March 6, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.12 has been released.
News: February 3, 2024: The February '24 Report is up.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
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Important thing to note for people with baseless speculation about difficulty:This is a fairly standard video game feature, or at least it used to be.QuoteSoldiers still die permanently, fog of war and line of sight are hugely important in combat, and you absolutely can lose the game if you screw up too badly
I remember reading... no idea where... that X-Com recruits are indeed just grunts; recruited from various militaries around the world but not really given much traning beyond boot camp and whatever experience they've picked up in the field. The reasoning was that the various world governments need their special forces now more than ever, and are definitely not going to hand over their most elite to an organisation that has yet to prove itself.
What i'd like to see is more experienced recruits unlock as you improve your reputation with the various nations. In fact, what I really want to see is more effects to keeping nations happy beyond just increased funding. Maybe if you keep the USA happy they'll increase your funding, or maybe you'll start seeing Delta Force or Navy Seals pop up in the recruitment pool. Maybe next time you land at a terror mission, there's a squad of black-ops waiting who have cleared a landing site for you. Likewise if they've signed a treaty with the aliens these same forces would be allied with the aliens at any missions that pop up in their territory.
The presence of human enemies at least is encouraging in that regard.
I misspoke there. The increased number of contacting spots is one of the advantages that hexes has for melee, not the only one. There is also the fact that it makes melee flanking a non-trivial task, allowing the player to establish defensive fronts. Wesnoth is a game that showcases most of the advantages that hexes have over squares for one-to-two block apart combat.The main advantage of hexes is that the increased number of contacting spots allows for more advanced formations and melee engagements (movement can be disregarded, as most square grid games have a 150% cost for diagonal movement, which is close enough to the actual factor of sqrt(2) while leaving it easy to calculate, as well as offering a total of eight squares to move to instead of six hexes).If you want to maximize melee attacks, why no just let people attack over the diagonal (for 8 points of attack instead of just 6)?
Line of fire is a matter of visualizing vectors. It's far more intuitive in a cubic lattice because you have an already available system of orthogonal component vectors (the x, y, and z of the grid). On the other hand visualizing vectors in a hexagonal lattice is much less intuitive.Square grid combat plays into X-COM's strengths: use of line-of-sight and dynamic cover. The ready availability of a Cartesian grid makes it eas[ier] for the player to visualize their line of fire and how it might intersect with intermediary objects.You're going to have to explain this one to me, because I seem to have contracted the stupids. (in case it's contagious, the question is "What makes it easier for you to estimate line of fire on a square grid, then it would be on a hex lattice?")
Hexes are great because they're the best way to map the worldWhile hexes would likely work well for modeling the world, I don't know why the geoscape would need to be divided up into a grid, unless they were making a mechanic of it.
Fallout is a rare game that pulled it off so brilliantly that nobody realized it was an ugly hex game.While I love Fallout, I don't think that it's hex-based grid was at all suited to the environment, architecture, or combat.
What is the new MBT system? I haven΄t followed Planetside Universe very closely, did they have an article?
My opinion on Daedric princes:I view the princes like thisSpoiler (click to show/hide)
Take a look at this list: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Bugs_%28Skyrim%29
Mostly they are funny.
If this "Radiant AI" system keeps improving and becomes more Radiant Intelligence and less Artificial, the non-linearity will appear out of the dynamic interactions between the NPCs, the player and the world, and questlines will be largely unscripted save for the dramatic points, setting goals for the NPCs and letting them do their thing and make their own decisions on how to oppose the player or cope with the loss of another NPC. They're "pioneering" with a "new" technology, and everyone knows that if you pioneer, you'll often die of dysentery. (Quotation marks because there is most likely some other game out there that has already done this and did it better)Radiant AI was a gimmick, and it hasn't been improved since its inception in Oblivion. It would probably be better described as a list of character schedules than a form of AI. Unfortunately for Bethesda's "Radiant [fetch] Quest" system, the point where procedural generation can mimic the work of a competent human writer is also likely the point where computer programs start passing the Turing test, and I don't see Bethesda as producing that level of innovation.
I also like quick escapes. It's not realistic, but by god does it get rid of a potentially extremely boring part of the game.I don't think anyone is arguing against the principle of backdoors. The problem is that the linear dungeons are more like a movie or a rollercoaster than a structure to be explored by the player. If dungeons were non-linear, alternate entrances/exits would seem more like natural features than developer cop-outs. Also, previous installments had things like intervention scrolls and mark and recall that provided an instantaneous escape and were well-integrated with the lore.
I mean, can anyone honestly get enjoyment out of walking through an empty dungeon and enjoy it? I can't.
I happen to enjoy the game, mostly because I don't break immersion just by having a marker on the compass. I mean, it's impossible for Adventurer to have a compass, right? Or mark something on his map?There is nothing wrong with the player having a compass. The problem is that it does far more than a compass should, usurping the player's ability to solve problems on his own. I see nothing wrong with allowing the player to use the compass to find NPCs or landmarks that they know (this is especially useful given that NPCs can move around).
And while the dungeons backtracking is sort of strange, it's a hell of a lot better than getting stuck in a hole and having to reload. If we were going for 100% realism, there would have to be a entire minigame based around shoving a full suit of Elven armor into your backpack. Not to mention your hundreds of dwarven arrows that should be impossible to carry. Oh, and swimming in heavy armor? They should take that out, because it's totes unrealistic. Most of the light armor too.
As for trainers, who gets more skilled in armor within an hour/week? Crazy. They need to go. For that matter, the HP system should be replaced by a DF like system that requires hours of pouring over your old anatomy texts to find the most optimal place to stab the next bandit.I never heard anyone complain about this. Most of the complaints are about the removal of interesting features that existed in previous games.
Also elves and dwarves and dragons never existed and shouldn't be in the game. Why are there so many caves? What about the polytheism that shouldn't be so prevalent during that time period?
TES VI: History Class.
Is this really any different from spamming spells while walking in Oblivion or forging a thousand iron daggers in Skyrim?I was complaining before they announced Skyrim. I knew TES series were ruined when Oblivion came out. It's just less skills, armors, weapons, magic, etc, etc and more graphics, combat and "streamlining" for casual players (they actually mean dumb players I think) from now on.
Meh, it's not perfect but it's still fun if you don't play it like the way you played Morrowind.
You mean spamming the jump button while you move around?
