Bay 12 Games Forum

I always thought of Dominions 3 as the spiritual successor to MoM.  It seemed to expand the areas that needed it and perform a few re-balances to make the game more interesting: namely, adding multiplayer and making commander units and item creation worthwhile endeavors.  The balance is still a little bit off and somewhat dependent on luck, but the best summary I heard was that it's less of a competitive game like Starcraft and more like a multiplayer Dwarf Fortress.

The only real loss over MoM is the lack of tool-tips.  While both games are complex affairs with manuals full of spreadsheets, I found MoM much easier to learn because of the better in-game help.

Good god, it's like the Spore design document channeled through Peter Molyneux and posted on Deviantart with copious amounts of "original content do not steal".

Quote from: alway on March 16, 2012, 04:27:25 pm

Quote from: mattie2009 on March 16, 2012, 03:34:49 pm

Quote from: Ellwood Bartlett

HOW DO I BUSINESS

This has to be a joke.
Not even the most retarded, brain-dead scumsucking basket of idiocy on the planet would willingly look at this and go "Yeah. This seems like a good plan. I think this could pan out without the internet viciously mocking me."

The project is a good example of a "dead baby monkey." A project which is absolutely terrible, everyone else can see it is obviously terrible, but its creator, emotionally invested in the project, will never let it go, much like a monkey whose baby has died will continue attempting to take care of it and coax it awake.

And the sadness quotient of this project just increased 3-fold.

It seems more likely that the guy successfully opened a pizza shop, played a few video games and assumed that the development processes operated in similar ways.  If he had invested more time and effort into it he'd have researched the development process, picked up a bit of coding, written a more solid design doc, and be funding it with his own money.

That was just suggested 2 posts ago >.>

I think Ozy was mentioning an example of a user interface that implements Virtz' suggestion.

OK, I am totally anti-EA and if voodoo dolls worked I'd have one made to represent their corporate entity and play with it all day for what they did to Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

With that out the way, what I want to know is, for someone who loved the original concept of Mass Effect (like, 5 years ago), and loved the first game, but hates to see the quality of anything artistic drop, would you guys recommend I played 2 and 3?

I was a huge fan of Bioware until the EA buyout, but they have lost all that love with infantile marketing, development practices and customer care.  All the key writers have left both teams now Drew's gone, EA are just milking the cow (to try and stay alive) that a decade of solid RPG development built.  It makes me sick, and I will never buy an EA game again - BUT I would consider buying ME 2 and 3 (second hand, of course!) if it offers a solid conclusion to my favourite space RPG of all time.  Without spoilers, do you folks think the trilogy ended as well as it started?

It depends on what you played the games for.  The character writing is roughly the same with a couple good characters (Mordin, Garrus, Grunt, Zaeed), a couple bad characters (the obligatory humans, brought in because Bioware remembered how much everyone loved Carth and the space Nazi in the first game), and some filler.  The gameplay is also roughly the same, being a generic popamole shooter unless you choose vanguard.

The plot is utterly retarded though (the original head writer left after the first game, leaving the incompetent Mac Walters in charge), and if that bothers you I'd avoid the game at all costs.  In the first fifteen minutes Shepard dies pointlessly and is then brought back to life using technology that's never mentioned again.  The crazy plot holes and retcons that occur in this fifteen minute period are pretty well-documented here (there aren't any spoilers as it only covers the first fifteen or so minutes of the game).  All of Shepard's dialog options tend to boil down to "I bet it was the reapers!", making him seem like a raving lunatic when he should be trying to win allies.  The reveal of the Collector's plan is so outright ridiculous that you will be unable to take the reapers seriously as villains again.  Also, it went from "an unlikely hero from a backwater planet saves the galaxy" to "humans are special for no particular reason".

It's worth 10 dollars if you just want to biotic charge people and listen to some interesting characters.  I'd never give them money for ME3 though.  Their massive arrogance in attempting to silence all criticism shows that they are unworthy of customer support.  When they criticized the large number of players who complained about the quality of the product they bought as "entitled gamers" it felt more like the punchline to a Yakov Smirnoff joke than something an actual company would say to it's consumers.  That said, everything I hear about the game sounds like a complete ass-pull, from the reaper's motivations to their method of defeat.

Regardless, do want.  I miss Tribes.

There's a Tribes remake in open beta, with a thread here.  Between Tribes: Ascend and Planetside 2012 is looking surprisingly good for multiplayer shooters.

Love the comments for that video on RPS. It basically boils down to; 360 footage = CLEAR PROOF OF FIRAXIS' DUMBIFICATION OF THE GAME THIS IS AN INSULT TO MY ENTIRE GENERATION

*sigh*

I might just get this for a console, no fear of lag or poor performance on my comp.

Eh, while other games provide clear examples of obsolete console hardware tarnishing gameplay such as Skyrim's reduced armor/clothing slots, low on-screen characters, closed cities, and lack of levitation, I don't see how it should affect XCOM.  The original XCOM had great gameplay with just a 20MHz processor and 2MB RAM, and I'm pretty sure the Xbox isn't that bad.

I'm also echoing people's hopes that the Glam Cam, while cool, will be optional, since that would get a little taxing after a while.

I can't agree more.

I would be okay if there was no psi, as long as the morale system is good.  Psi really did seem out of place and poorly implemented in the original, and unbalancing on either side.  It is a terribly unessential part of X-Com to me, much like base defense: I see why it was there, but I didn't like how it worked and I'm fine without it. (I doubt there will be base defense in this...)

Psi struck me as poorly implemented (although not out-of-place) in the original too.  However, we'll probably see it in the remake given that it's pretty much tailor made for a skill/ability system.

Yeah, I'd rather have the game complete with no bugs later than a mere shell of the whole thing ridden with bugs. Take your time, devs! _{as much as we want it now}

While a bug-free game is always preferable, I can see a lot of motivations for indie studios (especially on the lower end) to opt to release during late alpha/early beta.  I don't think many of them have the resources to hire a massive QA department, so giving early access often helps to catch hard to find bugs.  The gradual release also allows a fanbase to build over time and to avoid a release day fiasco (i.e. Skyrim on PS3).  I've grown to enjoy this, as it provides a much nicer feel than the industry standard overhyped weekend releases.  Crowdsourcing also seems a bit more humane than the current entertainment software industry QA model.

That said, this doesn't look like it's anywhere near the point where most of the major content has been added and the obvious bugs have been squashed.  I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, though.

While I dislike the freemium model and think that there are some questionable decisions with the latest patch (spinfusor being 42000 exp when it should be the default), everything else seems perfect.  My gripes are minor compared to the fact that they're filling a niche that's been empty for years, and are quite good at it.