insomnia.ac just got hacked

edited 28th Aug '11 4:51:09 PM by Myrmidon

Kill all math nerds

I read the complexity/depth thing before actually, didn't know he made it.

... What?

No. Seriously... what? Are you seriously trying to say Fallout 3 wasn't horribly unbalanced? And the New Vegas doesn't have much better balance?

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

New Vegas, from what I saw of it, was a large mass of glitches. Can't comment on the plot, though.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

edited 28th Aug '11 4:51:19 PM by Myrmidon

Kill all math nerds

Visual Novels: V Ns are a bastardchild of a format that can be focused on whatever it wants. So, obviously, the proper solution is to judge on a case-per-case basis. It never focuses on complex interactivity, though, otherwise it would be a full-blown game.

So if a VN is clearly story-focused, you focus the review on the story. If it's just an excuse for porn (which does happen) you review it based on the quality of porn provided. (LOL)

Spelunky: he thinks it has shit gameplay, simple as that. Just because it focuses on the gameplay doesn't mean it can't be shit. Whether you agree with his review or not is a different thing, but it's a bit irrelevant.

Books: Quality of prose I called "writing style" and as for thematic depth, I simply wanted to include that too in "story". Anyway, it still doesn't change my argument.

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He thinks it has shit gameplay because it's an indie game not made in Japan.

Kill all math nerds

This argument would perhaps hold a drop of water if it were supported by reality.

There are next to no stat checks in Fallout 3. Perception and Charisma are completely useless. Agility is useless for anyone not using VATS. There are no differing character builds - every single character will end up maxed out long before the game is over, and before reaching the max level if powergaming. There are only a handful of quests and they are extremely straightforward, not interconnected in the slightest, and completely linear except for some binary endings. VATS is overpowered and incredibly boring just as it would be if I could pause the game in Call of Duty and have the computer take a shot for me. Stealth is barbarically barebones compared to games that came out 10 years earlier or more. It crashes like the fucking hindenburg regularly to the point where even New Vegas an Obsidian game is more stable. To top it all off, it's based on the fundamentally broken, clunky, unoptimized, downright hideous Gamebryo engine that they've been recycling since Morrowind. I could go on an on. How exactly did they focus on the gameplay? By loading it with hundreds of hours of identical filler content?

FNV fixes many of those things, primarily the skill system and quest design which are incredibly important to an RPG, but it still cursed by virtue of being built on Bethesda's implementation of Gamebryo.

And FYI, Black Isle had nothing to do with FNV. They were dead years before Obsidian was formed. I'm also loling at things BIS 'slapped together' considering the excellent character system and quest design in the first two Fallouts. You know, things that are actually important to an RPG. And all of this was based on a dedicated engine that actually got the job done, contrasted with the sloppy paint job Bethesda did in repurposing the already broken and inadequate Oblivion engine into FO 3.

edited 28th Aug '11 1:47:55 PM by Mammalsauce

Icycalm did not "hate" Spelunky because of its "gameplay" (I agree with him, that's a useless word since it's too all-encompassing), he gave it two out of five stars ("playable, but without merit") because of its poor controls (i.e., laggy attacks, improper scrolling, dodgy hit detection) and it's attempt to pass off its randomly-generated stages as some kind of innovation when it doesn't work that well on a platformer (a genre where most of the challenge is depended on intricate stage design and enemy placement). He actually gave some constructive advice on how to improve the game mechanics in his review. You can still read his review of the game on Google's caches.

To the guy who said he doesn't understand why SRPGs are classified as JRPG, JRPGs emphasizes world exploration and random battles, while SRPGs are essentially war simulations with stats-building (in fact, the "S" stands for simulation in Japan, which makes little sense since almost all games are simulations of some kind). While there are games that combine elements from the two, it's pretty much obvious that games like Fire Emblem and Shining Force don't play anything at all like Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star. There's a reason why the Final Fantasy Tactics games aren't counted among the main Final Fantasy series. Megami Tensei also had its own SRPG spinoff Majin Tensei, while Langrisser (a series of SRPGs) had its own JRPG spinoff series called Growlanser.

As much of a "prick" as Icycalm may had been, at least he had some valuable insights that you don't read often in mainstream gaming sites. The Mindprobe kids who "hacked" his site are even bigger pricks than he is, since they aren't even offering anything of value in its place other than a poor man's version of the Insomnia forum. They actually unlocked Icy's pay-to-view forums for the public to see, but then they deleted it when they realized people actually cared more about what Icy and his staff were writing behind closed doors than the actual hacking of the site, so they deleted the forums. They even deleted a few posts on their forum criticizing their actions.

Still, it was pretty stupid for Icycalm to leave his PHP backup script out there in the open. It's the first thing they teach to secure in most PHP programming books.

edited 28th Aug '11 1:49:20 PM by PowerRider

edited 28th Aug '11 4:51:26 PM by Myrmidon

Kill all math nerds

CRP Gs have been doing that for years. All of the good ones are fully aware that they are video games and not tabletop RP Gs. The stats are incredibly important because they are the only means through which you can have differing character builds and interactivity. Quests are meaningful game content as opposed to banally repetitive kill, loot, repeat filler combat.

Fallout is not based on a tabletop franchise, and neither is the character system. You wouldn't know this because you clearly don't have a modicum of understanding of what an actual RPG is. The thing you're looking for is an open world FPS with stats; might I suggest Borderlands?

You also completely dodged addressing all the crippling flaws I mentioned. Even as an action adventure game unrelated to the rest of the Fallout franchise, FO 3 is broken.

edited 28th Aug '11 1:54:32 PM by Mammalsauce

edited 28th Aug '11 4:51:32 PM by Myrmidon

Kill all math nerds

edited 28th Aug '11 4:51:40 PM by Myrmidon

Kill all math nerds

Those are not trivial, unimportant remainders of anything, they are essential, core elements of the genre. If you like FO 3 because it eschewed them, you do not like RP Gs. That's okay, but you should probably look into another genre. You seem to like open world action adventure games which FO 3 is a decent example of. I don't like fighting games but I don't complain about how they don't match up to beat 'em ups and how they continue to embrace archaic mechanics like combos, parrying, counter systems... I don't know, I don't play fighting games.No, and I can acknowledge that you have a very different opinion, but you are so against the elements which define the RPG genre it makes you come off as more than a little dense to anyone with a background playing RP Gs.

edited 28th Aug '11 2:00:20 PM by Mammalsauce

edited 28th Aug '11 4:51:47 PM by Myrmidon

Kill all math nerds

ANGST ABOUT MY GENRE BEING DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Care to make an actual point with that broad, unsubstantiated statement? Care to actually address one of the points I raised?

If Myrmidon enjoyed that particular RPG, why shouldn't he enjoy that RPG?

And speaking as a mod, please don't accuse people of trolling when they express an opinion you don't like.

edited 28th Aug '11 2:03:20 PM by BobbyG

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While I haven't read any of icycalm's articles, I do kinda feel sorry for him.

edited 28th Aug '11 2:07:12 PM by Folt

Fantastic Supreme Überkaiser Emperor Folt of The Infinity and Beyond" ... "The First"!

I'd feel sorry for him if I'd seen any form of indication that he viewed other human beings with anything other than contempt.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

He might very well make brilliant points about gaming, but when it's sandwiched between Nietzschean Internet Bullshit Rant #57495734895743 and blatant misogyny, it's hard to support him.

Kill all math nerds

Because he did not enjoy the elements that made it an RPG. His only flaw he could find was that it didn't sever itself from the genre altogether. FO 3 is a very poor representative of the genre because more than half of the game - in this case, th half he enjoyed - is ballast form other genres, namely, open world FPS. That's like me complaining that Super Smash Bros. is a better fighting game than Street Fighter or what have you, because I enjoyed the single player mode which is a platformer.That wasn't an accusation, it was an honest question. I've seen trolls use similar rhetoric. Poe's law and all. It was a mess on release, so you can't be blamed for thinking that. It's had exceptional patch support from Bethesda/Obsidian QA since then though, so it's pretty much glitch-free by this point. It's much more stable and optimized than FO 3 at least.

edited 28th Aug '11 2:16:43 PM by Mammalsauce

I've never said I support him, but I can't exactly stand against him either, since I've never read anything of what he said and have only your opinions to go from. However, I was affected by the PSN hack (in the I-cant-get-on-so-I-can't-get-some-downloadable-content-for-a-long-time way) back then so I can somewhat sympathize with him as a victim.

edited 28th Aug '11 2:15:39 PM by Folt

Fantastic Supreme Überkaiser Emperor Folt of The Infinity and Beyond" ... "The First"!

icycalm does not blindly hate all "unprofessionally" made non-Japanese games, for example, he really likes "Frozen Synapse", he simply didn't have a review of it yet.

Cave Story is originally Japanese and yet he still dislikes it.

The whole issue was clarified a great deal in his mostly excellent "On Indies and Dependies" article. I was thoroughly looking forward for part II when his site got hacked. The article was pretty much great all-around save for a completely unnecessary Shout-Out to Hitler (no, really) that served no point whatsoever and was almost completely irrelevant. Too bad, for the rest of the article was spot-on.

(Also keep in mind here that I'm not trying to defend him as a person here, he was an asshole, but quite often it's a massive case Jerkass Has a Point.)

Also: skill systems are not that important in an RPG. Example of an RPG you could play with a human gamemaster that requires almost no skill or battle systems and could be handled by GM's smartness alone: you're mute and, for one reason or another, mistaken for crazy. You are in an asylum and have to convince the doctors you're sane. After you find a way to communicate (perhaps through writing, or with gestures) it becomes a dialogue-based game, but since the player can directly change the narrative, it's still an RPG.

edited 28th Aug '11 2:18:54 PM by Muzozavr

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