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Messages - Microcline

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241
Other Games / Re: Syndicate the FPS
« on: February 21, 2012, 08:10:52 pm »
Quote from: hemmingjay on February 21, 2012, 06:14:54 pm
Do you have internet at home? They can stop your service at any point and not refund the remaineder of your money and still hold you liable for the length of any contract agreement. The same is true of your cellphone. Our beloved Steam, they can do the same thing. Caught cheating, they can ban your access including offline access. Mortgages, insurance, banking agreements, it's honestly all the same. The truth of the matter is that as long as corporations are the primary backers to politicians, corporate lawyers will have draconian loopholes in place that allow them to get away with murder.

How appropriate that this conversation is on a Syndicate thread.

PS My good friend is a corporate lawyer here in NYC at a major media firm and tells me that none of these agreements would hold up to a lawsuit, but they are in place to disuade the individual from making trouble for them should they fail to provide the expected level of service.
People are more willing to enter into such agreements with Valve because they have a solid consumer reputation.  EA has earned considerably less trust through such actions as suspending users' games for criticizing DAII and hiding the unsubscribe button in TOR (then banning anyone in the forums who provided a workaround).

Furthermore the main criticisms I generally hear about Origin are the fact that it gives EA the explicit right to scan the user's hard drive and removes the right of the consumer to take legal action against EA.  There's no reason for a consumer to have to put up with such abuse.

242
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 17, 2012, 09:49:13 pm »
Quote from: Vattic on February 17, 2012, 09:19:27 pm
Daggerfall had more nudity than Skyrim. The women and men weren't representative of a broad spectrum but more like a prediction of the current Skyrim mods.

Edit: It might be pixelated but a search for "daggerfall nudity" lead me to a page all about it for anyone who hasn't played daggerfall.
I don't think people are complaining about nudity.  It makes sense for mythological creatures, gods, prostitutes, priestesses of Dibella, and crazy PCs to be naked.  I consider the naked Nord playthrough to be a TES tradition.  The problem comes when sexuality is shoehorned into the game for cheap titillation.

243
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 17, 2012, 08:44:24 pm »
Quote from: nenjin on February 17, 2012, 08:24:55 pm
Quote
This is a real problem that seems to have developed at Bethesda.  Back during Morrowind, sex appeal was never shoehorned into the game.  Now we've got stupid things like boob armor and argonians with breasts whose only justification is to sell more copies to the increasingly juvenile audience.

Let's be fair though. In every prior game, models were so ugly it's like the artists beat them mercilessly with the ugly stick. Now that Bethesda has models that aren't completely hideous (some are still quite hideous) I'm sure they want to play that card. Yeah, it's still a trend in every AAA studio but.....for the most part ES is still incredibly tasteful compared to the worst offenders. There may be boob armor and boobs on stuff you don't think should have boobs....but there's no slut armor anywhere in the game that I can remember.
Forsworn armor is a leather bikini.

Quote from: Aequor on February 17, 2012, 08:33:57 pm
Personally I think most of the blame can be attributed to the players and modders rather than Bethesda.
I think their claim that they don't care about their installed base makes them incapable of using this excuse.  If they're allowed to use "it's our artistic vision" to flip off those who want them to add spears, crossbows, levitation, or a competent writing and art staff than they can just as easily use it to say that if players want chainmail bikinis and reptile mammaries they can mod it in on their own time.

244
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 17, 2012, 08:14:23 pm »
Quote from: Tarran on February 17, 2012, 07:51:07 pm
Quote from: Leatra on February 17, 2012, 07:41:58 pm
If your character is female, she won't wear a lot of armor though. It is a known fact that the less armor a woman wears and exposes more skin, more protection they will get. All these fantasy or medieval age videogames, movies and animes can't be wrong.
One of these days someone is going to put realistic armor on women that looks almost identical to male armor. That person will suddenly become my hero forever for not being an erotic idiot. :P
I saw these on Something for Nobody.  I don't know if they're compatible with the current version, though.
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3296
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3681
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3146

This is a real problem that seems to have developed at Bethesda.  Back during Morrowind, sex appeal was never shoehorned into the game.  Now we've got stupid things like boob armor and argonians with breasts whose only justification is to sell more copies to the increasingly juvenile audience.

245
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 17, 2012, 07:16:40 pm »
Quote from: The Merchant Of Menace on February 17, 2012, 06:24:16 pm
Giving the various bandit groups tatoos or some other indentifying mark and having the player remove that could work.

Because the bandits have to have /some/ method of recognising each other, there's about six thousand of them, they need to know who to actually rob.
I've thought of this too, and while it's a good solution for bounties on criminal organizations such as the Camonna Tong or the Riften Thieves' Guild, it doesn't make sense for everyone who is the target of a quest to have an identifying tattoo.  Even if other identifying factors are used, it would still draw attention if the player character knew to decapitate a hermit living in a cave because his head would be needed for a quest later (or worse, if they had to backtrack to the location of the kill after receiving the quest, breaking the flow of gameplay for a minor improvement in realism).  In the end, if the developer wants to avoid telepathic questgivers the only solutions are case-by-case rather than systematic, as explaining an otherwise accepted break from reality with a new unrealistic element often breaks the player's immersion more than leaving it alone.

246
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 17, 2012, 06:22:06 pm »
Quote from: Tarran on February 17, 2012, 04:32:04 pm
2 pages late, dude.
The way I see it, I'm a couple pages early.

Quote from: Metalax on February 17, 2012, 06:09:02 pm
Quote from: Neyvn on February 17, 2012, 03:14:35 pm
I was thinking about having Bandits carry a certain item that can be collected and handed in to either the City's Captain of the Guards or the Jarl's Aids... *what is that S term that means Jarl's Aid...* who then pays you a certain amount. Like woodcutting and Farming just instead of being safe its full of danger...
Seneschal is the word you are looking for I think. Ears would be the traditional token taken from generic slain bandits, although the bounty payer should be specific about whether it is just the right/left ear that they will pay for, as no bounty hunter wants to lug around several hundred pounds of useless gristle if they have no need for it. In cases where it is a specific/named bandit you would want to deliver the head for proof.
I've spent a while trying to think of a way of averting telepathic questgivers, but it always ended up sounding silly, such as them having an ability to immediately recognize that an ear belonged to a bandit, or the player running around with a hundred kilos of "quest heads" in case they might be useful later.

247
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 17, 2012, 04:30:20 pm »
Unless your main gripe with Skyrim was "lack of underage, under-dressed, bug-eyed anime girls" I don't think "mods will fix it" is a valid response.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

248
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 11, 2012, 08:30:05 pm »
Quote from: Buttery_Mess on February 11, 2012, 06:48:02 pm
I suppose if there were dwarves in Hammerfell and Morrowind, it'd make sense that they'd be in Skyrim too. Anyway, the realms of ancient races don't necessarily match up to modern Imperial provinces. Don't forget that the Dwemer predate the races of men, and what's now called Skyrim may have been considered a part of Resadyn in times past.

The problem with this is that there are physical landmarks in Tamriel that lock the positions of ancient civilizations.  Morrowind is bordered on the east by the Velothi mountains, the Rourken Clan settled in Stros M'Kai, and Nord and Breton territories are indicated by the locations of Sarthaal and the Direnni Tower.  If I recall correctly, sources in Skyrim seem to indicate that Blackreach was occupied up until the disappearance, although I think they justify this by saying that they occasionally fought with the Nords.

The more I look at it, the more the presence of Dwemer in Skyrim seems like an afterthought meant to placate the fans.  Unlike the Dwemer ruins in Morrowind, they have absolutely no relevance to the main quest (apart from a fetch quest) or anything else going on in the game.  It's a shame, because the Dwemer ruins were one of the game's few highlights.  The enemies were diverse, imposing, and well-animated, and the dungeons were a treat to explore.  Blackreach was the only area where I felt more like an adventurer exploring a ruined city than a colonoscopy camera being pushed through an intestine.  Freedom of movement was provided by rooftop walkways, sewer exits, and surface elevators and every room had a sense of historical purpose that gave a motivation to explore other than teabagging a level-scaled corpse and stealing his randomized loot.

249
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: February 09, 2012, 03:02:17 am »
So did anyone else catch Todd's speech at DICE?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

edit: spoiler'd due to length.  Also, if nothing else I'd recommend watching the mod montage at 21:00, as it justifies every quote about steering clear of mudcrabs.

250
Other Games / Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« on: February 04, 2012, 05:22:33 pm »
Quote from: Sowelu on February 04, 2012, 03:56:48 pm
I didn't see anything about those smoke grenades in any official source.  Link please; I suspect it was someone pulling it out of their ass again.
In the podcast he states that the first skill in the support class tree is the ability to throw smoke grenades.  While this doesn't explicitly rule out it being in the other trees at different points, the class system still makes no sense from a gameplay or realism standpoint.  It seems silly that a gunner is completely unable to learn how to throw a smoke grenade or receive medic training.  It seems to be a pointless removal of player choice.  At the same time, allowing characters to acquire skills from multiple trees wouldn't lead to Final Fantasy VII style do-everything characters because abilities are always limited by equipment.

251
Other Games / Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« on: February 03, 2012, 07:45:38 pm »
Quote from: Aqizzar on February 03, 2012, 06:29:07 pm
Quote from: Mephansteras on February 03, 2012, 06:06:57 pm
Quote from: Cthulhu on February 03, 2012, 06:03:12 pm
Yeah, he was basically describing how I played there, so I'm 100% on board (Where before I was only 90%) the no time units train.

I usually had a decent idea of what people could do, and I'm pretty good about setting up actual tactics using my soldiers. But I can see where he's coming from. Hopefully the new game is as fun to play as they make it out.

He cinched it when he pointed out the classic X-COM moment when you have some guy stuck in a bad position, one TU short for ducking or moving, or burns it turning to face a target and can't shoot, and so forth.  It's a venerable dynamic sure, but I won't miss it.

I interpreted it as a new emphasis on multi-turn planing.  In the original, the best defense is a good offense so your goal would be to coordinate a one turn action that would neutralize all hostiles, and failing to do so would leave you vulnerable.  Surprising an enemy and taking them down in a single turn always made me feel like I was running a badass SWAT team, but the TU system does become difficult for spans of time beyond a single action phase.  Firaxis' system seems to emphasize plans that occur over multiple turns by new mechanics that allow a unit to survive an enemy action phase (with things like bunker down), and the TU system was replaced with the move/act system because it fits these shorter turns better and is more suited to long-term plans.

Quote from: Virtz on February 03, 2012, 03:56:29 pm
They actually mentioned something along the lines of wanting more of an exchange between the sides? Like that because of the stupid class abilities, with enough people, you could overpower the visible enemy forces in one turn?... Or something? But basically it sounded like they lowered squad size because of the class abilities and kept insisting that the classes add depth and tactics.
The reason given is that having too many soldiers would often lead to a ridiculous amount of micromanagement.  He's right that a lot of players would just leave units in the avenger towards the end.  I still think 6-8-10 is the optimum for the original X-COM, but I could see 4-6-8 working in the new game.  What troubles me is that he brought up the problem of the effects of lethality that were discussed earlier in the thread but didn't seem to suggest a solution.  They're probably still sorting out what the endgame number should be, and I'm hoping that the number is raised to six by the time the missions escalate above flying saucers in cornfields.

The class system still seems like a load of bollocks, especially the notion that units need a support tree perk to throw smoke grenades.  The versatility of the original units meant that you were always given a choice of actions (i.e. do you use a smoke grenade or make a run for it?), whereas while the new system might not be as bad as using a Final Fantasy class system it still seems like it would severely limit the choices that the player makes in the battlescape.

That said, it still looks pretty good right now.

252
Other Games / Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« on: February 03, 2012, 01:26:02 pm »
Quote from: Dohon on February 03, 2012, 12:44:00 pm
Part three of the RPS interview is up here.

I can honestly say that I'm looking forward to this game now.  He gave a good explanation of how removing time units wasn't a case of blatant dumbing down, but rather shelving it to make room for new mechanics (similar to what Egoraptor said about the sub-weapons in his video on SCIV).  The only change that hasn't been explained is the decreased squad size.  I always felt that eight was the optimum number, going down to six for small UFOs and up to ten for things like battleships, bases, and terror missions.

The inclusion of ironman mode makes me think that they understand the original and know what they're doing though.

Edit: listening to the podcast

253
Other Games / Re: A Game of Dwarves
« on: January 21, 2012, 12:06:01 am »
I think that because of its emphasis of gamism over narratism and simulationism it's going to be competing more with Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius than DF.  As a theme dwarves are well suited to this concept, although at this point I am beginning to grow weary of their overuse and think that it would be more interesting to tread new ground like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius did.  That said, whether it succeeds or fails depends on how much it can contribute to the genre.

As I have little to go on, my only advice at the moment would be to change the main page art.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The Dreamworks face is something that should remain endemic to kender and poorly rendered talking animals voiced by has-been celebrities.

254
Other Games / Re: Discussion on TES V: Skyrim
« on: January 20, 2012, 09:28:25 pm »
Quote from: scriver on January 20, 2012, 07:59:01 pm
Quote from: Wolf Tengu on January 20, 2012, 05:31:48 pm
I mean, none of the companions maul anyone who isn't a nameless bandit or whatever. Well, that we know of.

First night after the ritual. They set a freshly transformed werewolf upon their hometown for no discernible reason, possibly just for shits and giggles.
There's also the fact that they claim to follow the tradition of the five-hundred (or thereabouts) companions of Ysgrammor, who returned to Skyrim to end meric rule and seal KINMUNE.  Yet Talos worship is banned, the Aldmeri Dominion acts freely in Skyrim, and KINMUNE is not only unsealed but nearly stolen by the Thalmor.  Having quests about these could have provided some much needed integration for Skyrim's background and faction quests, such as companion quests about sabotaging the Thalmor's influence in Skyrim.  Bethesda did a great job of setting the the Thalmor up as an enemy the playerbase loves to hate and had two factions motivated to act against them, and instead what we got was a bunch of self-centered werewolves and a group of generic fantasy dragonslayers.  They could also be tied into the college questline by having a quest where the player consults the companions on the lore surrounding Ysgrammor at Saarthal, which would resolve the issue that the questline is a complete non-sequitur unless you've been keeping up with MK's forum posts.

Quote from: scriver on January 20, 2012, 07:59:01 pm
Quote from: Deathsword on January 20, 2012, 07:17:47 pm
And, as said above, Ulfric is an egocentric idiot that has no concept of neutrality or of the threat the Thalmor pose against all non-Altmer
Not just non-Altmer either. They literally want to undo the world.
Erasing Talos and removing Man should undo Lorkhan's treachery, freeing the Aedra and restoring divinity to the Altmer (Bosmer, Khajiit, Dunmer, Orsimer and Falmer are up to debate), so it is mainly a problem for non-Altmer.

Quote from: scriver on January 20, 2012, 07:59:01 pm
Quote
On another topic, after some delving in dwemer ruins you kinda notice how sadistic the dwemer were (torture rooms, how they left the falmer, etc), something that wasn't so apparent in Morrowind.
Can't help but feel this is just another symptom of Beth's current trend of portraying every non-player race as EVIL though.
It's worse than that.  It seems that everyone in the province of Skyrim who lives outside of a town is not only chaotic evil but feels an overwhelming desire to attack any passerby, no matter how dangerous this proposition is or how little profit they would make from it.  I liked how in Morrowind I'd often find caves with mages who just wanted to be left alone, and how you could talk to the vampire clans.  Instead, Todd Howard thought we'd get bored in Skyrim if our screen wasn't splattered with strawberry jam every five minutes from murdering some nameless goon.

255
Other Games / Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« on: January 18, 2012, 08:51:48 pm »
I really like the new designs.  They seem to be taking a Valve-like approach, where enemy roles and abilities are implied by their physical appearance.  Sectiods look like psionic-using glass cannons, and mutons look like something that you need heavier firepower to take down.  Most of the tension in the original came from the gameplay mechanics rather than the graphics, and I think adjusting some of the designs to be closer to the gameplay while remaining true to the overall aesthetic is a good idea.  I'm looking forward to seeing the snakemen and chrysalids.

Quote from: Biag on January 18, 2012, 08:18:17 pm
I'm not sure how I feel about bestial Mutons. I think they'd look more Evil SEALs if they were less bestial. I like the tribal thing, that's cool, but as they are right now they look more like Halo's Brutes than highly-trained cold-blooded killers. I would have had them upright, seven feet tall, wearing non-bulky armor (both to allow room to move and to show the tattoos).
The original also made heavy note of the fact that each of the races was engineered (genetically and cybernetically) by the etherals with a specific purpose in mind.  The gorilla-like frame emphasizes this, and the bulky armor gives them a reason to be so muscular as well as communicating to the player their resistance to low-power weapons.

I must admit that the music and art interviews seem spot-on.  Although it likely won't be until close to release, I'd like to see if an interview with the gameplay developers will have a similar effect.  The use of a move-shoot turn seems to be the biggest change at this point.  It removes a lot of player decisions such as having to decide between using TUs to increase accuracy/decrease hitbox by crouching, whether to scout an area by turning, whether to go back into cover after shooting, or whether to get in an additional shot.  As Sowelu brought up earlier, this also likely means that both you and the aliens won't be able to do as much during a single turn.  This might lower the skill ceiling, as in the original, while you could clear an area during a single well-planned turn and would be harshly punished during the alien's phase if you botched it, this one seems like it will reward your planning less as you have less actions and may be unable kill the aliens in a turn and punish your failure less as the surviving aliens have less time to wail on you during their turn.

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