* Fights: Think about a gunfight. There's a lot of ducking for cover, poking your head out, firing a few times, and then repeating. Not exactly conducive to a MMORPG environment.
Oops, somehow snipped out my reply to this. It has been done before and can be done again hopefully better.
* Mobs: Who can you fight in a futuristic society? Not dragons or Firelords or giant mutant spiders, but people (maybe with a few cyborgs thrown in too). Not that exciting
The Warhammer 40K setting has a plethora of alien races and other nasties.
* Weapons: Guns. Lots of guns. Guns which are small, not that much fun to wield (from a MMORPG standpoint) and
"Small" is the worst word you could ever use to describe the Warhammer 40K weapons. Try "oversized".
* Fights: Think about a gunfight. There's a lot of ducking for cover, poking your head out, firing a few times, and then repeating. Not exactly conducive to a MMORPG environment.
The tradition of awful sci-fi MMOs is a different matter where I agree entirely. But the 40K setting by its nature lends itself to a MMO much better than these games. This is why I wish they were still heading in that direction.
A rather trite reply to cover your ignorance. Let me guess, you like Torment but don't like Final Fantasy and any association between the two had you fetch the pitchforks and torches even if it's true? I'll leave it to you to figure out why you're so wrong. The provable fact is, you are.
Anyway, no matter what you do in Torment you end up squared off against Tranny and you either die or go to hell (Balor).
In Fallout your story starts and ends in the same place in every (successful) game you play. There's a lot of sidequests in the game and they change the description after the ending but the story is never that much different and most of the quests only have one or two solutions. There is never that big a degree of freedom. In fact, in believe that in that you could compare Fallout to Final Fantasy X-2 (and this is based on hearsay, I haven't played it - X-2 that is, I have bought every Black Isle game and several copies of some for various reaons)
Now can we quit with the narrowmindedness? I'm frankly surprised how many people I seem to have infuriated by knocking at their pretend superiority.
I know, I typoed the subject, please don't sue me!
Again with the western vs easten
on
Living In Oblivion
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· Score: 2, Funny
Get off your high horse already, Zonk, there's no such distionction, and you mentioning Torment, a game heavily inspired by Final Fantasy (and my favourite game ever) as a western example proves this.
I've played RPGs all my life. Pen & paper, computer RPGs back since the old SSI/Ultima and the early Final Fantasies games. I like 'both genres'. And I see so many closed minds when people discuss them.
Face it, there's not such a huge difference between Oblivion, Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy. There's a big focus on character development and their stories in the Final Fantasy games. So was there in Ultima 7. But the core of the gameplay is the same. You have a quest that takes you from A to B. Along the way you can take time of to do sidequests X, Y and Z.
There's more sidequests in Oblivion, that is true. They're also tightly scripted and though you have some leeway in what you do it's far from the free choice people pretend is there.
You can assault people, empty their pockets and rob their stores. That is freedom. But what do you gain from it? Either you pay the guards/thieves' guild to erase the record and it's as if it never happened, or you keep running from the law who somehow know your face on sight - unable to continue with the main story that is there.
It's not really an opportuniy to change the story, it's just a pastime. It's far from anything revolutionary either, and it has about as much ultimate effect as if you set your characters in FF to attack eachother.
They're just games. And the AI in Oblivion sucks immensely. It's still a good game. Overhyped, which was fuelled a lot by Bethesda's bullshit (they're good at propaganda, I'll grant them that) but still a good game. Mind you, I enjoyed BG2 more and I will definitely remember BG2 longer.
Did you know Torment, one of the most critically acclaimed western made RPGs ever and using BioWare's famous engine, included a thank you note to Squaresoft for Final Fantasy in the credits?
Oblivion is not all that special and definitely not very innovative - and in places horribly designed. It's a good fun RPG though. And so are Final Fantasy, Fallout, Pools of Radiance, World of Warcraft and countless others.
In some of the best RPGs you were 'just another person' - and how you play WoW is far from the only way and immersion is well possible. It may not be a 'traditional AD&D-based SSI/Black Isle RPG' but it's the most successful western hemisphere RPG ever.
there is an abundance of non-save-game fun to be had by simply messing with the locals to see how the game's AI reacts.
I agree there. The AI is so buggy you need to do very little messing about to make it do hilariously stupid things. Like when I got in Jauffrey's way and he jumped up and down on a candlestick for a minute then fell through the wall. Brilliant!
Or when you beat up a quest-vital NPC (they're immortal, so much for freedom), then kill all the guards that come for you, then surrounded by corpses you go buy your groceries from the NPC who just woke up and has forgotten everything that happened.
Or when you assault some innocent and if you don't kill him in first blow and he sees you for a second before dying, a guard comes running from the other side of the town at mach 3 - so you jump over a wall into an alley and he starts running around the block, so you jump over again and he turns around and goes back around the block.
Or when you tapdance on a storekeep's desk throwing all the goods around the room, then take out your claymore and play golf with the remainders. Then you lift up an apple and set it down again and 200 city guards suddenly enter.
Also got a kick out of how a guard gave me permissing to investigate a murder scene, so I lifted up a parchment in the basement (not knowing about the red cursor yet) and "Boromir" yells Stop stealing from me! despite us being far away from his home in another person's house where I had permission to be.
And it started out nicely when I got accosted by the guards for horse theft in a far away town when I went up and talked to them after being given the horse at the priory early on.
At least the AI is nicely forgiving. Early in the game you can attempt to assassinate Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise and pick the pockets of his bodyguards, and if you get caught you only have to say you're sorry and they forget all about it.
And if you decide after a mad killing spree leaving the streets filled with slaughtered townsfolk that you regret this, you just have to hand over a few gold and all is forgiven and you're once again lauded as a hero.
Regardless of the freedom the job system provides in terms of character creation, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy X-2 did NOT have open ended plots- whether your party consisted of white mages with broadswords, Chemist Monks, Dancers who could cast black magic, or any combination thereof there was only one endgame, and you had no choice but to play the Hero and follow a VERY scripted plot.
Executive summary: "I like the Xbox. I like the Xbox 360. These arbitrary comparisons of apples and oranges I pulled out of my ass prove the Revolution will suck. Also I have a big penis."
'WOW' factor is far from a direct factor of system power. For starters Nintendo (and they're far from alone in this) have proven in the past that it's very possible to produce a game (much more visually appealing than thought possible on the console (Ocarina of Time springs to mind), especially when you're producing directly for the console, and not working with some massive crossplatform framework (Hi XAN). Along the same lines it's easy to produce an underwhelming game on a powerhouse system. Even Oblivion, a game heralded for its visual beauty (among other things) often seems more like a demonstration of various technologies with no real overall scheme. (Don't get me started, I enjoy the game, I really do, but that makes it flaws so much more obvious).
And ignoring the visuals, though it really remains to be seen what Nintendo will pull out of their weird controller there is a potential for a much bigger WOW there than 'we have HDR lighting'.
Finally you ask what game producers will want to bring games to a 'weak' system. Realize that far from all game producers think graphics and hardware performance the most important factor. Making high-end games isn't just a matter of using big enough hardware, it also takes much more work than working on weaker hardware. I'm sure a lot of producers will see the value in wokring on a console where the graphical expectations/requirements aren't as high, allowing more work on the actual gameplay which is what offers the lasting experience, or lower production costs.
I'm not exactly a Nintendo fanboi, though I did own a N64 and the original GameBoy - but both as a gamer and as a developer I'm watching where the Revolution is going with great anticipation.
I'll go for wasting my time telling you you're wasting your time trying to inform someone that they're wasting their time trying to diss other people wasting their time with a holier-than-thou attitude that accomplishes nothing rank?
Slashdot Mirror
* Fights: Think about a gunfight. There's a lot of ducking for cover, poking your head out, firing a few times, and then repeating. Not exactly conducive to a MMORPG environment.
Oops, somehow snipped out my reply to this. It has been done before and can be done again hopefully better.
* Mobs: Who can you fight in a futuristic society? Not dragons or Firelords or giant mutant spiders, but people (maybe with a few cyborgs thrown in too). Not that exciting
The Warhammer 40K setting has a plethora of alien races and other nasties.
* Weapons: Guns. Lots of guns. Guns which are small, not that much fun to wield (from a MMORPG standpoint) and
"Small" is the worst word you could ever use to describe the Warhammer 40K weapons. Try "oversized".
* Fights: Think about a gunfight. There's a lot of ducking for cover, poking your head out, firing a few times, and then repeating. Not exactly conducive to a MMORPG environment.
The tradition of awful sci-fi MMOs is a different matter where I agree entirely. But the 40K setting by its nature lends itself to a MMO much better than these games. This is why I wish they were still heading in that direction.
At least you got the Windows developer right...
Actually it's Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy universe that became Warcraft. Of course Tolkien started it all though.
By "Horde popuation" you meant "WoW population" right?
I studied German for 6 years involuntarily and I had hoped to escape the nightmares here at least.
German class is Hell, man.
A rather trite reply to cover your ignorance. Let me guess, you like Torment but don't like Final Fantasy and any association between the two had you fetch the pitchforks and torches even if it's true? I'll leave it to you to figure out why you're so wrong. The provable fact is, you are.
Anyway, no matter what you do in Torment you end up squared off against Tranny and you either die or go to hell (Balor).
In Fallout your story starts and ends in the same place in every (successful) game you play. There's a lot of sidequests in the game and they change the description after the ending but the story is never that much different and most of the quests only have one or two solutions. There is never that big a degree of freedom. In fact, in believe that in that you could compare Fallout to Final Fantasy X-2 (and this is based on hearsay, I haven't played it - X-2 that is, I have bought every Black Isle game and several copies of some for various reaons)
Now can we quit with the narrowmindedness? I'm frankly surprised how many people I seem to have infuriated by knocking at their pretend superiority.
Tell me to what degree you create the story in Torment? Baldur's Gate? Icewind Dale? Or any of the old SSI games?
You can change some events but the story is the same.
I know, I typoed the subject, please don't sue me!
Get off your high horse already, Zonk, there's no such distionction, and you mentioning Torment, a game heavily inspired by Final Fantasy (and my favourite game ever) as a western example proves this.
I've played RPGs all my life. Pen & paper, computer RPGs back since the old SSI/Ultima and the early Final Fantasies games. I like 'both genres'. And I see so many closed minds when people discuss them.
Face it, there's not such a huge difference between Oblivion, Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy. There's a big focus on character development and their stories in the Final Fantasy games. So was there in Ultima 7. But the core of the gameplay is the same. You have a quest that takes you from A to B. Along the way you can take time of to do sidequests X, Y and Z.
There's more sidequests in Oblivion, that is true. They're also tightly scripted and though you have some leeway in what you do it's far from the free choice people pretend is there.
You can assault people, empty their pockets and rob their stores. That is freedom. But what do you gain from it? Either you pay the guards/thieves' guild to erase the record and it's as if it never happened, or you keep running from the law who somehow know your face on sight - unable to continue with the main story that is there.
It's not really an opportuniy to change the story, it's just a pastime. It's far from anything revolutionary either, and it has about as much ultimate effect as if you set your characters in FF to attack eachother.
They're just games. And the AI in Oblivion sucks immensely. It's still a good game. Overhyped, which was fuelled a lot by Bethesda's bullshit (they're good at propaganda, I'll grant them that) but still a good game. Mind you, I enjoyed BG2 more and I will definitely remember BG2 longer.
Did you know Torment, one of the most critically acclaimed western made RPGs ever and using BioWare's famous engine, included a thank you note to Squaresoft for Final Fantasy in the credits?
Oblivion is not all that special and definitely not very innovative - and in places horribly designed. It's a good fun RPG though. And so are Final Fantasy, Fallout, Pools of Radiance, World of Warcraft and countless others.
In some of the best RPGs you were 'just another person' - and how you play WoW is far from the only way and immersion is well possible. It may not be a 'traditional AD&D-based SSI/Black Isle RPG' but it's the most successful western hemisphere RPG ever.
there is an abundance of non-save-game fun to be had by simply messing with the locals to see how the game's AI reacts.
I agree there. The AI is so buggy you need to do very little messing about to make it do hilariously stupid things. Like when I got in Jauffrey's way and he jumped up and down on a candlestick for a minute then fell through the wall. Brilliant!
Or when you beat up a quest-vital NPC (they're immortal, so much for freedom), then kill all the guards that come for you, then surrounded by corpses you go buy your groceries from the NPC who just woke up and has forgotten everything that happened.
Or when you assault some innocent and if you don't kill him in first blow and he sees you for a second before dying, a guard comes running from the other side of the town at mach 3 - so you jump over a wall into an alley and he starts running around the block, so you jump over again and he turns around and goes back around the block.
Or when you tapdance on a storekeep's desk throwing all the goods around the room, then take out your claymore and play golf with the remainders. Then you lift up an apple and set it down again and 200 city guards suddenly enter.
Also got a kick out of how a guard gave me permissing to investigate a murder scene, so I lifted up a parchment in the basement (not knowing about the red cursor yet) and "Boromir" yells Stop stealing from me! despite us being far away from his home in another person's house where I had permission to be.
And it started out nicely when I got accosted by the guards for horse theft in a far away town when I went up and talked to them after being given the horse at the priory early on.
At least the AI is nicely forgiving. Early in the game you can attempt to assassinate Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise and pick the pockets of his bodyguards, and if you get caught you only have to say you're sorry and they forget all about it.
And if you decide after a mad killing spree leaving the streets filled with slaughtered townsfolk that you regret this, you just have to hand over a few gold and all is forgiven and you're once again lauded as a hero.
I love this game.
Regardless of the freedom the job system provides in terms of character creation, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy X-2 did NOT have open ended plots- whether your party consisted of white mages with broadswords, Chemist Monks, Dancers who could cast black magic, or any combination thereof there was only one endgame, and you had no choice but to play the Hero and follow a VERY scripted plot.
...which is what he said...
Executive summary: "I like the Xbox. I like the Xbox 360. These arbitrary comparisons of apples and oranges I pulled out of my ass prove the Revolution will suck. Also I have a big penis."
Make it 'pretty damn awful voice acting' and you're right.
But... but... no hookers? No violence? What's the point then?
'WOW' factor is far from a direct factor of system power. For starters Nintendo (and they're far from alone in this) have proven in the past that it's very possible to produce a game (much more visually appealing than thought possible on the console (Ocarina of Time springs to mind), especially when you're producing directly for the console, and not working with some massive crossplatform framework (Hi XAN). Along the same lines it's easy to produce an underwhelming game on a powerhouse system. Even Oblivion, a game heralded for its visual beauty (among other things) often seems more like a demonstration of various technologies with no real overall scheme. (Don't get me started, I enjoy the game, I really do, but that makes it flaws so much more obvious).
And ignoring the visuals, though it really remains to be seen what Nintendo will pull out of their weird controller there is a potential for a much bigger WOW there than 'we have HDR lighting'.
Finally you ask what game producers will want to bring games to a 'weak' system. Realize that far from all game producers think graphics and hardware performance the most important factor. Making high-end games isn't just a matter of using big enough hardware, it also takes much more work than working on weaker hardware. I'm sure a lot of producers will see the value in wokring on a console where the graphical expectations/requirements aren't as high, allowing more work on the actual gameplay which is what offers the lasting experience, or lower production costs.
I'm not exactly a Nintendo fanboi, though I did own a N64 and the original GameBoy - but both as a gamer and as a developer I'm watching where the Revolution is going with great anticipation.
"Oh gee, I forgot how to view my grades. Maybe if I write 'boobies' in this little box that says Google it'll show up"
So what about imagery that causes sexual arousal but isn't intended to?
With the amount of fetishes I've seen represented on the internet we might as well make .xxx a mandatory suffix of all domain names if we count that.
root/swordfish. It's always swordfish.
It's been the default for quite a lot of years... have you ever used IE? But unlike the older versions it's also easy to change now.
The Mythic-EA rumor is a few months old and has been officially denied.
I'll go for wasting my time telling you you're wasting your time trying to inform someone that they're wasting their time trying to diss other people wasting their time with a holier-than-thou attitude that accomplishes nothing rank?
This message is brought to you by The Ministry of T Federal Trade - BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING READING YOUR EMAILS
I don't get it :/