moop on 2/9/2005 at 22:10
So is your main complaint is that there aren't a lot of mods which meet your requirements in order to be worthy of playing? Even though you haven't played any of them yet? Play them first, and see if you like them, at least. Don't expect full-production mods, though... you get what you pay for. If you want a new, full, "DX3," that's not what you can expect.
Quote Posted by Karkianman
Too bad there arent too many mods :P
How can you say the list is short, when there are still plenty of mods you haven't played? :erg:
tGGP - Yea I play that style too... maybe it's "minimalist" or w/e you want to call it... I got into that habit after the original Resident Evil made me paranoid about wasting even a single bullet. :joke:
Ziemanskye on 3/9/2005 at 13:56
Did anyone else hoard health kits and snacks, despite having regen?
TheGreatGodPan on 3/9/2005 at 16:32
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
Did anyone else hoard health kits and snacks, despite having regen?
Dear God, yes. Eventually I ran out of space and had to drop all the candy bars and soda, but I had the maximum number of soy packets throughout most of the game.
Hell Kitty on 5/9/2005 at 14:24
Quote Posted by Dr. Dumb_lunatic
"The idea that skills were removed due to consoles in so insanely ridiculous, considering the amount of RPGs available for console."
Not really insanely ridiculous: it's
entirely possible they removed them due to consoles. It just might've been a bad decision.
It was..a bad call, Ripley. A bad call.
No, it was never
due to consoles, it was
due to a bad design choice by Ion Storm. If anyone at Ion Storm ever thought "consoles can't handle skills" or "console players can't handle skills", they'd be completely wrong, given the multitude of console RPGs, including the PS2 DX, and as such it falls under "stupid decision by Ion Storm".
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
Did anyone else hoard health kits and snacks, despite having regen?
Heh. Health kits, yes, not food.
Has anyone played the Shifter mod? I'm playing through now and I seem to have much more equipment than I usually have (lockpicks, multitools, medkits, energy cells). I don't recall finding any more, just having a constant supply in my inventory). I dunno, maybe I'm just a better player. :laff:
TheGreatGodPan on 5/9/2005 at 18:43
Quote Posted by Hell Kitty
If anyone at Ion Storm ever thought "consoles can't handle skills" or "console players can't handle skills", they'd be completely wrong, given the multitude of console RPGs, including the PS2 DX, and as such it falls under "stupid decision by Ion Storm".
The original Deus Ex was designed for PCs then ported to a console. What kind of RPGs were there for consoles before IW? Most of them were from Japan. How many of the people working on IW had designed a game for consoles before? To people who only play consoles, Baldur's Gate equals Dark Alliance and Fallout equals FO:POS, neither of which really deserve the title of RPG. Furthermore, those are all third person. Console players wouldn't be used to turn-based first-person RPGs like Wizardry, Bards Tale and Might & Magic, so to them a first person game is an FPS. It's true that Morrowind also came out for consoles, but it had a lot less skills (they also called it streamlining) than its PC only predecessor, Daggerfall. The next TES game, also for consoles, is going to have even fewer skills. After IW Snowblind was released. Anyone seeing a pattern? The console market is different from the PC market and that market doesn't think much of Planescape: Torment, Thief, or Grim Fandango. Those games won't be made for consoles, and if you like those games, a developer making a game for a console is not likely to be targetting you.
Karkianman on 5/9/2005 at 20:44
*sigh*
KOTOR? I rest my case for RPG's on consoles.
And Deus Ex is actually an action adventure FPS with RPG elements. And AFAIK it did reasonably well on the PS2, despite being a port.
And moop, most of those actually arent that great, unless something seriously strange and awesome has happened. The top part of the list is just a slight modification. Different weapons and such. What it has to do with the augs of DX1, I dont know, since they pretty much just change around a few things. The bottom list has I think like 3 or 4 actual decent picks. The rest are pretty much crap.
Why does it even matter? We are talking about the main game, not things that other people changed. In the game, about a third of the augs are pretty much useless except for a handful or less of specific situations (like getting a gun mod or two).
I would seriously take the DXIW mods over the DX mods any day. They are more useful, more creative, more fun, and more interesting. When I first used the health leech drone in DXIW, my jaw dropped. Using Bot Dom, I couldnt stop smiling. I couldnt run out of ways to have fun with the Strength mod. To quote Vin Diesel "I am going to kill you with my tea cup."
The actuall gameplay mechanics, graphics, etc were better in DXIW than they were in DX. The thing that DXIW missed was the level size and design, the dialogue, the characters, and the dramatic presentation. When you can kill anyone you meet in DXIW it makes it harder to develop characters, get a story, etc. When you cant use weapons for arbritrary reasons to preserve important characters, it hinders plot. They had too many shallow choices without consequance, and few significant choices without consequance. If you took the map content from DX and put it into DXIW, and tweaked it so that everything worked, etc, you would have one hell of a goddamn game.
Hell Kitty on 6/9/2005 at 12:24
Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan
What kind of RPGs were there for consoles before IW?
Holy shit, that's like asking me what kind of action movies were at the cinema before Transporter 2 (to pick a current action movie).
Of course, the issue isn't RPGs on console, it's skills in games on console, and the ridiculous belief that:
1. Consoles can't handle skills
2. Console players don't understand skills.
Quote:
To people who only play consoles, Baldur's Gate equals Dark Alliance and Fallout equals FO:POS
Eh, what do the BG and Fallout licenses have to do with skills in consoles games? Nothing. Funnily enough, BG:DA, BG:DA2, F:BOS, and Champions of Norrath and it's sequel are all examples of action-RPGs that make heavy use of skills.
Quote:
neither of which really deserve the title of RPG.
Neither claim to be RPGs, they are action-RPGs, a subgenre made popular by Diablo on PC.
Quote:
Console players wouldn't be used to turn-based first-person RPGs like Wizardry, Bards Tale and Might & Magic
You know, it would really help if you knew what you were talking about... early Wizardry, Bards Tale and Might & Magic games appeared on NES, SNES and Genesis! There was even an original Wizardry game for PS2. Current generation console gamers probably wouldn't be familiar with them, but neither would current generation PC gamers. The lack of
turn-based first-person RPGs,
turn-based RPGs and RPGs
in general isn't a console problem, it's a problem with the games industry as a whole. In fact there are more RPGs and turn-based games on console nowadays than there are on PC.
For the record, like Karkianman, I consider Deus Ex an action/adventure with RPG elements. "RPG elements" seem to be more popular in many different types of games now than RPGs, with "RPG elements" generally meaning skills. I'm rather looking forward to the next Soul Calibur with it's character creation mode in that regard...
Quote:
so to them a first person game is an FPS.
Actually, the moronic belief that "if it's first-person it must be an FPS" seems to be limited to the PC crowd. I remember when the first video for Vampire: Bloodlines came out, arguing with people on the Interplay boards who thought it was
just an shooter based solely on it's perspective. Also argued with people who claimed that DX is an FPS simply because it's in the first-person perspective and features guns. Thankfully console gamers tend to be smart enough to classify games based on the
gameplay rather than something as silly as perspective.
Quote:
It's true that Morrowind also came out for consoles, but it had a lot less skills (they also called it streamlining) than its PC only predecessor, Daggerfall.
Yes, it has less skills than Daggerfall, though ironically enough it has a more complex system than DX. The skill system in DX is simple, want to pick locks? Choose the lockpicking skill. What to use heavy weapons, use the heavy weapons skill. Etc. Morrowind is also pretty simple, but at least it also has major and minor skills to think about, and how they contribute differently to levelling up.
Quote:
The console market is different from the PC market and that market doesn't think much of Planescape: Torment, Thief, or Grim Fandango. Those games won't be made for consoles, and if you like those games, a developer making a game for a console is not likely to be targetting you.
No, no, no, those games you list are the exception on PC as well. It's not that these games aren't getting made for console, it's that they aren't getting made
at all. We live in an age where publisher want every game to be a blockbuster and be made in the shortest time possible. Nothing like PST exsited before it came out and nothing has come out like it since, it was a one off, regardless of system, because it wasn't popular enough
on PC. Stealth gaming is more popular on console with games like MGS and SC, though they are stealth/action, different to Thief's stealth/exploration. Like PST, Thief is an example of a game type which isn't popular on PC or console. And as for Grim Fandango, the point-and-click adventure game isn't big
on PC anymore.Your complaints are not due to consoles, they are due to the current state of the games industry, and the beliefs of the publishers and developers.
Dr. Dumb_lunatic on 6/9/2005 at 12:53
Is it me, or is this turning into a "Console Gamers are stupid"<--> "No, PC gamers are stupid"<--> "No, console gamers are stupid" etc etc debate?
Which I don't think is necessarily a step in the right direction.
Quote:
No, it was never due to consoles, it was due to a bad design choice by Ion Storm. If anyone at Ion Storm ever thought "consoles can't handle skills" or "console players can't handle skills", they'd be completely wrong, given the multitude of console RPGs, including the PS2 DX, and as such it falls under "stupid decision by Ion Storm".
For the record, you misinterpreted my post: I meant that it's entirely possible that the reason they dropped skills was that they THOUGHT they wouldn't go down well with consoles. That's why I put 'bad decision', not 'flawed logical argument'. I was simply stating that there's no reason they couldn't've made that decision, based on that assumption. The assumption may have been wrong, but that's irrelevant.
Still, the skill system was an aspect I sorely missed: the ability to "instantly use any weapon one encounters" has always been Dr. Freeman's bag, in my book.
As for other things, the whole 'automatically typing in logins you know' I presume is a conceit implemented for consoles (lack of keyboard, etc), and that one bugged me as well. I mean, you can't even just sit and try numbers at random (something there was a fair bit of in DX, actually: a fair few keypads had 2-digit codes, and the first digit was almost always 0). This sort of silly detail is the kind of thing I like.
The whole concept of 'streamlining', reducing complexity, removing extraneous and redundant aspects, it just irks me.
I can perfectly well understand why minor and strictly speaking gameplay-irrelevant details might be deemed unnecessary (not to mention potentially annoying to handle with a control pad), but I wanted them. And I suspect that there would've been more of them if the game was intended to be PC-only.
I guess I wanted "DX only better", and I got "DX-lite with nice graphics. If you can handle them. Also turn off bloom."
meh.
Anyway, back to the Mead family.
Has anyone mentioned that Sarah Mead was used as the random schoolgirl on tonnochi road?
Hell Kitty on 6/9/2005 at 13:30
Quote Posted by Dr. Dumb_lunatic
For the record, you misinterpreted my post
I didn't misinterpret anything. You said
"it's entirely possible they removed them due to consoles" which is wrong. It
is entirely possible they removed them due to mistaken beliefs about consoles or console players, but no matter what the reason was it was
due to a decision by Ion Storm,
not due to consoles which is what you posted, even if it wasn't what you meant.
Quote:
a fair few keypads had 2-digit codes, and the first digit was almost always 0).
There are only 4 places with 2 digit codes starting with 0, and they are all in the same place. Hardly a far few considering all the four digit codes in the game.
I prefer automatic entry of codes to prevent cheating, though I guess that kinda falls into the realm of telling people how they should play their game.
I like my games with lots of fiddly things, for example I like organizing my inventory in games ala tetris. I don't know why but I do. Sadly games nowadays are geared more towards "streamlining" everything.
Ziemanskye on 6/9/2005 at 14:33
Hell Kitty, did you try the PS2 incarnation of DX?
Personally I don't much like the tetris re-arrangements, but I did like being able to carry a lot of stuff, and the controls make it so that the d-pad (up and down I think) cycled through the 'toolbelt' items, which you could manually flag on or off for everything, so there's still a fair bit of inventory management, and you could only carry 4 ranged weapons (not counting throwing knives, pepper-spray, fire-extinguishers or grenades), so there's still choices to be made about what to carry.
I'm just curious, because as I said, I don't like grid inventories, in PC or console games, but I also don't much like having inventories that are endless, or which have a maximum number of variations of pick-up. By that I mean that I think IW had too few things you could store and make some use of, there weren't enough 'tools' to be collected.
And automatic codes... Oh hell yes. Being able to guess a code is one thing, but being able to play a game a second time and remember (or just google) codes is cheating in a meta-game sort of way, but it annoys me for some reason when it's possible.
