Liam

lets all play some mother fucking video games and join the mother fucking steam group Steam ID: countyhell / Username: [UD]liam like to play: currently not much, but sometimes L4D2, counter-strike 1.6, super street fighter 4 AE.

that dude is gonna hell this thread and philnemba sucks just like anyone else who is gonna try to sneak a post in before this one!

yukib1t is sometimes a good poster unlike breezeep also she likes ebm and i do too

in computer role playing games that is exactly what the term "role playing" means, and crpgs were and still are a very different experience from tabletop rpgs, which was my point. computers, especially those around at the genesis of crpg development, can't replicate the spontaneity and emergent gameplay allowed by a human gm nor enable player's imaginations in the same way. but they can enforce the underlying rule sets, roll the dice and crunch the numbers a hell of a lot faster. the common thread between all older rpgs is separation of player and character skill, not blurring the line between them (fallout and planescape are not really older rpgs but they agree with this anyway). in diablo and diablo 2, the character systems are the roleplaying; just as in the gold box D&D games or wizardry or dragon quest. fallout and DX's multiple pathing and choice and consequence were governed and enabled largely by their character systems. bethesda games certainly qualify as well although as i noted the rpg systems have been getting weaker as design focus has shifted elsewhere; i haven't played skyrim but could present oblivion, which has a character system so pants-on-head retarded it's actually better in a metagaming sense not to engage with it. on the other hand, half-life truly immerses me in my "role" as gordon freeman through it's presentation and storytelling technique, visual novels allow me agency and the ability to alter the course of the story, far cry 2 allows me freedom of approach and the chance to meaningfully affect the flow of gameplay based on my choices. noone would consider these games to be RPGs even though i can arguably roleplay in all of them. which is exactly the trouble with the intuitive definition of an RPG based on the term "roleplaying"; it's extremely subjective, excludes a majority of the genre (most stuff before fallout and literally almost everything before U7) while including, as geo said, almost everything else.

the term is flawed in that it originated outside of video gaming, unlike "FPS" or "RTS"... early computer RPGs were derivative of contemporary tabletop role-playing games, which were in turn derivative of tabletop war games but were on a smaller scale: so the difference was "the unit on square C17 has the best odds on a diceroll of defeating the enemy's unit on square C18" versus "dave's rogue character has the best odds on a diceroll of disarming the spike trap", hence dave is "playing a (specialized) role (within the party)". which in video games translated to one player in control of a party of specialized characters with an rng determining outcomes based on skills, attributes, etc. "RPG" in video game terms can be basically translated to "stat blocks and dice rolls enabling a strong separation between player and character skill". this has become really muddied especially in recent years since the two biggest western developers of AAA "RPGs", bethesda and bioware, have put the biggest emphasis on other elements (sandbox exploration and storyline/character interaction respectively) at the expense of strong system design.

naw dawg. but i added a link in the extant matchmaking thread. yw

objection overruled

Spending warm summer days indoors Writing frightening verse To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg

wouldn't say i didn't like it. you have a real knack for designing interesting scenery and layouts which i should've stressed more in the review. would just benefit from more gameplay variety and a "less is more" approach to monster placement

consecutively including e1m9.

i can't shake the feeling there's some context to this you're not letting us in on.

i probably still have the original retail discs hidden away somewhere. despite one of the stupidest titles in gaming it's a very competent diablo clone that set itself apart from the pack by way of a well-developed overworld, deeper leveling system and more nuanced quest design. gets a bit tedious towards the end but well worth the chump change it costs on steam (or GOG). infinity engine games and fallout 1/2 are still much better.

let's edit out soda's haphazard introductory and conclusive sentences and resubmit his post for for EE's (dis)approval: fine gaming? it has a nice ring to it.

i don't get why being able to see the weapon mods makes them better, but thanks for the heads up otherwise. and i may just try the demo as i get my first real day off in months soon. as for the story, bioware have kind of been disappointing in that aspect since dragon age awakenings, i'm not as hardline about that though. you are correct, i must have been blinded by nerd rage. it's been longer since mass 2's release than i remember.

sure. mass 2 is a cover shooter, with full regen in cover, that offers no credible threat to force you from cover. even on "insanity" difficulty it's for babies. the party-joinable NPCs are comic book caricatures with no reason to exist save that The Illusive Man read the script in advance. weapon mods, armor mods, grenades, inventory system in general, gone. entire "reaper" main plotline went full retard. harbinger. boss fights with glowy red weak spots. the citadel is now two stories of merch kiosks. "you've got mail" where mass 1 dialogue choices were supposed to have an impact. shall i go on?

this has been standard fare since the EA merger, see shale in DAO and zaeed in mass 2. it's always been totally lame but i dont know why the bioware fanbase would suddenly be up in arms. anyway, mass 2 (with the exception of a small few inspired moments) sucked a whole burlap sack of dicks and mass 3 is most likely going to suck at least a small handbag's worth. it's kind of a tired point to make but EA really has killed bioware, at least the bioware that made BG, KOTOR, mass 1, and DAO. not just through embarrassing marketing and DLC nickel-and-diming, but through putting a studio known for 3-4 year dev cycles on a yearly release schedule. and i doubt that the major changes in design direction seen in their recent titles was a totally internal decision. at least the romance novel / dating sim / team edward aspect of their old niche- the red-headed stepchildren of the old BG community- is still there and pleased as punch, oh yes.

seeing as this is doomworld and weve already beaten the videogame violence stigma to death, can we bitch about the tax code being used for social engineering instead? I mean i used to be able to get a pack of smokes for like two dolla. God damn.

wow, diablo and ff use statblocks and leveling systems as the dominant gameplay mechanic which solidly places them in the rpg genre. no matter how much people harp on about about narrative choices or "playing a role" within a setting, all there really needs to be is separation of the player's skill from the character's via stats and dicerolls.

the japanese RPG industry is currently much stronger than the western one in terms of gameplay depth and variety. i agree about the banality of the square-enix cutscene and FF in general but if there's an RPG market in a years-long decline it's the western one. (if we're just talking finances you might be right, i have no idea how non-FF JRPGs sell globally). they aren't

not gonna write a response paper but few points: ME1 "gunplay" is fine and even good when you, as i stated, evaluate it in the context of a hybrid tps-rpg (stronger on the rpg even). aiming is simple to allow for the proper separation of player and character skill that an rpg demands, it's the dicerolls, character sheet and weapon mods (inventory system) mostly determining the outcome of battle. the combat also encompasses a lot more than the shooty guns element, whereas in ME2 it really doesn't. and ME2 as a shooter is far weaker than ME1 is as an action/hybrid rpg, it's a cover shooter with full regen (within seconds) that makes no credible attempts to force you from your hidey-hole. don't understand your beef with the ME1 cover. the spectre arsenal is totally broken and makes the whole weapon choice/modding element redundant once you have access to it, that's a gimme. but it's also a flaw that could've been easily remedied without butchering the entire system. sidequest level design is better in ME2, yes, but the plot-significant locales in ME1 (the bulk of the game) are far, far better than those in 2. kaidan and ashley are better conceived and developed than anybody on the ME2 cast save maybe mordin. ashley is probably one of bioware's best-written party-joinable NPCs, in fact! also, ME1 has like thirty times the intra-party interaction as ME2 despite having a cast less than half the size. the decisions in ME2 that have in-game impact are: get party member's loyalty or don't, spoiler: and the endgame squad leaders. loyalty is almost impossible to fuck up unless you're trying, in some cases is actually impossible, with the exception being Zaeed's. the potentially awesome cascading decisions at the endgame were ruined by miranda the tutorial NPC and well, it's the endgame and we know now that ME3 is going to use understudies to fill the gaps anyway. the virmire decision in ME1 at least has a real, lasting gameplay effect even if you're not emotionally invested in either option. you got called out for being misinformed, deal.

well keep in mind i'm in an extreme minority here, ME2 gets five times the critical and consumer acclaim that ME1 did, although I suspect little of it from diehard ME1 fans. it's like 20 bucks on steam now and apparently even has a demo so don't let one bard's opinion stop you from trying it from an open mind. to sum up my viewpoint succinctly, ME1 was strong attempt at a hybrid cover-tps+rpg that had a lot of game design flaws but also a vast amount of potential. ME2 is a rather bare-bones pure tps surviving on visual polish, Rule of Cool and cosmetic/illusory choice. kotor is a good game in its own right but is essentially a simplified BG2 for consoles. i think the praise it gets is somewhat inflated due to a: being the xbox generation's first exposure to the bioware formula and b: being a better prequel story for SW fans than the actual SW prequels. and the dark side path is totally rad man.

to contribute, mass effect 2. loved the first and was looking forward to the second since its announcement, got mad giddy at seeing my imported commander shepard in the opening cutscene then got steadily more disappointed as I progressed. the cool tactical encounters that tested your choices at levelup and in squad selection got replaced by a bad gears clone with rock-paper-scissors defenses and arcadey bossfights, colorful expansive environments like the citadel, ilos and virmire were gone for kotor-style closet towns and shooting galleries. plot made no sense, characters were for the most part comic book caricatures including the returning ones (garrus was fucking batman, seriously). class identity down the toilet. and oh god the final boss. it still hurts. I feel like it only gets cred for "improving" on the first because the game went full-on shooter whereas the old, properly hybrid combat got called "clunky". which it wasn't, when you understood that you were actually rolling dice in the background and not executing a simple boom headshot. makes me wonder what the 2011 gaming press would have to say about something like deus ex if it came out today.