RedEye9 wrote on Jun 19, 2016, 11:07:
OMFG Those Sellouts!!!!!!

I get it you feel a strong urge to say something, but sometimes there`s just nothing to say.

Valve is not actually a corporation, but funnily enough it only makes things worse, since it has no responsibility to anybody else but Sir Knight and his round table.

Maxim? Is this still a thing?

Kajetan wrote on Jun 19, 2016, 05:51:
Valve still is a privately held company and not simply a brand in possession of a big corporation.

I lol`d. Do you know what Valve`s full business name is?

Numinar wrote on Jun 17, 2016, 23:53:
Some of the set pieces in Half Life are amazing, but I'd never start playing it again after finishing it like I would do with Doom, Heretic or Halo. It's a linear corridor shooter like every PC shooter ever until it's release. It didn't have the co-op, excellent MP, cool vehicle mechanics (which carry over into MP and co-op with sick boarding mechanics) and it definitely doesn't have the awesome sandbox of weapon, enemy and vehicle interaction which helps make every encounter feel fresh. No contest to me and I don't sit around praying to lord Gabe for HL3. Metro and Metro LL did this decade's version of a moody linear FPS already so there is no room for it unless they think of something really fresh.

Preach, brother. It`s one of the great paradoxes of our era that PC people, who are self-proclaimed FPS experts, have written of Halo because of an ancient beef with M$ and their urge to surf the anti-console wave.

I love first Half-Life, second much less so, but still. However, as you say they`re good for one playthrough and that`s that. Their strong suit was great story (H1) and set pieces and innovative physics (H2) - but not combat itself. Halo on the other hand is a liquid, ever-changing sandbox with groundbreaking AI and huge replayability value.

ViRGE wrote on Jun 18, 2016, 02:14:
Paying gets you the best cheats and the best tears as you make people rage at you.

The fact that cheaters use this excruciating excuse - that somehow making others mad is okay because they`re too competitive or something - will never cease to amaze me.

If you want to be a douchecunt and cheat then do so, but please keep your lame rationalization to yourself.

Planetside 1 was still going on? Didn`t even know...

Glad they still support P2, despite everybody saying it`d be dead soon last year...it`s an amazing game - and that`s from somebody who hates f2p model dearly.

And the base building sounds awesome too - makes me wanna jump in again...though I can`t really play it anymore - my ole foggy brain is bot too slow for this kind of intensity.

Pun Of The Day

Such a shame Bungie let their superb talents go to waste on this mediocre game.

Never played Marathon (Mac, ugh) but it gets constant praise. Myth is still one of my favourite PC games, Oni was a blast and Halo a 10/10 revelation. Now, a grindy online-only FPS. Depressing.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 17, 2016, 14:13:
You also realize the MS are just being assholes and trying to force people to adopt Win 10, and this is another pin in the voodoo doll, right?

Didn`t they try to do the same with some games for Vista and/or DX10/11? Not saying it`s a good thing - and it will be a long time, if ever, when I upgrade, but it`s not exactly a new tactic.

I keep thinking I`d like to play the first Dead Rising again. Had it on Xb when it first came out but hated didn`t understand its structure (timed quests etc). Now that I`ve been rebooted with a roguelike mindset, it all starts making sense. Play for high score, not to save everybody.

The first ME was awesome so of course they went and dumbed down/"streamlined" the sequel so that it nearly played itself, leaving you ample time to stare at Miranda`s ass.

This, and Dragon Age mess made me give up completely on Bioware and I was quite happy with this status quo. Bunch of sad, greedy hacks.

However my SPACE games addiction is back in full force atm so I keep thinking about breaking the embargo. Especially seeing as there are some positive signs....Mako is back! which means perhaps they opened up the planets again...and the whole universe is supposed to be more open too. So, maybe...

SlimRam wrote on Jun 15, 2016, 04:25:
Keyboard and Mouse support for the Xbone is a few months away (and that does mean in game, not just menu navigation) soooo maybe a few less controller peasants

With exception of some competitive online FPS buying KBM for X1 is a waste of money, since majority of their games have been designed for and play way better with a gamepad.

The balance is perhaps different for the PC, but not as much as you`d imagine. However I do understand some of the PC Master Racers need to cling on to that ol` trope, so who am I to argue

Beamer wrote on Jun 15, 2016, 08:35:
I got to the point that I had a huge army yet nothing to do with it.

The main problem with M&B is that it screams for pemadeath mode.This would change the whole dynamic and made it million times more challenging/interesting.

This sequel looks absolutely fantabulous. Destructible castles got teh 6 y.o. in me salivating. Hope they will keep the promises for the AI. And yeah, that permadeath. It`s a trendy thing now, so hopefully...

Overwatch-Lawbreakers-battleborn are all interchangeable in my mind.

Also, if you want to include the micro$hit in your game, don`t do it in this obnoxiously lame, stealthy "down the road' way. Just have the balls to came out and do it. I`ll hate you a bit less, then

What I thought yesterday, why is there no Witcher movie? It would be actually perfect for big budget Hollywood, and nowadays fantasy sells.

RedEye9 wrote on Jun 15, 2016, 10:10:
blood doping

That`s for Lance and other old timers, these days kids are all about hidden motors and such...even some magnetic field sorcery...

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jun 14, 2016, 17:38:
Broken mechanics: Oblivion's level scaling making it possible to get a full set of the best armor in the game by encountering a bandit, Morrowind's alchemy allowing for exponential growth stat boosts, Oblivion's persuasion minigame which was frankly just bizarre, loot being (with rare exception) being generic and randomized leads to very little sense of reward in dungeon crawling.

- level scaling: mentioned as a major flaw in my first post: also with a remark it`s very difficult to pull off in an open world game without making it a closed open world game. I mean, you did read my post, right?
-alchemy boost: and? see the first point: in this game you`re free to do stuff. If it "breaks" it for you, too bad.
-persuasion minigame: it`s just a minigame. Why is it more bizarre than any other minigame? Does bizarre equal "broken"?
-loot: see the first point. How do you populate endless dungeons with scaling enemies? The loot has to scale as well otherwise you`d get the "best set of armor" by clearing this or that dungeon. It wasn`t perfect, but they`re learning.

And I'm unclear why Ultima is an unfair comparison.

If it`s really unclear, I cant help much here, perhaps simplistic analogies like: Goldbox did everything better than Baldur`s Gate, what`s the point of BG? System Shock had everything and more than Deus Ex, Pirates than AC:BG, Doom than Doom, Krondor than Witcher, and Darklands is still the best CRPG ever, so why even bother with playing new games?

This is daft of course, but I try to stay with the vibes. I made a mention in my 1st post about people missing a point and lacking in understanding basic game design - it shows. TES/FO don`t excel in any single department and are near-lame in some - but as a whole they`re unbeatable because nobody creates true worlds like theirs. It`s easy to nitpick on details if you`re in a mind to do so, however it`s rather lame, since you miss the bigger picture.

Btw, name your favourite CRPG and I will do a hatchet job in the same style. The Witcher? Can`t even get the movement done properly until last patch. Gothic? Combat is from Planet Madness. Dragon Age? Do you have your credit card with you, sire? Arcanum/Bloodlines/Gothic/TOEE? Unplayable without community patches. But they`re not from Bethsoft, so all is good.

I don't know why I'm arguing with someone who evidently can't tell the difference between a backtick and an apostrophe.

No I don`t, neither do I care that much. But you stay classy brah

The perennial question "who won the E3?" has already been answered.

My head is spinning. Procedural generation+destructible terrain+turn based strategy+Julian Gollop = The Only Game You Should Care About.

Mending broken hearts, with a slight (15 years) delay

Scottish Martial Arts wrote on Jun 14, 2016, 15:58:
I don't really feel like going through a point by point rebuttal, but I will say that your argument tends not to address some of the more salient complaints with Bethesda games,

Well, I wish you did - maybe then you could avoid that desperate scrapping-the-barrel move with dragging out the Ultima series. Is that all you got, an impossible comparison with a 2D/decades old series?

Please name some of the "broken mechanics", I`m interested. As for bad writing, well it`s a mixed bag, it ranges from great (III) to okay (IV) to cringeworthy (V). It`s also irrelevant - becasue the point you and everybody else misses is that their games let you create your own narratives.

So you can snigger all you want about potato faces and arrows in knees - but the only real sound is that of an argument being stretched.

As for the old "mile wide, inch deep"...well. If we are down to a being-ridiculous level, then I could say I`d rather watch a good film read a book than waste my time with second-rate things like Witcher. Sounds stupid? Go read that "mile wide" thingy again, you`ll see where I`m coming from

@Beamer and "ugly Oblivion" posse: when it come out, the gfx was mindboggling, perhaps read some reviews to refresh the failing memory. That`s on top of rather obvious things like the fact that you can make a corridor game "prettier" than one that lets you run anywhere...but we know this, right?

This comment was edited on Jun 14, 2016, 16:31.

Creston wrote on Jun 14, 2016, 13:38:
it's a ridiculously unfair comparison. Skyrim came out in 2011 and had to run on the shitty Xbox 360 and the even shittier PS3. Witcher 3 came out in 2015 and had to run on the PS4/Xbone. It's a night and day difference.

What`s this, a reasonable post in a TES/FO thread? Somebody pinch me.

Yep, this Beth-hate narrative is one of the trendiest trends in modern gaming and also one of the most unfair and unreasonable ones.

As it is I could probably fill a book dissecting it, but in short, well, it`s just goddamn ridiculous. People will go to incredible lengths to "prove" how crap their games are, however all they`re doing is, at best, miss the point and at worst show total ignorance of basic game design.

The only real (as in important) flaw in some of their open worlds is the difficulty balancing. However, if you think about it you`ll realize how incredibly tricky it is to pull off without closing up the game world.

The rest of accusations is either blown out of proportion or entirely made up (I once heard somebody state that Oblivion was an "ugly" game. Fancy that.) No, seriously - gimme any example you like and I`m sure I`ll be able to deal with it quite easily.

That`s because people seem to forget there is no other game like it and there`s no other game like it because it`s so tricky to pull off. No other first-person CRPG that will let you roam a true open world and be whatever you wanna be: a werewolf, spellcasting rogue, crazed barbarian or evil knight. No other game will let you adopt children and build goddamn settlements then raid other settlements with allied army. Or collect a hundred spoons and arrange them on a beach to write a message to your gf*

And finally, no other game engine is so incredibly flexible to allow for such unprecedented customization. Yeah, stick that in your "they release broken games for modders to fix it" BS pipe.

That`s it: other devs make games, Bethsoft builds worlds. I like a Witcher, a Risen or a Gothic, but these are in a different league. If this kinda league - more linear and story-driven - is your thing, then fine. Different strokes and all that. But if you wanna single combat about it, then best bring your AAArgument, else it might not be a pretty sight

*true story

ventry wrote on Jun 14, 2016, 00:14:

Your smart phone spies/collects/sends telemetry on you 24/7 despite what options you turn off.
You know that, right??

Selective caring hurts credibility.

No it does not, if you take some simple precautions (like rootin` n tootin and lil` gapps cancer surgery).

As for Crackdown, well. The enviro destruction is long overdue in gaming, though Red Faction was on the right path. But cloud dependant? This concept is so 2008.