[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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.
[...]
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]
I think you're mistaking "value" for "meaning". It doesn't matter what a dollar is called or what it's worth, it's still just a name for a given kind of money. For instance, here in Portugal we've had three different currencies in the last 100 years: the "real" (ri - al), the "escudo" and now the "euro". The "real" and the "escudo" were pretty much the same value, it was only a matter of changing the name but the "escudo" and the "euro" have completely different values (1 euro = roughly 200 escudos).
Does it matter? Does it change our perception of what money is, even if it's value is completely changed from one year to the next? No, it's just another name for the same thing: money. Value has nothing to do with terminology or how people percieve its function. Even after 100 hundred years, three different names for currency and the skyrocketting of what one "escudo" could buy, money is still just money.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
They're the same thing: RPGs. However, those were at the genesis of the genre which has since now branched out into new, unexplored territory. Following your logic, what is Pong nowadays? Is it still a videogame, even if nowadays the definition of the term encompasses extremely complex and varied experiences that are light years ahead of two squares going up and down trying to pass a square that was supposed to be a ball? Of course not, Pong is as much a videogame as is Civilization, Super Mario, Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, etc.
So no, we can't have immutable labels, because there's too much variety and evolution to just start setting hard boundaries around everything.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Assuming Shepard cared. At all.
I play characters lacking empathy a lot. Shepard did not work as a stoic, disconnected person.[/quote]
Well, then the character didn't revolve around your preferences, sorry about that.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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 I'm the one being obtuse? Alistair is supposed to be purposefuly making your life harder just for kicks, risking the life of three other prospect Grey Wardens? Not being there to make things easy doesn't mean that he's doing to make it harder on purpose either, it just means that he's not an easy way out of the situation, his presence doesn't mean that your success is guaranteed.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
They did jump at me, but by the time I was that far into the game I had had so few opportunities to actually role-play that kind of character that I had already given up several hours before and just said "screw it, I'm just going to play as "me" again, see what options are offered throughout the game, and then try to create a character that the game will allow me to RP".
So, hurray for "metagamy" role-play!
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
You also forgot The Witcher. And the Final Fantasy series. And that's just to mention some of the "kickstarters" of voiced PCs
Proof that RPGs were already trying to get voice-acting PCs in their games for a long time but there's a catch: it requires a lot of work and a lot of disk space, because you're talking about the character with the biggest number of lines in the whole game and you have to take into account the fact that many of these games may offer customization options that can conflict with a given voice. For instace, one of the reasons why I'm glad DA doesn't have voiced PCs is because it would feel strange to play a Dwarf Noble that would sound exactly like a City Elf or a Human Mage.
Now, a game that has one lead character that goes through a plot like the ones like Mass Effect or The Witcher? That's a huge improvement over the mutes.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
And all humans have feelings that affect their perception of the world. That's the basis of the Uncanny Valley: it's your knowledge of a given thing that affects how you percieve it and, hence, how you feel towards it.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I expect it to accommodate my playstyle because that would make the game more internally consistent.[/quote]
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
It's not so much a matter of easy combat, but rather of how long you have to wait until you actually have to input something to influence the fight. In Fallout, even if the enemy isn't all that easy to beat, you still have time to lean back on your chair because you have to wait through the slow-motion sequence of your character shooting your target.
Dragon Age, on the other hand, is a game of easy,detachable combat. In most of the fights I just select everyone, order them to attack someone, wait until they've killed it, click on someone else, wait, click again with only the odd use of an ability of spell to speed things up. So I can't fold my arms, but I do end up with my left hand holding my head or my cup of tea while I keep my right hand tapping on the mouse waitting for the next click. And the fact that you can pretty much beat any fight using the same tactic from start to finish doesn't help.
I get the feeling that if I could just queue a few orders (like you can in pretty much any strategy game in existence) I could just lean back and watch the combat unfold. Or do something else entirely. Like making another cup of tea.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
It wasn't, I was just pointing out that we had enough dead time as is. I also disliked the damned elevators, but you won't have a shortage of people complaining that ME2 isn't an RPG anymore because the loading screens break the immersion in the game.
And having to pull something to read every time you have to wait for a goddamned elevator to make it way to where you want to go doesn't? Seriously?
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Culture is pervasive.[/quote]
It is when people are exposed to it. My sister isn't since she doesn't see me playing shooters nor does she care one bit about them, so it's never something we talk about. So my point still stands.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
The game still does and there's no entry in the manual.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
Did you miss the point of the whole scene? People aren't making a decision based on those speeches alone, they have their own ideas, their own beliefs on what should be done, their own fears and motivs on what they should do, and each speech tries to convince them to adopt a given decision.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Garrus should want to see both sides before reaching a decision. The others are similar.[/quote]
You don't always need to see both sides to reach a decision. It might help, but it's not always imperative. At first, Garrus believes that you can't do any good if you always follow procedure, but you can convince him by both words and actions that he might be wrong.
And aren't Ashely and Kaidan pretty much seeing "the other side" too? Ashely is working with aliens and getting to know them better and Kaidan is starting to feel dissapointed with the way the Coucil runs things.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
Why do I assume that Zevran is aware of the option? Oh, I don't know, maybe because he will directly show his unease in killing the Dalish by asking you if you should really do it! But it's okay, at that point you have three options, two of them basically consisting on telling him to stuff it and the third is making a persuade check by literally saying "It's for the best."
My PC could crown himself rule of Thedas with that silver tongue of his, apparently.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Only if you don't tick the boxes for interesting.[/quote]
Yes, I try to make a character interssting and I forget to add that.
Are you serious?
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
No, you showed nothing at all. I said that I managed to drive Shepard wherever I meant him to go, regardless of wheter or not I knew exactly what he was going to do, and I still stand by that. I'm not "dodging" the issue, I'm just telling you how things are.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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]
No, I don't need to play anything. I alreayd own the entire Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series and that stupid inventory system is another of those things that I'm glad was finally thrown out of games and into a fiery pit.
That thing added nothing to strategy or tactics, it was just busywork. Even worse, it was boring busywork. Having to return to town every couple of missions just to buy arrows because your character ate them up in less than nothing and you could only have stacks of 20 at a time added what to the game? Besides needless backtracking?
Or what about having to keep feeding the ammo slots of your character with the arrows they already had in their inventory, because apparently they were too stupid to use do it themselves, meaning that if you forgot to check every 5 minutes, you'd have Imoen charging her opponents with her sword and getting killed in an instant, because she was apparently too stupid to just get another arrow from the dozens she had in her inventory.
Oh, and identifying items was fun too, what with the constant back and forth of passing the inventory of my Mage and Bard to someone else (and since they're ranged fighters, their inventory was always cluttered with ammo), then giving them the unindentified items, indentifying them and then putting everything back into place.
Now tell me, how in the hell is that supposed to be strategic? It requires no tactics, no planning and no thought whatsoever, it's just a constant back a forth of needless micromanagement.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Wrong. You, the player, are given the choice, but the available options are not presented to you, so you cannot weigh them effectively.[/quote]
Rachni Queen. Kill or let go.
The Keeper Scanner. Keep scanning or stop after your learn the truth?
The garage pass on Noveria. Several choices on what your options are and how to go about it.
Virmire. Ashley or Kaidan?
How in the hell is this hard to figure out?
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
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.[/quote]
And you can learn the practice all you want, you're not going anywhere without practice.
Or since we're talking about music, what about music genres. Do you really think you could ever teach a deaf person what Punk Rock is just by giving them a book?
[quote]Kalfear wrote...
LOL add me to your list of loving
tactical combat (as he said, usually turn based).
Love games that
let me move, get countered, counter the counter, ect!
But ME2
isnt that, its twitch, low tatical combat at best.[/quote]
I've had more tactical though in ME2 than I ever did on Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age. Hell, I had more trouble divinsing strategies on Left 4 Dead than I ever did on any turn-based RPG.
Why? Because with ME2 and L4D, I had to worry about flanking, managing my characters, formations, when to rush and when to take it slow, when to capitalize on an opening given and much more. And I had to think of all this on my feet. I've lost count of the number of times I was under pressure in a tought situation and muttering "think, think, think! You need a way out of this now!" And when you do succeed and everything goes the way you planned it, it gives you a sense that you won't get anywhere else.
Turn-based RPGs, on the other hand, is mostly a matter of memorizing the rules and acting on that knowledge. That's it. Give your Fighters a lot of AC and some +3 swords, the Mage casts spells, the Cleric heals and the Rogue backstabs. And there you have it, all you need to know to beat the game. <_<
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