overpowered as well, since no one except spell casters could really hurt/kill them; you could just stand back casting spells while they held the enemy's attention. And, of course, the even more overpowered Staff of the Magi, not to mention Robe of Vecna. A spellcaster's paradise.

 

[DiverNB]

It certainly helped that the robe of Vecna looked great on any caster too. It gave off that distinguished wizard look, and at the same time, let you rattle off an Abi Dalzhims Wilting right into your enemies face. Yeah, I'm an appearance whore.

 

[stargelman]

If you want a severly overpowered mage, play Daggerfall. Basically, if you did things right, you could practically cast as many spells that were as powerful as you wanted and not even really pay for it with spellpoints.

 

[ixg]

You never got even anywhere near to finishing Arcanum, kingcomrade, so lewl, man, lewl.

 

[kingcomrade]

And everyone knows that in order to know anything about the shitty UI, the shitty combat engine, and the shitty levels of the game you have to have played it all the way through. Thanks for making a relevant point.

 

[Callaxes]

Atleast Arcanum didn't take 10 to 15 hours to complete on the first go.

 

[Texas Red]

Eh, in BG 2 mages werent *that* overpowered compared to NWN/NWN 2. In NWN 2, as a sorcerer, you look like a rocket launcher, able to clean up everything in an area without exhausting your main arsenal. Not only that but every wand you create has *50* charges. In BG 2 you really didnt have enough firepower to even kill a single troll or whatnot, as the more important spells were meant buffing your party or enchanting the opponents. But that was what I actually liked though.

 

[DiverNB]

It depends on what kind of magic user you were, really. I used Time Mages / sorcerors for offensive spell casting (Abi-Dalzhims, chain contingencies, flame arrow, acid arrow, Chromatic Orb, Disintegrate, SunFire, etc.) because the sorceror's limitations in spells, and time mage because their innate chances of having random effects go off after a spell cast was ungodly.

Then I usually had a second mage/wizard in my party to fill the role of using buffs such as haste and all that good stuff.


And an extremely over powered mage can be in Morrowind too. With the fortify magicka potions you could create with alchemy, you could create any kind of spell you desired.

 

[Raapys]

You had more than enough firepower with the right setup, I'd say. It was all about which spells you chose. The combination of lowering the enemy's magic resistance along with saving throws and then firing off Finger of Death or Abi-Dalzhims, all inside a single TimeStop, could pretty much take out just about anything. Heck, if you were lucky a single Finger of Death could take out a dragon all by itself.

Skull Trap was insane at the higher levels, too. And the lovely Dragon's Breath.

While both Daggerfall and Morrowind( to a lesser degree ) allows for powerful mages, I think the spell effect selection is too narrow to make it anywhere as interesting as BG2. Levitation is great, though.

 

[stargelman]

Are you kidding? Magic was crippled to the extend of being entirely useless in MW, at least for combat. And no, artifacts don't count.

 

[Texas Red]

Except you couldnt Finger of Death a dragon because of his insane magic resistance. You had to cast quite a number of Lower Resistance before being able to do anything with it magic wise.

And this happened to many powerful enemies. Everything else werent really worth it as fighter would take care of them with greater ease.

 

[Raapys]

I killed Irinicus' black dragon with a single FoD the first time I happened upon it. Lucky, yeah, but even so, it's not that hard to just put 3 Lower Resistance spells in the contigency thing and follow it up with a FoD.

And TimeStop + Improved Alacrity pretty much lets you spam as many Lower Reistances, Abi'Dalzhim, Skull Traps, etc. as you need, and nearing the end of the TimeStop period you can just recast it and continue till you've killed everyone.

Did a fighter actually have any chance at all at soloing the game?

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Did a fighter actually have any chance at all at soloing the game?

It's possible. You need to start out in the first game though and you need to do quite a bit of cheese.

 

[Trash]

The direction of gameing is something I've been spending quite some thinking of lately. Not just a specific genre, but computer gameing in general. For one thing, I really don't see how gameing is going down the toilets. Great games have been rare for as long as I can remember, with most of the shelves being stuffed with at best average crap. For every pac man we had a E.T. so to speak.

What has changed is the industry. Back then, there seemed to be more incentive to try new things. These days the big bucks have arrived, with companys like ea creating soulless sequell after sequell. However there still seems to be a lot of innovation from independent publishers, the former eastern european countries and the indie scene. That has been made a shitload easier by the rise of the www. I remember how I traded cassette tapes with my friends at school to get the newest coolest games. Nowadays I just fire up my pc and start surfing.

I'm kinda optimistic, and that has been mainly due to the amount of great games I've seen recently that had big bucks and big names behind them. Company of Heroes is pure brilliance, that has an attention to detail I haven't seen in a long while. Gears of War is one of the best shooters I've ever played, and I've played them all. Guitar Hero is sheer fun in a very innovative way. God of War 2 is perhaps the best game I've ever had the joy of playing. These are just examples. Gameing has changed, from it's humble beginnings on university mainframes to the multi billions industry that it is now. With it have come new pro's and cons. But for me, I'm looking forward to what the future will bring.