Almost everyone still hasn't warmed up to the idea of crowdfunding.
People see it as akin to burning your own money.
...Well, that was outta of nowhere.
edited 17th Sep '12 5:30:42 PM by fakeangelbr
Donate money to Skullgirls, get a sweet poster.Actually, I think it would be interesting to see a videogame that deals with real world issues of racism and sexism, in a non-allegorical way. Other forms of media explore these issues, why not games?
Although, there is something to be said for wanting to leave out real-world problems for the sake of escapism.
edited 17th Sep '12 5:34:54 PM by Talby
But then the game wouldn't be either one, unless it handles the subject that badly.
There is a difference between been racist and explorism racism at it's grittiest.
Now this is something that I don't get where it comes from.
edited 17th Sep '12 5:38:19 PM by fakeangelbr
Donate money to Skullgirls, get a sweet poster.There's also one about his supposed feminism that goes on for 30 comments that cannot be adequately summarized.
EDIT:
Yes, that one. His response is great. "Please elaborate. Those words don't mean anything to me."
The plot is pretty bare bones right now. It could describe half the RPGS out there (two worlds 2 comes to mind) in broad strokes. I'm guessing they'll have it more nailed down in 6 months or so.
As far as racism and the like is concerned I think it can be really interesting. The thing is you need to make it effect the game. If it's just snide remarks or background info it's removed from the player and then not really an issue.
edited 17th Sep '12 5:44:48 PM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?So apparently there is an opinion that unless something has an impact on gameplay it isn't relevant.
For the record I actually agree with that and I think it has more going for it than you're giving credit for. The gameplay relevance is what gives it meaning. Skyrim honestly feels like a bunch of gimmicks and trinkets to play with rather than a fully realised open world RPG. Since the game is pretty stripped down in its RPG elements I can become the leader of the Companions guild despite never having lifted a sword or I can lead the Thieves guild while being absolutely terrible at stealth, you get the picture.
Whenever this type of criticism gets brought up people say "just roleplay and only join the guild for the type of skill you're good at" and this is where the 'LAR Ping' concept comes into play. The game is so devoid of RPG elements and an actual ruleset to govern player choice and action that the player has to just make shit up and play pretend. They have to make up their own rules because the game does a terrible job at it.
Go look at your average Skyrim discussion and it's full of headcanon and making up fake stories compared to a typical Fallout discussion where the tightly designed but flexible ruleset allows for an actual emergent storytelling and expression of a player character's personality within the actual gameplay (I hope that doesn't sound as elitist as it's starting to worryingly sound to me, I definitely have a preference for the latter but I'm not trying to imply the former is inherently stupid or anything). I don't need to make up that my character is a complete dunce, the low INT dialogue does that for me. My perks and traits get to add additional opportunities to do this in story and gameplay and so on.
I get the appeal of Skyrim, I know a lot of people disliked FNV because questlines closed off based on actions and for many players they wanted to experience everything in one playthrough which is what Bethesda is generally able to offer. But that's not Obsidian's appeal. If Bethesda is all about roaming around and hiking everywhere and making your own stories, Obsidian's games are about the game mechanics and tangling yourself in factional disputes and allowing branching stories to evolve as a consequence of gameplay mechanics and the character system.
So of course when Obsidian says "You can have a house!" without adding "It's like the Sink and has extra questlines etc" this unfortunately leads to some crazier fans going overboard and raging that this will lead to the Skyrim approach. Because many people, myself included, frankly don't want that.
(For the record, while I was initially not as impressed with the house goal I definitely don't support flaming Sawyer's formspring for it. That is stupid, infantile and achieves nothing.)
edited 17th Sep '12 7:18:37 PM by ShadowScythe
I'll answer more thoroughly in the morning but my main objection that line of reasoning is that it's very arbitrary definition of what gameplay actually is.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?Tim Cain said in the kickstarter video that it would be his first original High Fantasy RPG. There's definitely magic according to Sawyer.
This makes me think that the technology won't be as developed as Arcanum's. No steam engines, probably no electricity, no major manufacturing industries etc.
So maybe 13th-15th Century level technology mixed with magic and fantasy races.
edited 18th Sep '12 5:32:57 AM by ShadowScythe
Alright, to expand upon last night's thought
You need to come up with a very odd definition of gameplay and impact to exclude player housing. In gameplay terms you normally need to sink a ton of money into one to get it or complete a quest. It's impact is that you can now stash your loot/companions/other utility. Not the most exciting thing in the world but neither is inn keeper Joe who gives you hints on where to find quests but nobody complains about him.
"Skyrim honestly feels like a bunch of gimmicks and trinkets to play with rather than a fully realised open world RPG"
Really? Because it's almost the exact same system as a certain other game you love...
"Since the game is pretty stripped down in its RPG elements I can become the leader of the Companions guild despite never having lifted a sword or I can lead the Thieves guild while being absolutely terrible at stealth, you get the picture."
The Companions guild is about being a fighter, that doesn't mean you need a sword. To become the thieves guild master you need to complete a ridiculous amount of side-quests which require stealth. If you're seen you fail that quest and have to start over.
"They have to make up their own rules because the game does a terrible job at it."
So your objection is that there isn't enough restrictions? You can put your own restrictions on yourself. Why should my gameplay experience be lessened, specifically the freedom to do whatever, so you can feel better about your character? Especially when you an impose that challenge on yourself.
"Obsidian's games are about the game mechanics and tangling yourself in factional disputes and allowing branching stories to evolve as a consequence of gameplay mechanics and the character system."
And how does having a house change that? There is literally no reason in anything you said that screams "And that means no houses!"
edited 18th Sep '12 7:04:23 AM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?I'm worried that houses are going to become to Eternity what towns were to FF 13.
i.e. stupid head bashing palooka-ville.
That said, I am interested in hearing Shadow Scythe answer those questions as much as thatguythere — and I don't mean to diminish you reply in any way. I wasn't quite clear on what Shadow Scythe mean either.
This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.I've had some frustratingly hard exams today so I'm probably going to end up repeating myself a lot. I certainly haven't bothered proofreading this.
Before I continue I need to establish that what I was targetting was in my earlier rant was against 'LARP features' in general rather than the house. A house that is little more than a glorified inventory is harmless and hardly reflects on the overall game- though I personally prefer something more meaningful than that like a setting for a quest hub or some impact on the overall gameworld and subsequent quest lines (and hopefully at least the former will be in the game according to Sawyer).
But what I was attacking was this:
The features that have "no gameplay impact but allows me to play pretend" which something like Oblivion and Skyrim are rife with, which I blame mainly due to a stripping down of RPG elements and a lack of an extensive ruleset. I'll elaborate further in a moment on what that means, but first:
For clarification what I meant was I was a mage and had no specialty in any 'fighter' skills. There was basically no test of my physical prowess and it honestly makes no sense for the game to let a flimsy mage become head of the guild. For reference the Morrowind guilds required you to start specialising at some point.
With the Thieves guild only 2 quests really force stealth on you (From memory and a quick skim through list I think it's Hard answers and The Pursuit) and they aren't really that hard even with low stealth (By the end of the Thieves' guild mainline I was only around 30-40 stealth and I started at 10). Pretty much every other mission lets you kill your way through for either no punishment or maybe a little less reward. Again, the build has no meaning if I can just do anything with no consequence.
(I'm assuming you mean Fallout for this) I don't even know where to begin with this statement. It's absolutely absurd to say that Skyrim has almost the exact same system as Fallouts 1, 2 and New Vegas. Let's ignore the obvious stuff (i.e. point allocation vs learn by doing, Base Attributes vs 'just' HP/Mana/Stamina and Perks as a minor element that improves specialisation as you build them up vs Perks as basically the main component of specialisation) and focus on the execution.
Fallout emphasises character skill over player skill. I'm basically defining character skill as the stats of the character and player skill as almost everything else (the player's strategy, reflexes etc). This makes the character build meaningful as this is what impacts the most on quest design and the capacity to solve quests in different ways. Fallout also emphasises a whole variety of skills and an opportunity for all of them to be meaningful in quest design and overall gameplay whereas Skyrim is very heavily combat-centric- good luck every trying to raise your speech oriented skill without exploits and you'll never raise smithing at a reasonable pace without grinding to craft 10000 silver daggers.
And this is what I mean by lines like "trinkets and gimmicks", the combat skills are fine, but all this other crap is near useless. So many features in the game have very little use. They could have been meaningful gameplay features and added so much to the depth of gameplay but they aren't and at best all these superficial elements are just repeated over and over again with very little variety (e.g. pretty much all the dungeon puzzles which boil down to rehashes of very basic formulas) and the game ends up being gimmicky.
A good, deep RPG, hell a well thought out game in general will do its best to make as many features have a fully realised gameplay element to them.
And finally my conclusion. No it absolutely isn't about restriction, making those RPG elements meaningful gives so much more freedom. Because when the ruleset actually accommodates for all these skills and stats and features in a meaningful manner it gives so much more freedom of playstyle and it actually matters within the context of the gameworld. I don't need to 'pretend' I've done something or make up some fake story because the gameworld has actually thought about those things and let me actually execute within the gameworld. And this only happens when the RPG has a very extensive ruleset with deep enough RPG elements to allow for such freedom.
To use a super extreme example: I can play a P&P game and cast Lightning bolt with an attack roll of +6 against the enemy's AC of 12 for a damage for 4 HP if it hits, and then I move from that to LAR Ping and just yell "lightning bolt"
while miming casting and then realise that because there are no stats there's nothing actually making this LARP meaningful in any way ("Oh yeah? Well I have lightning shield!") and is just a lot of Calvinball. At which point my friend says "Just make up your own ruleset in your head! Stop messing with my freedom!" and frankly, no thanks, if the game isn't acknowledging or responding to what I'm doing or even allowing me to do things because it simply hasn't thought of such things then it's not freedom, it's just playing pretend.
I hope that godawful mess cleared something up. Why can't I put this much effort into stuff that matters.
X_X I'm so tired from that.
Double posting to separate topics because who even wants to read that crap? I wouldn't be offended if everyone just said tl;dr and moved on.
Activision. The best we can hope for is no one even touches the license and it dies a noble death
.
For a lot of people, yes. Especially if it was for a setting you already cared about (a bit debatable here considering it's only just started but hey it might become a lot more valuable in the future).
edited 19th Sep '12 5:50:41 AM by ShadowScythe
I read it!
BTW, isn't technically just stating your opinion "LARP" feature? I mean, it doesn't serve any purpose in game except stating your opinion about something in game
Unless of course its opinion that affects reputation/whatever. Same thing about whether you act nice or jerk(and not talking about doing good/evil things) if it doesn't prevent you anything.
You mean like the difference between "Lie: I really do care about you" and "Truth: I really do care about you" style options in something like Torment? Where all it affected was character alignment which itself was just a personal thing?
Yeah pretty much- but then not many people praise Torment for that element. You could make the argument that it's more developed than just pretending that you were lying but I don't really think it matters until that Lie or Tone actually has a consequence.
On the other hand Torment allows different builds to have different approaches and different character moments in the game. Charisma, Rogue class, Fighter class and of course High WIS/High INT for mages all had meaningful moments in quest design and story/dialogue which is what's really praiseworthy about that game (even if it's heavily partial towards mages).
edited 19th Sep '12 6:10:09 AM by ShadowScythe

No. It's just the fact that they raised over one million in one day, so I would expect most of the response to be positive.
Of course, Sawyer's probably just picking all the negative questions.
edited 17th Sep '12 5:28:14 PM by Mukora
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."