1067 réponses à ce sujet

[Mimaiselphenai]

Well, if I took part in saving the entire galaxy from destruction and the one who was my leader came back from the dead and was like "wanna kick ass and save life as we know it again?" I wouldn't respond with "nah, gotta get revenge on someone. Good luck with that. See ya." It'd be more like "DID YOU EVEN HAVE TO ASK? **** ANOTHER NORMANDY? THIS IS AWESOME!"

[TJSolo]

Well that is your explanation and reasoning for labels and a black/white view; feelings of revenge and self-justification you have towards people you will never meet.



The posts about ME2 needing richer RPG elements is not about hating ME2, it is feedback.

There is no rule on this forum that feedback about the BW products have to be positive in nature.

The feedback offered from ME1 helped shaped ME2 now people are offering feedback to help shape ME3.

As far as I can tell from Ms.Normans statements is that one of her goals for ME3 is to have richer and more complex RPG elements. That sounds great to me, why does it sound great to me? Because ME2 was lacking in the RPG elements department.



I will never use the term marketing "streamline" ever unless contractually obligated to.

I will say dumbed down because that is what the mechanics feel like to me but by using that phrase I am not calling any person dumb.

If the mere mentioning of the shortcomings people have with ME2 offends you, it should be very obvious what threads you should avoid.

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]Lusitanum wrote...

Let me put this simply:

Core features - of everything[/i] - do change - over time. It’s all a matter of what a given name start to encompass in the experience of the people using a given language or even a given action.

Take the word “hospital” for instance. Hospitals were originally rest rooms attached to monasteries and convents, originating as religious communities, with care provided by monks and nuns. The name [/i]hospital has the same roots as “hotel” and “hospitality” and this is especially apparent in many languages (including my own) which still has words like “hóspede” (guest) and “hospedar” (to house, to receive someone). Oh, and by the way, did you knew that the act of putting your hand over your mouth when you yawn or sneeze has its origin in superstitious beliefs that your spirit would leave your body through your mouth if you didn’t put your hand on its way like a
barrier, only to become a basic norm of politeness in our days? So what are you going to do next time you yawn, just leave your mouth open because you're not superstitious or follow the current notion that not covering your mouth is impolite, despite the fact that the latter is a result of changed perceptions?

So, as you can see, what a word or act actually means does [/i]change with time, so you’ll just have to accept that RPG will follow the same route as everything else in the history of Mankind.[/b][/quote]
You're conflating what something is called with what it is.

The place where people get medical treatment, that's a hospital.  What we call it doesn't change what it is.  What we call it doesn't change what its core features are.

That people think the world is flat doesn't make it so.
[quote]Because it’s already being used in everything else in the story besides the main catalyst of all the events?[/quote]
Yes, so it exists.  No one's disputing that.  If you're pointing to its presence in the game to demonstrate that it's more important than something that can't be in the game, then you're just presupposing your conclusion.

You clearly don't know why you favour authored narrative over emergent narrative.
[quote]The decision whether your Shepard is male or female: not a choice[/quote]
Not really a roleplaying choice, no.
[quote]The class you choose to play as: not a choice[/quote]
Again, this has effectively nothing to do with roleplaying.
[quote]Playing the game as paragon, renegade or something in between: not a choice[/quote]
I've covered wuite extensively how this is not roleplaying.
[quote]Choosing what order to recruit your squad mates and whether to recruit them
all: not a choice[/quote]
That's arguably roleplaying.  I'll give you that one.
[quote]Choosing between moral issues and squad loyalty: not a choice[/quote]
The Paragon/Renegade system prevents this sort of choice.  So this doesn't even ever happen in the game.
[quote]Deciding who survives the suicide mission: not a choice[/quote]
As with recruitment, there's the potential for some roleplaying in this one (though less, because you're forced to choose through the dialogue wheel).
[quote]And no matter what character you are, you are going to save the world from the Archdemon and like it,[/i] Mr.![/quote]
That the game doesn't model the circumstance wherein you allow civilization to be destroyed isn't much of a cost.  Who would do that?
[quote]That’s what a defined character does for you in a game: it actually makes sense when you’re given more limited choices because you have a clearly defined reason as to why you’re not allowed to go a given way. In games like DA, you just get stuck on a wall because there’s not a “I want to go this way” option. That’s why, for instance, becoming a Specter felt like a natural development of the story while becoming a Grey Warden was just
another But Thou Must moment out of many. [/quote]
I think it's entirely the opposite.  DAO gives you a reason to become a Grey Warden.  Become a Grey Warden or go to jail.  Become a Grey Warden or die of a horrible disease.  Naturally, I chose Grey Warden.  Mass Effect, on the other hand, offered no compelling reasons to become a Spectre.
[quote]So… you’re upset you couldn’t tell Ash to stuff it about religion but you’re fine that my City Elf, who has a deep resentment against humans, can only express his aggressiveness towards humans once in every blue moon.[/quote]
I didn't find that was true at all.  My mage was given many opportunities to be dimissive of the Chantry or control of the mages within the tower.
[quote]Oh, and that’s when he doesn’t end up bowing to them at the end (as he did with Caillan). [/quote]
The cinematics were a problem, as you can plainly see.

But Mass Effect was basically all cinematics.  Every single conversation had the potential to cause exactly this problem.  It was a far rarer occurrence in DAO (expecially since DAO was a much larger game, so the events were farther apart still).
[quote]Why would you need to revise that? Because half of the time it will sound like a goddamned
poorly translated Anime:

“I would like to know more about you The Sacred Chalice of Onkatosh.”
“So, you’re ready for the Proving Trial! Go on, it’s all ready and good luck.”
“Wait, no, I didn’t say I wanted to try to get the - *gets locked up* Goddamnit!” [/quote]
At no point did I suggest that you could come up with dialogue that was entirely dissimilar to the pre-written line.  But you can certainly adjust the line to accommodate any quirks of delivery your character might have, or to emphasize one aspect of the line over another.

I'm not comparing this to a roleplaying ideal.  I'm pointing out how much farther from that roleplaying ideal Mass Effect is compared to a game like DO or KotOR.

[quote]I’ll try to explain this in small words so you can understand: I know that he’s not a mute because I’m apparently able to talk to people (so either my character can talk or everyone else has telepathic abilities in order to read my mind and know what I can say) but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels [/i]like I’m a mute, given that I never heard my character talk during freaking dialogs! It doesn’t really feel like a normal conversation if one side is using his mouth and the other just stand there creepily looking into the other person without ever opening his mouth.[/quote]
So things you feel contradict things you know.

Your feelings are broken.
[quote]Do I really [/i]need to explain this to you? Seriously, do I need to break it down as to why an ability that you use once every so often is used in a different way than an action which is done continually until stopped?[/quote]
By that reasoning, then, I absolutely should have been able to fire a sniper rifle while paused, or at the very least aim it.
[quote]I mean, how did you want shooting to be handled in the game?[/quote]
I wanted it to be a stat-driven event that following from my selection of an intended target.
[quote]Keep imputing the exact number of bullets that you want to fire before getting back into cover when there’s a perfectly functional and natural keep-shooting-until-I-tell-you-to-stop mechanic that we’ve used since ever? Oh, and apparently I also have to remind you that, when you use a one-shot ability, you don’t have to worry about [/quote]
The keep shooting until I tell you to stop mechanic would have worked great with stat-driven aiming.  Select a target, enable firing, and then unpause the game to allow the firing the commence.  It then keeps firing until the target is dead or otherwise no longer available (like behind cover), or until I tell it to stop.

That would have been fine.  The problem with the way it worked in ME was that it broke the stat-driven aiming by eliminating the paused target selection.
[quote]Good Lord, my younger sister could figure this out and she doesn’t even know what Mass Effect is![/quote]
But clearly her thinking is already constrained by the conventions of the shooter genre.
[quote]Again, the game makes perfect sense as is because you have a well-defined character whose actions you can understand[/quote]
No I can't.  I couldn't understand Shepard's actions at all.  In fact, I'd argue that Shepard might have been well-defined, but not in a way that was knowable to the player the first time through the game.  The player isn't really told anything about Shepard, so the player can't possibly make decisions on his behalf.  Except the game is designed such that that's exactly what the player is supposed to do.

At the start of the game, according to you, I don't know Shepard at all.  So why is the game asking me for my input?

The only way that makes sense is if I do know Shepard, and the only way I can know Shepard at that point is if I created Shepard myself.
[quote]Given the fact that the game conveniently points out when your character is lying, your argument makes no sense. That’s why these games often have options like:

1. No, I won’t help you.
2. I don’t want to get involved in this.
3. OK, you can trust me.
4. (Lie) OK, you can trust me.

#4 is the only option that is considered a lie, every single other option is a sincere response.[/quote]
If that's the case (and I have no reason to believe it is) then they should document that in the manual.  Or put "(Sincere)" before each line.
[quote]Also, “the system rewards you for having people skills”? You honestly believe that saying “amen” to every single thing that someone says is having people skills? Then if you ever have to lead a group, you’ll be in deep trouble.[/quote]
You tell people things they already know and they respond "I really identify with you."  Have you never listened to a politican speak?
[quote]Having people’s skills means possessing the ability to make people see things your way, to be able to persuade them[/quote]
Persuasion is irrational.  If I explain why something is true, and you don't accept my reasons, there's nothing else I can do with you.
[quote]On the other hand, someone who can work around another person’s divergent opinion and make them see things their way, that is someone with actual people skills. You know, just like what you do on Mass Effect when you convince Garrus, Ash and Kaidan to see the merits of doing things by the book/being less/prejudiced/becoming more prejudiced, even though they started off on the opposite spectrum.[/quote]
I always see that as them changing their mind for no reason I can explain.  I didn't say anything particularly revelatory, and yet their whole point of view has suddenly changed.

At least when I do that I know I'm lying.
[quote]There is nothing wrong in not being so in love with myself that I can’t automatically adore a character I created just because I created it[/i].[/quote]
You shouldn't love it just because you created it.  You should love it because you know better than anyone else what it is you love about characters, so you can make a character that ticks all your boxes.
[quote]I just believe that a professional writer can do a better job at creating a compelling character than me,[/quote]
Compelling to people generally?  Yes.  Compelling to you?  Nonsense.
[quote]When did I say anything about missing facial expressions? And besides, given the fact that we’re talking about reactions to story elements and the characteristics that make characters feel compelling and human… what the hell do battle animations have to do with anything?[/quote]
Battle animations are as much a part of the on-screen portrayal of your character as conversations are.  Moreso, really, in DAO, as your character is hardly ever on-screen during conversations.
[quote]Right, that’s why Mass Effect is such a critical and financial success and has such a huge and active fanbase: because it has absolutely no target audience.[/quote]
People are often very bad at identifying what it is they want from a product.

This is partly what killed General Motors.  They asked people what sort of car they wanted, and then built that car.  Other companies instead built the sort of car the people actually wanted (something that used less fuel and was easier to park) and those companies sold more cars, while GM failed.
[quote]don’t call me an outlier[/quote]
Is being an outlier a bad thing?  Do you strive to be typical? 
[quote]As you can see, I might not agree with everything that’s been said here, but it gives you an idea that at least we have something in common: we believe that RPGs have become much more than what they are when someone decided to slap a name on them some decades ago.[/quote]
I don't mind new features.  But I do want to keep the old features.
[quote]So I’m sorry to tell you that common sense is not something I can hand to you, it’s just something that you have or you don’t.[/quote]
Then no one has it.

Everything learnable is learnable from a book.
[quote]If I choose to go the diplomatic route, Shepard will be diplomatic and if I choose to be aggressive, Shepard will be aggressive. I don’t need to predict the future to know that, nor do I need a warning in full detail as to what exactly is Shepard going to do to know the consequences of my actions. If I decide to choose a given path I know Shepard will follow it and I’ll have to deal with the consequences. It’s that simple.[/quote]
Yes.  And so is Shepard if you play him like that.
[quote]So don’t tell me what I do or don’t believe or guarantee what I can or can’t do. And could you please stop making all those “universal claims”? That would be great.[/quote]
This particular universal happened to be correct, as you helped demonstrate by insisting it didn't matter.  You dodged the question rather than address it.
[quote]Again, you missed the point. Most people didn’t like the inventory system, not because it was a list (that’s the least of our worries, a list still keeps things sorted out), but because a) there was always a better set of items that you could equip that would be better than anything else, and every item you picked up until then was just a build-up to that point, and you received so much crap, that after a while it just felt like clutter that you had to clean up by either selling it or turning it into omni-gel because you didn’t need any of that.[/quote]
It was a particularly bad list inventory, yes.  There's wasn't enough genuine variety of loot.  There were too many incremental improvements.  The total item cap was far too low.

Again, BioWare has done better inventory systems before.
[quote]It managed to clean up the gameplay and it means that now you only need a few moments to suit up accordingly before a mission and there you go, back to the game. [/quote]
Why are you describing the inventory as if it's not part of the game?  It clearly is.  It's within the game.  It affects the rest of the gameplay.  Inventory management was part of the game.  Saying "back to the game" is nonsensical.
[quote]That’s what defined characters do: they let you shape their existences but they won’t allow you to turn their whole lives upside down just because you felt like messing around.[/quote]
The way Mass Effect works, you don't get to decide what Shepard's moment-to-moment motives are (because his subsequent actions could immediately contradict you), but you're still asked to make moment-to-moment decisions.  Either the input you offer is simply illusory, and Shepard will do basically the same thing regardless of what you tell him to do, or you have to guess at why he does things and accept that you'll be wrong a lot.

There's no middle ground.
[quote]And here’s the major flaw in your logic: the firm belief that everything should just
stagnate and die just because you said so. That’s lovely.[/quote]
They don't need to stagnate.  They just need to avoid being internally inconsistent.

If Ultima IV and Wizardy aren't RPGs, what are they?  How do I ask for those gameplay elements (or those from any intervening RPG) if there's no label that describes them?

[nelly21]

Well that is your explanation and reasoning for labels and a black/white view; feelings of revenge and self-justification you have towards people you will never meet.

Lol. Thank you Freud. Perhaps we should move on to my ego and super ego next? Or is my use of the term "purist" due to my feelings of inadequecy?

The posts about ME2 needing richer RPG elements is not about hating ME2, it is feedback.
There is no rule on this forum that feedback about the BW products have to be positive in nature.
The feedback offered from ME1 helped shaped ME2 now people are offering feedback to help shape ME3.
As far as I can tell from Ms.Normans statements is that one of her goals for ME3 is to have richer and more complex RPG elements. That sounds great to me, why does it sound great to me? Because ME2 was lacking in the RPG elements department.

And that's fine. That's what YOU want. You can say that's what you want. My problem isn't with you. My problem is the people who troll the millions of fans who DO like the direction the series is taking.

I will never use the term marketing "streamline" ever unless contractually obligated to.
I will say dumbed down because that is what the mechanics feel like to me but by using that phrase I am not calling any person dumb.
If the mere mentioning of the shortcomings people have with ME2 offends you, it should be very obvious what threads you should avoid.

But that isn't how most purists use "dumbed down" and you know it.

But I digress. As I stated before, there is no point in continuing the argument. I will never convince you to change your mind, nor will you change mine.

Modifié par nelly21, 18 mars 2010 - 11:03 .

[nelly21]

Mimaiselphenai wrote...

Well, if I took part in saving the entire galaxy from destruction and the one who was my leader came back from the dead and was like "wanna kick ass and save life as we know it again?" I wouldn't respond with "nah, gotta get revenge on someone. Good luck with that. See ya." It'd be more like "DID YOU EVEN HAVE TO ASK? **** ANOTHER NORMANDY? THIS IS AWESOME!"

You would follow a dead dude to his ship? +1 Bravery to you my friend.

[Orange Face_]

TJSolo wrote...

Time Spiral wrote...

...

Or it could indicate that the hype and many new found fans are posting due to the happines of a a new game that can blind them for the time beeing.

The happiness of a new game blinding them?! HAA!

Why not just, "They are happy with the new game,"?

Only time will be able to truly tell the two apart.
But chances are if a person is not able to see the flaws of something; they are blinded by it.
Which is also different from a person able to see the flaws of something and still accept it.

Exactly...I was very much aware of ME1 flaws... combat a little lame compared to shooters, cut and paste side missions... but I didn't care because the story was so amazing!!  It feels like fixing the flaws became the primary goal... the babys bathwater is dirty, well we can fix it just throw them both out! 

[Payne by name]

Why does everyone always look at the DLC fixing the holes in the games.



"oh the story was weak for forward momentum" - Response "Don't worry the DLC will take care of that".



Well I'm sorry I paid my £50 for a complete game not something that would be regularly patched through DLC that I can't get anyway as I'm not on live.

[Murmillos]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I mean, how did you want shooting to be handled in the game?

I wanted it to be a stat-driven event that following from my selection of an intended target.

So you are wanting all of ME combat to be just like FO3 V.A.T.S?

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

So I’m sorry to tell you that common sense is not something I can hand to you, it’s just something that you have or you don’t.

Then no one has it.
Everything learnable is learnable from a book.

Then how did you learn before you learned to learn from a book.  Did you learn everything you know today 100% from a book, or were you able to learn from other methods that aren't in a book.

Modifié par Murmillos, 19 mars 2010 - 12:50 .

[AOPotter]

nelly21 wrote...


And that's fine. That's what YOU want. You can say that's what you want. My problem isn't with you. My problem is the people who troll the millions of fans who DO like the direction the series is taking.

I wish I had the time to talk with "millions of fans", getting to know their opinion. Or do you read minds? Millions of them? Your services must be in high demand and well paid.

Did Bioware come to you, asking for insight? "Oh wise Oracle, reader of millions of minds? What will people think about a lame game mechanic like scanning for minerals?" 
And did you say to them: "Let me attune to their brainwaves. Oh. Yes. I am sensing that this is exacly what millions of people want! There is too much joy in their lifes anyway. Something that is unbelievably boring and dull is exactly what they would pay good money for! That and fish-flavoured chocolate-bars."

Stating what is disliked about a product is not trolling - its actually a service to the company. It saves money because it is free and you do not have to pay a focus group to find out why nobody is willing to buy your crap.
Of course it is often regarded as whining and reading it or listening to it is unpleasant (because these ungrateful people are complaining about your baby) - but again complaints management is a vital part of any company policy. And if you do not like it - do not read it. After all, unlike the Mods in this forum you are not paid to be here. You choose to be "trolled".

And finally: It should be hardly surprising that on a forum, belonging to a company that was best-known for its RPGs,  a lot of RPG-fans are present. If you went to the forums of the NRA you would not be surprised to find gun nuts there, would you?

[Murmillos]

AOPotter wrote...

And finally: It should be hardly surprising that on a forum, belonging to a company that was best-known for its RPGs,  a lot of RPG-fans are present. If you went to the forums of the NRA you would not be surprised to find gun nuts there, would you?

I hate going to car shows and finding its filled with crazy car enthusiasts, I mean seriously..

who do these people think they are?

Modifié par Murmillos, 19 mars 2010 - 01:15 .

[Tempest]

It is very hard to tell whether some of these people posting want a jrpg feel to the game or whether they want it to be different.

I personally enjoyed the RPG aspects in Mass Effect considering it had to fit in a mechanic into an RPG that had been done only a handful of times, FPS. I enjoy that each RPG with mechanics like ME have their own takes, but also flaws as well. I personally REALLY liked the mechanics done in ME2 in terms of intertwining 2 different mechanics. The only down side I see are how ME2 lacked much choice on what part of shepard would be better than others. For example, you couldn't make a shepard who has monstrous shields but very weak health or vice versa.



Such a choice would be difficult to put in considering there are classes. Maybe one class could have better defense than others, but that is going into how ME1 played. All in all, I approve of the direction ME2 went. Changing a few things to have the game go smoothly and at the same time actually make it worth while.



As for people complaining ME2 is too FPS, well...this is a game that focuses really heavy on futuristic guns right? Or did I miss something?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Murmillos wrote...

So you are wanting all of ME combat to be just like FO3 V.A.T.S?

I haven't played FO3, so I can't say for sure, but from what I understand that would be pretty good, yes.

Though the game would obviously then have to be rebalanced.

Then how did you learn before you learned to learn from a book.  Did you learn everything you know today 100% from a book, or were you able to learn from other methods that aren't in a book.

Did I say that learning from a book is the only way to learn?  No, I didn't.

You can laern to read from a book.  Any language can be taught by a book.  That it's possible to learn that language in some other way (and necessary if it's your first language) doesn't stop it from being learnable from a book.

Common sense is not, however, learnable from a book.  Therefore it is not learnable.

[Mordaedil]

Common sense is just a word that attributes concepts to logical assessments.



Sadly, in discussions like these, common sense is not a factor and opinions, points of view and preferences factor in more heavily than a common outlook.



For the record, Ultima IV is pretty much the greatest RPG ever and I'd love to see someone *try* to be as original as it. Noone has even tried to emulate the plot of that game, because that's how genius it was.

[Elvhen Veluthil]

Here is another perspective from some cool guy at GameBanshee (in the comment about how Bioware will make ME3 more of a RPG):

What I don't understand is why people are calling Mass Effect franchise a role playing game. The protagonist is very well defined in personality and dimension. There is only a slight variation on how that character says his/her lines, but the character is wholly constructed by Bioware writers. You don't play the role in the story, you just dictate which part of the written story gets played out first.

[Massadonious1]

AOPotter wrote...

And finally: It should be hardly surprising that on a forum, belonging to a company that was best-known for its RPGs,  a lot of RPG-fans are present. If you went to the forums of the NRA you would not be surprised to find gun nuts there, would you?

Buying Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale with your paper route money doesn't make you special.

[Lusitanum]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

You're conflating what something is called with what it is.

The place where people get medical treatment, that's a hospital.  What we call it doesn't change what it is.  What we call it doesn't change what its core features are.

That people think the world is flat doesn't make it so.[/quote]

A hospital is only a place where people get medical treatment today, it wasn't so in the beggining. First, it was a hotel, a place of hopitality run by the clergy and later it envolved into a place of medical treatment due to the fact that they started recieving more wounded soldiers from the wars than guests and later, hospitals could have that name with no religious affilitations whatsoever, even if some of them still mantain it to this day. That's the main reason why there are so many St. This and That hospitals.

It's the same thing that happened to RPGs. They started as something but as the perception that we had of them changed, so did their defining characteristics and now what was once a core characteristic just became another feature that may or may not be present.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Yes, so it exists.  No one's disputing that.  If you're pointing to its presence in the game to demonstrate that it's more important than something that can't be in the game, then you're just presupposing your conclusion.

You clearly don't know why you favour authored narrative over emergent narrative.[/quote]

I've already told you: it doesn't make sense when compared to the rest of the game and a professional writer will make a much better character than I ever could.

Unless David Gaider is in charge of the script, in which case it might go from pretty good (like the DA books) to completely unoriginal and generic (like the DA game).

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

That the game doesn't model the circumstance wherein you allow civilization to be destroyed isn't much of a cost.  Who would do that?[/quote]

Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be
bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to
watch the world burn.

OK, so I just used that quote because I loved to hear it in Batman Returns, but it still applies. I'm not a fan of having a bad ending just because you have a good one, but being told that we have all this choice, especially given all the different paths we could take and then being stuck with doing the basically same thing no matter what is kind of frustrating. I don't want to conquer the world again either, but let me proceed down a darker path or at least anything that's different than the same thing I did before.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I think it's entirely the opposite.  DAO gives you a reason to become a Grey Warden.  Become a Grey Warden or go to jail.  Become a Grey Warden or die of a horrible disease.  Naturally, I chose Grey Warden.  Mass Effect, on the other hand, offered no compelling reasons to become a Spectre.[/quote]

Yeah, except that even if you do choose to say "no, I'd rather go to jail!" Duncan still forces you to join the Grey Wardens. I especially loved the moment where he tells us to go get the blood and the treaties and you get to ask something like "Can we refuse to do this?" and Duncan just straight out tells you that "You have no choice on the matter". Well, thanks a lot for that.

Also, ME did give you a very good reason to become a Spectre: you're being given the authority of the Council and the means to do what an entire fleet couldn't. On the other hand, there's not one good reason to become a Grey Warden.

You're forced into a life of duty that you probably never wanted in the first place, you can kiss your family (and your chances of starting one) goodbye, chances are that you'll die during the Joining ceremony and even if you don't you already have your days numbered until you start turning into a Darkspawn yourself, upon which moment you'll have to kill yourself, and in exchange, you get nothing! Oh, you're told that you're given the ability to sense the darkspawn but that never translates into the game (loved the bit at the beginning when Alistair said we wouldn't get taken by surprise because of his "Grey Warden senses" and five minutes later BAMM! four Darkspawn come out of nowhere and ambush my party) but in exchange, the Darkspawn can sense you!

Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen a group that is worse off than the Grey Wardens. I mean, every one of these "elite warriors of justice" (Jedis, Spectres, Special Forces, etc.) always have this "with great power comes great responsibility", but our friends here still have yet to get that whole "power" thing first.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I didn't find that was true at all.  My mage was given many opportunities to be dimissive of the Chantry or control of the mages within the tower.[/quote]

And my elf had to cowtow to the humans. It wasn't a big issue for me since I wasn't really playing a prejudiced elf, but I kept noticing that the options weren't there most of the time.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The cinematics were a problem, as you can plainly see.

But Mass Effect was basically all cinematics.  Every single conversation had the potential to cause exactly this problem.  It was a far rarer occurrence in DAO (expecially since DAO was a much larger game, so the events were farther apart still).[/quote]

That's because they're different takes on story-telling. The difference is that in ME, the emotion was trigerred by choosing a given path and in DA... it's just there when the game triggers tells you're supposed to be folding your arms.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

At no point did I suggest that you could come up with dialogue that was entirely dissimilar to the pre-written line.  But you can certainly adjust the line to accommodate any quirks of delivery your character might have, or to emphasize one aspect of the line over another.[/quote]

But you still have to adjust the line, instead of being able to justify it with a "oh, he misheard me" (something that goes against everything we've seen in games, by the way). Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with this dialog system, but just don't give it more credit than its due.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I'm not comparing this to a roleplaying ideal.  I'm pointing out how much farther from that roleplaying ideal Mass Effect is compared to a game like DO or KotOR.[/quote]

Maybe, and I'm not denying that Mass Effect has less options to role-play than those games. What I am trying to point out are some of the things that you seem to hate on ME that are either present in some way on other games you mention and how the fact that "less" does not equal "none".

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

So things you feel contradict things you know.

Your feelings are broken.[/quote]

I'd say that it's more of a case that the things I know can't drown out what I feel.

And my feelings are just fine, thank you very much.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

By that reasoning, then, I absolutely should have been able to fire a sniper rifle while paused, or at the very least aim it.[/quote]

Believe me, having the Infiltrator as my favorite class, I can share your frustration, but that doesn't change the fact that you can't change a gun to have the same game mechanics as the biotic/tech skills. The ability to aim while paused is there so that you can more accurately give specific orders to your squad members without having to turn and point to the exact place you want them to go or use their abilities in real time (which can get you killed in less than nothing. I should know). If you choose to use it as an aiming assisst, that's just your way of "exploiting" the system, but don't expect everything to accomodate that playstyle just because you want it to.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I wanted it to be a stat-driven event that following from my selection of an intended target.

[...]

The keep shooting until I tell you to stop mechanic would have worked great with stat-driven aiming.  Select a target, enable firing, and then unpause the game to allow the firing the commence.  It then keeps firing until the target is dead or otherwise no longer available (like behind cover), or until I tell it to stop.

That would have been fine.  The problem with the way it worked in ME was that it broke the stat-driven aiming by eliminating the paused target selection.[/quote]

Meaning: point, click and fold your arms until
the enemy is dead.

Didn't we already have the elevators for all
those boring moments where you had to keep yourself busy while you
waited for the game to just get on with it?

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

But clearly her thinking is already constrained by the conventions of the shooter genre.[/quote]

And clearly you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. My sister isn't that much of a gamer, and what little she plays is pretty much what you'd expect from a female casual gamer: puzzle games and platforms. And OK, maybe a bit of GTA, but it's more because of the driving over pedestrians than the shooting. Hell, she uses more grenades than she uses bullets.

Oh, and guess what, she still could have figured the same thing I did if one just presented her with the facts of the matter. It's another case of using common sense. And she's not really all that much into reading.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

If that's the case (and I have no reason to believe it is) then they should document that in the manual.  Or put "(Sincere)" before each line.[/quote]

You really need to have an entry in the manual to know how to follow the simple "lie" command? Then what happens when you find something like "(kill him)", "(loot the corpse)" or "(throw away)"? Do you need to check the documentation there too?

Oh, and also, have you ever thought how unnatural having the corresponding response for every single statement would look on paper? We would all look like HK-47 or an ME Elcor, excpet that with them, their speech quirks are amusing, while in a normal humanoid being, it'd just look like he was brain-damaged.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

You tell people things they already know and they respond "I really identify with you."  Have you never listened to a politican speak?[/quote]

Yes, and the basic idiot will just try to go for as many groups as he can by shaping his speech to what pleases the crowd more, while the true leaders, the ones who actually have some charisma, will make the crowd believe that what he says is a good idea, even if at first they might have disagreed with it.

Have you ever seen the movie "Other People's Money". Me neither, but the two speeches that Gregory Peck and Danny DeVito present as to why the shareholders should keep the factory working so they can recover vs. why they should sell their stocks because their business is lost anyway are a great example of how persuasion and people skills actually work.

They're not just telling people what they want to hear, they're not just blindly agreeing with them, they're trying to convince them that what they're saying, that what they offer, is the best option for them, even if their audience thought otherwise.

If they just pulled on their respective sides of the rope, they'd never get anywhere, those that had one opinion would keep it. Here, they're persuading those that are on one side to join theirs without losing the ones they already have. That is people's skills, that's charisma, that's having a silver tongue.

Now imagine how well things would go in DA if you had to gather your whole party around you and try to persuade them all at once by just doing the usual "you're absolutely right" trick. For every party member that you'd manage to sweet talk, you'd have four or five that would start to hate you.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Persuasion is irrational.  If I explain why something is true, and you don't accept my reasons, there's nothing else I can do with you.[/quote]

It all depends on how strong the opposing side's views are and how convincing your argument is, both in what you say and how you say it.

A pity that persuasion games like DA just boil it down to the latter aspect, meaning that apparently all your character needs to is say a really, really heartbreaking "I don't want this." to get his way.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I always see that as them changing their mind for no reason I can explain.  I didn't say anything particularly revelatory, and yet their whole point of view has suddenly changed.

At least when I do that I know I'm lying.[/quote]

Again, it's both a matter of how deeply rooted their opinions are and how strong your argument is.

Garrus is dissapointed with C-Sec, but he doesn't hate it and still believes you can do some good in it, and Shepard only needs to show him how doing things by the book has a reason behind it and actually does get things done.

Ashley is prejudiced against aliens and believes that humanity should look after itself first, but she's no zealot, she can work with aliens without a problem and Shepard can show her that you can actually trust aliens.

Kaidan, on the other hand, may believe that aliens are as much people as humans, but the reluctance on the Council to act puts him on the fence, and then all Shepard needs to do is to give him a little push.

All of these are actually believable situations, far better than just convincing Zevran that butchering the Dalish Elves, for whom he has such a fascination, by setting the werewolves loose on them when there's a perfectly viable peaceful option available with a mere "(Persuade) It's for the best."... it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I don't care if you're freaking Adolf Hitler, it's just not going to work that easily.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

You shouldn't love it just because you created it.  You should love it because you know better than anyone else what it is you love about characters, so you can make a character that ticks all your boxes.[/quote]

Here's the thing: ticking the boxes doesn't make it interessting, it makes it predictable and boring. The best characters that you can write are the ones that you set on paper and then seem to do things on their own accord, even though you never told them to do so. It's a major problem when you're trying to set them through a given story, but at least it means that made actual, "living" characters.

So no, I can't like a character just because I "tick the boxes". It would be like having a custom-made human: it might have the things we would consider ideal, but you just can't get past how artificial it is.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Compelling to people generally?  Yes.  Compelling to you?  Nonsense.[/quote]

Commander Shepard: very well-develloped character that I loved and gets me pumped to play the game.

Random NWN2 Paladin with which I've spent several hours around a sheet of paper, working on his character build and all his backstory and motivations before even touching the game: couldn't even make me finish the damned thing. Hell, I can't even remember what his name was now.

So there you have it.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Battle animations are as much a part of the on-screen portrayal of your character as conversations are.  Moreso, really, in DAO, as your character is hardly ever on-screen during conversations.[/quote]

So your character makes grimaces of pain when hit and an angry face when fighting and you think that is a portrait of your character? Even though that's a feature that pretty much all games have had for the last 10 years?

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

People are often very bad at identifying what it is they want from a product.

This is partly what killed General Motors.  They asked people what sort of car they wanted, and then built that car.  Other companies instead built the sort of car the people actually wanted (something that used less fuel and was easier to park) and those companies sold more cars, while GM failed.[/quote]

Except that people liked Mass Effect when it came, they still like it now and again it has won critical and financial success, along with a devoted fanbase! Hell, ME2 was even more antecipated and played than the first one. How in the hell is that not a market and since when does that compare to that whole ramble about General Motors?

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Is being an outlier a bad thing?  Do you strive to be typical? [/quote]

Given the fact that I'm kind of a reclusive guy who keeps to himself and still ends up in the center of things due to some unique feature or another, no, I don't strive to be typical and I couldn't be even if I tried.

What I don't like is to be called something that I am not, in this case, being treated like I'm some loner who is pretty much the only one defending a given point while you have the backing of pretty much everybody else when our situations are reversed.

And kindly stop making baseless assumptions about what I am or not, my life is none of your business so keep your nose out of it.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I don't mind new features.  But I do want to keep the old features.[/quote]

If you never remove the old features, you'll never be able to evolve and experiment. You'll always stick to the same crutches and drag around.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Then no one has it.

Everything learnable is learnable from a book.[/quote]

As someone that reads a lot and still has a lot to learn from actually living, I can't even begin to tell you what's wrong with that last sentence.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

This particular universal happened to be correct, as you helped demonstrate by insisting it didn't matter.  You dodged the question rather than address it.[/quote]

I said I knew I could make Shepard go whichever way I meant him to go, even on my first playthrough and with no previous knowledge on what would happen, which contradicted your absolute claim. So, really, what more do you want if that doesn't answer your question?

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Why are you describing the inventory as if it's not part of the game?  It clearly is.  It's within the game.  It affects the rest of the gameplay.  Inventory management was part of the game.  Saying "back to the game" is nonsensical.[/quote]

It's as much part of the game as the freaking Start Menu: it's part of the game, but you're not actually playing the game, you're just messing with your options.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The way Mass Effect works, you don't get to decide what Shepard's moment-to-moment motives are (because his subsequent actions could immediately contradict you), but you're still asked to make moment-to-moment decisions.  Either the input you offer is simply illusory, and Shepard will do basically the same thing regardless of what you tell him to do, or you have to guess at why he does things and accept that you'll be wrong a lot.

There's no middle ground.[/quote]

Shepard is given a situation. Shepard is given a choice between his available options. You choose it, Shepard follows that choice.

How in the blue hell is that had to figure out in any way.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

They don't need to stagnate.  They just need to avoid being internally inconsistent.

If Ultima IV and Wizardy aren't RPGs, what are they?  How do I ask for those gameplay elements (or those from any intervening RPG) if there's no label that describes them?[/quote]

They're RPGs because they have the elements that other games of the genre also share like levels, skills, inventories, experience points, etc. etc. Oh, they also give you some role-playing? That's nice, but that's just another feature.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I haven't played FO3, so I can't
say for sure, but from what I understand that would be pretty good, yes.

Though
the game would obviously then have to be rebalanced.[/quote]

No it wouldn't. V.A.T.S. can be a lot of fun at first when you get your first dismemberments and beheadings by bullet, but after a while it just makes the game as boring as you wanted ME to be with the "aim and wait until it dies" mechaninc. You see an enemy, you open V.A.T.S., aim a couple of shots to the head, the guy dies, move to the next one. It just feels like the game's just playing itself half of the time while you wait for it to finish off with what should be an obstacle.

Hell, after a while, I just had to ditch V.A.T.S. and shoot manually. I absolutely sucked at it (remember: PC player using a XBox360 controller for the first time) and I kept losing ammo and health because of it, but at least the firefights felt like actual freaking firefights and not an automatic God Mode button where I just riddled my enemy's brain with bullets before he could fire a single shot.

[quote]Sylvius
the Mad wrote...

Did I say that learning from a book is the only
way to learn?  No, I didn't.

You can laern to read from a book. 
Any language can be taught by a book.  That it's possible to learn that
language in some other way (and necessary if it's your first language)
doesn't stop it from being learnable from a book.

Common sense is
not, however, learnable from a book.  Therefore it is not learnable.

[/quote]

What about, say, swimming? You can study the theory all you want, you're not learning to swim without actual practice. Hence, it's impossible to learn how to swim.

Good God, your arguments make no sense whatsoever.

[Murmillos]

god you two.... novels.

Modifié par Murmillos, 20 mars 2010 - 02:17 .

[EternalWolfe]

Murmillos wrote...

god you two.... novels.

Eh, its not too bad(of course, I have a tendency to read novels in real life, so long reads don't both me).  But reading these two do give a very intresting view into the different mindsets and how they see each other and their own views.  Although I wouldn't care to argue - both sides have their lines drawn and It'll take more effort then anyone short of whatever god or diety you care to mention to move them.

[Mimaiselphenai]

EternalWolfe wrote...

Murmillos wrote...

god you two.... novels.

Eh, its not too bad(of course, I have a tendency to read novels in real life, so long reads don't both me).  But reading these two do give a very intresting view into the different mindsets and how they see each other and their own views.  Although I wouldn't care to argue - both sides have their lines drawn and It'll take more effort then anyone short of whatever god or diety you care to mention to move them.

I guess we're at the point in the downfall of society that novel reading is noteworthy.

[EternalWolfe]

Mimaiselphenai wrote...

I guess we're at the point in the downfall of society that novel reading is noteworthy.

Depends on where you live.  Where I live?  Yes, yes it is.

That's what I get for living in middle of America.

[Skemte]

Yana Montana wrote...

Combat was improved in ME2-hurray! But now I have to spend 90% of my game hiding behind crates playing a VANGUARD-tedious.
New characters-hurray! One freaking dialgue and then they refuse to talk to my desperate Shep-lame.
New story twists-hurray! Wait, have we actually had any?-uber-lame.
I WANT STORY AND ROLE-PLAYING NOT ANOTHER BIG GUN DLC, BioWare!

  Your doing something wrong then.. Something TERRIBLY wrong.. Because Barrier and Heavy Charge basically garentees you can charge quite some time.. Inless you are playing on insane.. And then if thats the case your a moron to expect to walk out int he open like that for the highest difficulty.

[Skemte]

javierabegazo wrote...

Dinkamus_Littlelog wrote...

I also miss the MAKO, and it looks like the Hammerhead wont provide anywhere near the same experience that the MAKO offered and that I enjoyed. From the vid it looks something like Wipeout, and not something that will let you explore a hostile world. At least not without "blowing **** up at high speed".

Yeah...I'm a bit worried about this, I'm concerned that all it has is an infinite supply of homing rockets and all you do are strafing runs.

  How in the hell did any one miss the Mako? It was one of the poorest handling vehicles in history.. And it was not difficult to fight in (outside that it handled awful) nor did you need anything to make it stronger.. It consisted you of moving back and fourth to avoid slow projectiles.. Or exposing bad AI to hit enemies while hardly being hit..  I don't see how any one would want this..  What so ever..  People constantly complain about how the shooting int eh game takes away from the game.. But at least you could play that differently, your character class and abilities you used made a difference.. This is a simplistic tank game..

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]Lusitanum wrote...

A hospital is only a place where people get medical treatment today, it wasn't so in the beggining. First, it was a hotel, a place of hopitality run by the clergy and later it envolved into a place of medical treatment due to the fact that they started recieving more wounded soldiers from the wars than guests and later, hospitals could have that name with no religious affilitations whatsoever, even if some of them still mantain it to this day. That's the main reason why there are so many St. This and That hospitals.[/quote]
You're still not getting it.  What something is is different from what something is called.  A hospital is a hospital - I'm sure you'll accept that.  A is A, after all.  So, using today's terminology, an ancient hospital or a future hospital is still a hospital, even though the people of that period wouldn't call it a hospital, and might even use the word hospital to describe something else entirely.

This is just like how economists measure value over time.  Because the value of the standard unit of measurement for value - currency - changes over time, they need to establish an immutable unit (often called real dollars) demarcated is a specific period's dollar values.  On this very forum, I have done such an analysis of the changing prices of computer games.  I measured everything in 2008 dollars to show how much game prices have fallen since 1984 (roughly 70%) in response to people conplaining about high game prices.

Regardless of what a dollar can buy in 1950 or 2050, a 2008 dollar's buying power is fixed.  Similarly, regardless of what the word hospital means across eras, what a hospital is, using today's terminology, never changes.
[quote]It's the same thing that happened to RPGs. They started as something but as the perception that we had of them changed, so did their defining characteristics and now what was once a core characteristic just became another feature that may or may not be present.[/quote]
Right, so given the 1985 definition of RPG, what are those games today?  And what were today's RPGs then?

We need immutable labels so we can compare across eras.
[quote]Yeah, except that even if you do choose to say "no, I'd rather go to jail!" Duncan still forces you to join the Grey Wardens. I especially loved the moment where he tells us to go get the blood and the treaties and you get to ask something like "Can we refuse to do this?" and Duncan just straight out tells you that "You have no choice on the matter". Well, thanks a lot for that.[/quote]
But that is the difference.  Then you're playing a character who didn't want to be a Grey Warden.  How does that change his approach to everything else that happens subsequently?

I'm actually playing that character right now.  He's a City Elf who didn't want to get married, but didn't see that he had much choice in the matter, felt pressured into raiding the Arl's estate, took Vaughan's money (because it was the easiest and most profitable way out of the room - really, if you don't feel in control of your life, you take opportunities when they appear), and then was generally contrary through the whole joining process.  And that roleplaying extends even into combat - this character is an abject coward and wants nothing to do with danger, so he hangs back and ineffectually fires his short bow.  He even avoids taking combat talents so the rest of the party will have less reason to ask him to fight things.

And, wonderfully, this even gave me a new impression of a dialogue option I'd previously avoided.  When told to light the beacon at Ostagar, one of the dialogue options reads:

"You mean I won't be part of the battle?"

I had previously read that as a whiny complaint from someone who wanted to fight in the battle.  My first character didn't want to be in the battle, so he didn't ask.  My second character realised that he didn't have any say in the matter, so he didn't care.  But this character was overjoyed not to be in the battle, so that line became an excited request for clarification.  He asked the question because he wanted to be reassured that no, he wouldn't have to fight anything.  That one line can mean many different things based on what sort of person the PC is is a feature of this dialogue system, but completely absent from ME's dialgoue system.  There is no reason or means to ask any question in ME except the way the writers intended it.

That's a barrier to roleplaying.
[quote]Also, ME did give you a very good reason to become a Spectre: you're being given the authority of the Council and the means to do what an entire fleet couldn't.[/quote]
Assuming Shepard cared.  At all.

I play characters lacking empathy a lot.  Shepard did not work as a stoic, disconnected person.
[quote]On the other hand, there's not one good reason to become a Grey Warden. [/quote]
Which is why the game ultimately doesn't ask.

If there's no other option, the game shouldn't pretend there is.  Did you play NWN2?  Right near the beginning, when the PC is told to go to Neverwinter, he's urged to travel by sea, as the High Road would be far too dangerous.  But the High Road isn't even there.  The game failed by telling me (explicitly) that the High Road was a possible route, because it wasn't.  There was no High Road.
[quote](loved the bit at the beginning when Alistair said we wouldn't get taken by surprise because of his "Grey Warden senses" and five minutes later BAMM! four Darkspawn come out of nowhere and ambush my party)[/quote]
You're being obtuse.  Alistair says you won't be surprised by the main horde.  Encountering and defeating darkspawn in small numbers is the whole point of the jaunt into the Wilds in the first place; Alistair even says outright that he won't make things easy for you.  Yes, he knew those Genlocks Rogues were there (and so should you have the second time you got ambushed - there was an audio cue).  He just didn't warn you about them.
[quote]And my elf had to cowtow to the humans. It wasn't a big issue for me since I wasn't really playing a prejudiced elf, but I kept noticing that the options weren't there most of the time.[/quote]
The big options like "let the human village die" or "leave the humans cursed forever" or "defile the humans' sacred relic" or "kill the human noble's heir" didn't jump out at you?  These were huge, game-changing choices.
[quote]But you still have to adjust the line, instead of being able to justify it with a "oh, he misheard me"[/quote]
Of course you do.  Just like you do in text-parsing games (Ultima) or keyword games (like Oblivion).  What your PC actually says is not modelled for you.  Nothing has changed since those early days of RPGs - now the games just give you more detailed options.

The game that broke away from that was Mass Effect, where suddenly your character was forced to say exactly what the designers wrote.  Never before was that the case (save other games with PC voice-over, like Deus Ex).
[quote]I'd say that it's more of a case that the things I know can't drown out what I feel.[/quote]
Things I know control the things I feel.  My feelings stem from my conscious thoughts, because I'm capable of rational analysis.  Like all humans are (supposedly).
[quote]don't expect everything to accomodate that playstyle just because you want it to.[/quote]
I expect it to accommodate my playstyle because that would make the game more internally consistent.
[quote]Meaning: point, click and fold your arms until the enemy is dead.[/quote]
If you have time to fold your arms, then the game is too easy.

Someone (I think Vaeliorin, who has already posted in this thread) once said that if you have time to look at the combat animations, then the combat is too easy.
[quote]Didn't we already have the elevators for all those boring moments where you had to keep yourself busy while you waited for the game to just get on with it?[/quote]
every other game has loading screens.  What difference does it make how the game makes us wait?  And I fail to see how this is germaine o the discussion.
[quote]And clearly you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. My sister isn't that much of a gamer[/quote]
Culture is pervasive.
[quote]You really need to have an entry in the manual to know how to follow the simple "lie" command? Then what happens when you find something like "(kill him)", "(loot the corpse)" or "(throw away)"? Do you need to check the documentation there too?

Oh, and also, have you ever thought how unnatural having the corresponding response for every single statement would look on paper? We would all look like HK-47 or an ME Elcor, excpet that with them, their speech quirks are amusing, while in a normal humanoid being, it'd just look like he was brain-damaged.[/quote]
If the game needs to know why the PC is saying something, the game needs to tell the player that.

I'd rather the game never ask.
[quote]Have you ever seen the movie "Other People's Money". Me neither, but the two speeches that Gregory Peck and Danny DeVito present as to why the shareholders should keep the factory working so they can recover vs. why they should sell their stocks because their business is lost anyway are a great example of how persuasion and people skills actually work.[/quote]
If that's how persuasion works, then people are dumb.

Peck's appeal to conscience would fail utterly to persuade anyone without a conscience, and anyone with a conscience should investogate whether his claims are true - that by saving the company the shareholders and doing a net good.

DeVito's response attacks on both points.  He asserts that there is no net good to be found in saving the company, but further that as shareholders they have no reason to be concerned with any good but their own.

Anyone who draws a conclusion based on these two speeches alone is just guessing.
[quote]Garrus is dissapointed with C-Sec, but he doesn't hate it and still believes you can do some good in it, and Shepard only needs to show him how doing things by the book has a reason behind it and actually does get things done.[/quote]
Garrus should want to see both sides before reaching a decision.  The others are similar.
[quote]All of these are actually believable situations, far better than just convincing Zevran that butchering the Dalish Elves, for whom he has such a fascination, by setting the werewolves loose on them when there's a perfectly viable peaceful option available with a mere "(Persuade) It's for the best."[/quote]
Why do you assume Zevran is aware of that option?  Or that anyone in the game (including the PC) is aware of that option?  What the PC knows or doesn't know is up to you, not the game.  That a dialogue option is presented to you is not evidence that it has occurred to the PC that he could say that.  that's for you to decide, and you alone.
[quote]Here's the thing: ticking the boxes doesn't make it interesting, it makes it predictable and boring.[/quote]
Only if you don't tick the boxes for interesting.
[quote]So your character makes grimaces of pain when hit and an angry face when fighting and you think that is a portrait of your character? Even though that's a feature that pretty much all games have had for the last 10 years?[/quote]
What does how long it's been available have to do with it?
[quote]I said I knew I could make Shepard go whichever way I meant him to go, even on my first playthrough and with no previous knowledge on what would happen, which contradicted your absolute claim.[/quote]
But as I showed, you were wrong about that.  You couldn't predict exactly what Shepard was going to say or do with every dialogue wheel selection you made, so you could never be sure that you weren't about to break the character.
[quote]It's as much part of the game as the freaking Start Menu: it's part of the game, but you're not actually playing the game, you're just messing with your options.[/quote]
The options?

Inventory is often an important part of the strategic gameplay in RPGs (DAO is noteworthy for its total abandonment of strategic planning in favour of tactical planning).  In a game like Baldur's Gate, managing the inventory included making decisions like "who carries the arrows" because there was no shared inventory, so you needed to decide how important it was to be able to transfer arrows to the character with the bow given that transfering gear had a limited range, and accessing the inventory automatically unpaused the game.  That had a tremendous impact on how combat worked.  Stacking potions with one character was more efficient (they used fewer slots), but distributing them among the party meant that everyone had immediate access to them.  Which do you do?

Inventory management is gameplay.

You need to play more turn-based strategy games.
[quote]Shepard is given a choice between his available options.[/quote]
Wrong.  You, the player, are given the choice, but the available options are not presented to you, so you cannot weigh them effectively.
[quote]No it wouldn't. V.A.T.S. can be a lot of fun at first when you get your first dismemberments and beheadings by bullet, but after a while it just makes the game as boring as you wanted ME to be with the "aim and wait until it dies" mechaninc. You see an enemy, you open V.A.T.S., aim a couple of shots to the head, the guy dies, move to the next one. It just feels like the game's just playing itself half of the time while you wait for it to finish off with what should be an obstacle.

Hell, after a while, I just had to ditch V.A.T.S. and shoot manually. I absolutely sucked at it (remember: PC player using a XBox360 controller for the first time) and I kept losing ammo and health because of it, but at least the firefights felt like actual freaking firefights and not an automatic God Mode button where I just riddled my enemy's brain with bullets before he could fire a single shot.[/quote]
Again, that's a balancing problem, not a mechanical problem.  With VATS, the game was apparently just too easy.
[quote]What about, say, swimming? You can study the theory all you want, you're not learning to swim without actual practice. Hence, it's impossible to learn how to swim.[/quote]
Wrong.  You can learn to swim from a book, but you need to practice to actually swim.  Muscle memory is not knowledge.

The same goes for playing the piano.  You can learn how from a book, but to play well you need to practice it and develop muscle memory.

[Vaeliorin]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Someone (I think Vaeliorin, who has already posted in this thread) once said that if you have time to look at the combat animations, then the combat is too easy.

Yes, that was me.  I still stand by it.  Of course, I like my combat ridiculously hard and requiring careful thought and planning for every second of the fight (the only games that ever seem to manage this are actual turn-based games, I assume because most people would hate combat that hard in real-time.)

Oh, and ME2...good (had the potential to be great if the writing was better) game, not an RPG (just to be on topic.)

[The Capital Gaultier]

Mimaiselphenai wrote...

I guess we're at the point in the downfall of society that novel reading is noteworthy.

You'd be wrong.  Novels on an Internet forum, though - gah!