NA Gold - Gothic 3 - Blue's News Comments

And since their map does NOT show dungeons, well, I guess you must REALLY like wandering around aimlessly trying to find a cave then. Technically, if I'm wandering around with a specific objective (in this case, looking for a cave), then I'm not aimless. I guess it's just a matter of playstyle. While playing Oblivion, I never used Fast Travel to get to any place I hadn't already been to on foot. I discovered about 99% of the dungeons through exploration, not through quest markers. Hell, I had already raided most of the quest dungeons before even getting the quest. As you can tell, I really like exploring so the lack of objective markers on the map in G3 doesn't bother me at all. Chances are, I'll already know where something is before I'm assigned a quest for it.

59.

Re: Not as pretty?!

Oct 28, 2006, 22:52

Orogogus

Is that a good example of it? I'm looking at it and can't tell what I'm looking at. I was going to say that those are some of the worst water effects I've seen in recent memory, but you say they're cobblestones -- that makes it even more terrible, frankly.

58.

Re: Not as pretty?!

Oct 28, 2006, 19:49

parallax just makes things look unrealistically shiny. What PM does it makes textures (like the cobblestones example below) look like they actually have much more depth and geometric detail. Here's just one example of PM in Gothic 3: http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/7226/gothic3parallaxmappedcrnq7.jpg ____________________ http://personal.inet.fi/atk/kjh2348fs/ageia_physx.html \| http://www.liveforspeed.net

57.

Re: Not as pretty?!

Oct 28, 2006, 19:20

PHJF

regular normal mapping is fine, parallax just makes things look unrealistically shiny.

HDR > Parallax

------
"Oh how awful. Did he at least die peacefully? To shreds you say. Well, how's his wife holding up? To shreds you say."




Steam + PSN: PHJF

56.

Re: Not as pretty?!

Oct 28, 2006, 17:46

The parallax mapping? Do you even know what that means? Hmmm... do you know what Parallax Mapping is? PM is friggin' everywhere in G3. Gives so much depth to the world objects. Judging from your post you haven't played Gothic 3 with all details set to maximum. ____________________ http://personal.inet.fi/atk/kjh2348fs/ageia_physx.html \| http://www.liveforspeed.net

55.

Re: Not as pretty?!

Oct 28, 2006, 15:20

Where's the grass? - I'm in the middle of a pond and on rocky cliffs in these pictures, hmmm, why is there no grass there? Straw Man Fallacy ring a bell? Wait, there is no grass on the beach in Gothic 3, it's horrible! The shadows? I'm in the middle of a lake, where exactly do you figure there would be shadows? The parallax mapping? Do you even know what that means? The hires textures? Oh right, because Gothic 3 is so full of those? The good looking forests? Snort. If you believe that Gothic 3's forests look better than Oblivion's with NE, then you are so deluded there's no point in trying to argue against it. Creston

54.

Re: haha

Oct 28, 2006, 15:16

True, you don't have to make the quest active, but even if you don't, you'll still get those spoiler popups every time you complete a part of a quest: "You found the item except there is something strange about it. You should try using a lightning spell on it and see what happens." They really don't leave much room for experimentation or investigation, telling you exactly what to do for each step of the quest. That is true, I will conceed that point. And you can't turn off the Cave/Fort/Ruins/Camp nav points in your compass, which really kind of spoils the surprise of finding these places in the first place. Also, quest locations are automatically marked on your map. Neither of these can be turned off without third-party modification. True, but that's tied in to the way Bethesda keeps shipping you off all over the world. I really wouldn't want to be given a quest in Cheydinhall to go to a dungeon that's near freaking Anvil. Good luck finding that one. Obviously they should have designed that better, but they figured with their compass, there was no need. Gothic 3, however, does seem to suffer a bit from the "Here's a quest, the dungeon is halfway around the world." And since their map does NOT show dungeons, well, I guess you must REALLY like wandering around aimlessly trying to find a cave then. As for not losing any sleep over Gothic 3, you just seem to be pretty outraged by it given your previous posts. You must not have read many of my posts, if you in any form believe that that is outrage. If I was REALLY outraged at the game, I'd overtake nin's post count in a day by shrieking the game's flaws to the high heavens. I think Gothic 3 can be a good game because, like I said, for the six hours or so that I played it, I did enjoy myself. In its current state, however, the bugs make enjoying the game feel more like a chore. That's why I'm recommending people just hold off on buying it until they've patched it sufficiently. Some people apparently think it's "cool" to have their worldstate ruined 15 hours into the game, so they can start over. I can guarantee you that 99.99999% percent of the other gamers out there do not consider such a thing to be all that great. Creston

53.

Re: No subject

Oct 28, 2006, 08:59

MacD

I'll byte on that; DE:IW was actually quite an enjoyable game. The one thing which it didn't have was the large maps DE was known for (and the exploration/choice that those large maps automatically entail)...and that's because the xbox didn't have the memory to store large maps (fuck you, MS). But the game itself was pretty enjoyable, with some cool settings and interesting combat. DE2 it wasn't, though.

52.

Re: No subject

Oct 28, 2006, 08:48

MacD

It's fun because it is actually an RPG again; you don't get a magic circle showing you exactly where to go. Someone tellinge me 'it's somewhere over there' is cool...it means I actually have to think and search for my goal instead of just following a marker for the whole game. The locations are actually thought out...if you think, you can actually logically place that bandit cave in the environment. It's called old school RPG. Although I must agree, the quest log is the WORST I've seen since Morrowind's...even though the latter at least gave you enough information.

51.

Re: No subject

Oct 28, 2006, 07:23

Some of us LOVE the fact that not everything is spelled out plain as day. Quoted for truth. I like the challenge. It's good that you have to think and discover things by yourself. I like to take my time with Gothic's, no need to rush. It's now two weeks since G3 was released and I'm at level 18 with only a few bits of the main quest done. In a fashion of true escapist, I like to wonder around, check out all kinds of things in the game world. With that said, it's sad that there's no climbing or diving anymore... ____________________ http://personal.inet.fi/atk/kjh2348fs/ageia_physx.html \| http://www.liveforspeed.net

50.

Re: Not as pretty?!

Oct 28, 2006, 07:14

However, I seriously doubt that anything in Gothic 3 looks like this (mostly on account of NOT HAVING any HDR rendering) : http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c185/Creston999/town.jpg http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c185/Creston999/lakedarksunset.jpg http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c185/Creston999/lakesunset2.jpg http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c185/Creston999/niceviewwater.jpg http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c185/Creston999/sunset.jpg You're right. Nothing in Gothic 3 looks that bad Where's the grass? The shadows? The parallax mapping? The hires textures? The good looking forests? etc. Also, I don't care if G3 has or does not have HDR, it's trivial... because the lighting in the game is marvellous. Well... to be honest, the ocean in G3 looks crap though and it seems there's no reflections on water surfaces and some character models have not so good textures. But, you can't have all, it seems ____________________ http://personal.inet.fi/atk/kjh2348fs/ageia_physx.html \| http://www.liveforspeed.net This comment was edited on Oct 28, 10:15.

49.

Re: No subject

Oct 28, 2006, 03:49

Sure the single player wasn't all that great (until the last expansion) but NWN was 1/100ths crappy single player and 99/100 genius multiplayer. Actually, it was 99/100 third-party genius multiplayer mods. Take away the mods and what do you have? A crappy game. So you can't say that NWN was the most popular RPG game ever made for PC or console. However, you can say that it had the most popular mods ever made for a PC or console RPG. Think of it like CS. CS started off as a HL mod. Does anyone say that HL is the most popular multiplayer game ever? No, because the actual HL multiplayer sucked. CS sucks too but it is still hugely popular and thus, it is the mod and not the actual game that is popular. The actual game is merely a medium through which the mod is expressed. This comment was edited on Oct 28, 03:53.

48.

Re: haha

Oct 28, 2006, 03:45

If you don't like the arrow showing you what to do, DO NOT MAKE THE QUEST ACTIVE. Entire problem solved? True, you don't have to make the quest active, but even if you don't, you'll still get those spoiler popups every time you complete a part of a quest: "You found the item except there is something strange about it. You should try using a lightning spell on it and see what happens." They really don't leave much room for experimentation or investigation, telling you exactly what to do for each step of the quest. And you can't turn off the Cave/Fort/Ruins/Camp nav points in your compass, which really kind of spoils the surprise of finding these places in the first place. Also, quest locations are automatically marked on your map. Neither of these can be turned off without third-party modification. As for not losing any sleep over Gothic 3, you just seem to be pretty outraged by it given your previous posts.

47.

Re: haha

Oct 28, 2006, 02:37

While I sympathize with your busy schedule, you must realize that the gaming world does not revolve around you. As mentioned earlier, Oblivion really killed a lot of the adventure in the game by holding the player's hand all the time Neither does the gaming world revolve around those who lean to the other side. It's called having the best of both worlds. As for Oblivion, I don't understand the complaint. If you don't like the arrow showing you what to do, DO NOT MAKE THE QUEST ACTIVE. Entire problem solved? In which bizarre scenario is the presence of a CHOICE on whether to use a system or not, not infinitely better than just having a worthless system? Oblivion : Use quest aid plus map marker, OR do not make quest active, figure it out yourself. Gothic 3 : Figure it out yourself completely, since the system is shite. Yes, I can see how Gothic 3 really is so much better for "the gaming world." And I was able to find the areas for these quests as well. I would suggest you come back to discuss this topic once you've visited Nordmar. Good luck on finding "mysterious cave X" there... Oh, and ever since Ultima Underworld began by giving us automaps, I find, quite frankly, that any game who no longer includes one to reek of lazy ass programming. Ie : gothic 3. Ofcourse, that's nowhere near the worst of its sins. The ZERO testing that was done on it is of a magnitude higher on that scale. No problem, just download a pirated copy shrug I kind of figured, actually, that the European version of Gothic 3 would suck (bugwise), but it was an impulse buy. It's not like I'm losing any sleep over it. I'm posting about it to give people a fair warning that the game is very flawed in its current state. To be fair to Piranha Bytes, they ARE patching it, and they do seem to be tackling the most grievous issues first. I actually hold out zero hope that the quest log system will be improved. Again, I don't need a green arrow to show me where to go. But to get actually CORRECT directions (that show up in my log), would have been a fairly simple, and user friendly thing to do. It's like they just didn't give a fuck. That, or they're just a third-rate developer. Creston

46.

Re: haha

Oct 28, 2006, 01:20

Ah, the eternal question: Should games adapt to the audience or should the audience adapt to the games? On the one hand, adapting games to players results in dumbing down. On the other hand, it can also lead to improvements. With Oblivion, Bethesda completely overcompensated and held the player's hand through every quest. It told you exactly where to go, where to find people, what to do, etc, really ruining any sense of surprise or investigation. Now we have the increasingly popular stance of "SCREW THIS, I WORK 80 HOURS A WEEK, HAVE 10 KIDS AND THREE WIVES!!!! I DON'T HAVE TIME TO EXPLORE OR INVESTIGATE FOR QUESTS AND ANYBODY WHO DOES IS A SPOILED TEN YEAR OLD WITH NO LIFE!!!!!!!" While I sympathize with your busy schedule, you must realize that the gaming world does not revolve around you. As mentioned earlier, Oblivion really killed a lot of the adventure in the game by holding the player's hand all the time. Gothic has always taken a more old-school approach to RPGs and I like that. Should they have at least made a nav point system optional? I suppose but I don't really feel any need for it. I didn't have any problems finding the boars or the bandit leader or the hidden base or the farm or the many orc patrols. All it takes is a little exploration. So yeah, I have no problems with the quest log. However, I do have problems with the combat system, which has been dumbed down. In the previous games, combat was all about timing and countering. When fighting NPCs, you'd time your blocks and then counter, block and counter, etc. One mistimed block or counter and you'd get hit by a 3-hit combo that took away 90% of your HP. With animals, it was all about dodging. Most animals would lunge at you, at which point you'd hop backwards (avoiding the attack) and then strike, hop backwards, strike, rinse and repeat. It was all very methodical yet intense since a single mistake could cost your life. In Gothic 3, you pretty much just mash the left and right mouse buttons as fast as you can and don't have to worry about timing or defense. Above all else, this is what bothers me about Gothic 3. I truly, truly hope they somehow improve the combat with the next patch. P.S. Creston, you really shouldn't buy games until you've played them. No demo? No problem, just download a pirated copy. If you like it, buy the game. If not, delete it. No moral indignation required. This comment was edited on Oct 28, 01:23.

45.

Re: haha

Oct 28, 2006, 00:45

I make my own maps as I go along. and count on my memory, you babies got spoiled by And you live in your parents' basement. Your opinion is noted. Most of us simply don't have the time to draw our own FUCKING MAPS ANYMORE. It's called being married, having kids, having a job, etc. I wish I still had 18 hours a day to be sitting there with my grid paper, drawing maps to all 187 dungeon levels of The Bard's Tale II. Levels that, I might add, had fucking invisible teleporters. God how I hated those levels... Like I said, I see the argument, but it just doesn't work. In this day and age, a GOOD automap is not optional. Neither is a good quest log. Gothic 3 is a fucking humongous step back in user friendliness. (ignoring the bugs for the moment.) it feels like youve been raped It's not THAT dramatic, cheese. Piranha Bytes makes RPGs, which I like, so even in the end if I don't like Gothic 3, my purchase of their game will hopefully finance a better one in the future. And it's possible that once they've patched it enough, I'll give it another shot and like it more. I did enjoy it for the first few hours, but the bugs and performance made it a chore to like. Creston This comment was edited on Oct 28, 00:46.

44.

Re: No subject

Oct 28, 2006, 00:38