TTLG main page... - by Goldmoon Dawn
Goldmoon Dawn on 18/2/2011 at 13:51
Better late than never. :p
Kolya on 18/2/2011 at 14:51
I almost shed a tear when I saw the hubmain page.
Though nothing in the articles was new to me, they are well thought out and a good read. And I don't mind reading a personal opinion up there at all - it gives the site character. And that's more important and more intriguing than a million aggregated info pieces and comments competing for attention. The way Digi casually reflected on the community's opinions, comparing them to his own, without the need or will to distance himself - that's power. Either you do it this way or make the forum index the main page.
However if this wasn't TTLG, I still wouldn't care. It's just too little, too late. The page still looks like a broke 90s gay portal. And the man writing there, much as I love him, is still the same as 10 years ago. There have been so many insightful, well balanced, funny and interesting writers here over the years. Often this type goes under in the forums, because an insightful, well balanced post is a discussion killer.
Why did you never give the job of writing a main page article to one of them? Heck, why don't you do it now and occupy yourself with the redesign? Speaking of which: Nobody cares for the old (or new) CMS, it's content content content. At this point a plain HTML page would be better than what's up there. Make a clear cut. Nobody will mind if it doesn't look great, as long as it works.
june gloom on 18/2/2011 at 19:05
Quote Posted by addink
Actually, it was. You just had to be there. Sorry you missed out.
I'm going to be polite, and just inform you that yes, yes I was there, and no, no it fucking well wasn't.
addink on 18/2/2011 at 19:41
For you maybe.
june gloom on 18/2/2011 at 20:01
Look.
I'm not saying the old days were terrible. Or even bad. There were a huge slew of good games, amazing games.
But a lot of people, especially here, tend to tromp around thinking the old days were inherently better than today, and refuse to even try anything new, because what's the point in that when they could just complain all day long instead? They have these rose-colored notions of how the old days were that have very little resemblance to the real thing- nostalgia for an age that never existed, etc.
We're never going to get 1998 back. If you can't handle this, if you spend every post on TTLG, or any other forum really, talking about how much better the old days were and how you have no interest in modern gaming without even looking at it, then please, stop posting, because you have nothing left to say.
jtr7 on 18/2/2011 at 21:42
What a disgusting notion you've infected yourself with. It's a myth, deth'. Posts like that destroy good discussion because it's contagious and fundamentally wrong, and you are repeating old, old, old garbage, like it's 2003 all over again. There's something very different at work but you will never see it. Meanwhile, we try to move forward while your perspective keeps dragging us into the past old damn arguments. You will never see how progressive the people you are crapping on really are. Anyone who flat-out says "They should just update the Dark Engine" isn't representative of those of us who never liked the common mass-market scene from the late 80's through 'til now. We stopped enjoying games for a bunch of reasons, long before your 1998 mantra, and finally, LGS made some games that did for us what games usually don't, had not, and still do not. It's not nostalgia, deth', it's games that worked in a sea of games that don't for us. If we could have one game for every thousand that fires on as many cylinders for us, and those of you in the great majority could have your 999 games to pick from, we'd be content. The fact the few games we like appeared around the turn of century has no bearing on why we weren't content before or since. It's the game mechanics that have been around since the 80s, which of course, your ilk don't count as tired and old, but only poor 1998 and thereabouts. I'm bored to death of seeing the same mechanics form the 80s getting updated while the handful of games that pushed to be different that we like have rarely been repeated. You fail to see how absurd and ironic your persistent myth-milking is. If this is at the core of your snubbing, you did it to yourself. I wondered what the hell happened to you. :(
Death to the nostalgia myth!
june gloom on 18/2/2011 at 21:58
Basically I got too old for posts like yours.
Sg3 on 19/2/2011 at 15:01
Hmm, I play and enjoy plenty of modern games. I was/am absolutely in love with Mass Effect and Prototype, for example. But there are certain things that have never quite been replicated; and only part of it is due to changes in my psychology as I age. For an example, I'm still wowed anew every time I hear the ambient sound/music in the two Looking Glass Thief games and in Arx Fatalis. I've never heard their like since.
I mean, look at Dark Messiah. Compare its music with that of Arx Fatalis. D.M. had an orchestral score. Now, don't mistake me; I love a good overblown & melodramatic orchestral score. I have the D.M. soundtrack and listen to it every so often, and am fond of it. But, an orchestral score, however nice, just doesn't compare with the singular, peculiar sort of music-and-ambient-sound hybrid that was in A.F.. You generally don't find the latter in games anymore, and the few I do hear aren't quite as powerful to me as the ones in my very favorite games. It isn't even nostalgia; I am awed just as much listening to those old sound clips now as then. I don't know why nothing of the sort is found in modern games. Well, I have my suspicions, but that's another discussion.
And the music is just one aspect of it. I chose to elaborate on music because it's the easiest for me to try to explain, but there are lot of other elements which seem to be forever lost. For every new idea which adds a good thing to a game, it seems that an old idea, which added (and would still add) something good to a game, is thrown away.
Digital Nightfall on 20/2/2011 at 03:39
I think what jtr7 is trying to say is that unlike the folks in Gen Gaming, most of the people in Thief Gen aren't gamers. They're people who discovered something that struck a chord with them, and haven't really found anything like it since. The FM Author / Player relationship has really withstood the test of time, though.
This isn't the reply to this thread I had really intended to make this weekend, but I ended up not having time... which is funny, considering how much it proves that I really don't have time for TTLG. I can't address the good things people have brought up in the way I'd like, but I will say this: I don't intend the revival to be about reporting news. Sure, when there's news that we have something to say about comes along, we should say it. What I want to get rolling is a series of features that might be posted up on the weekends or a few times a month. I already have a few such things in the works. I have a long list of possible new ones. I want to do some myself, but I'll need volunteers to write most of them.
This may sound like pointless blah blah rhetoric, but the non-news features presented on the front page shouldn't be all about my thoughts. It should be representative of TTLG. So hopefully once things get moving it won't matter how much free time I have, because some of you will have taken the reigns from me.
d'Spair on 20/2/2011 at 12:30
Jesus, I can't believe the main page actually gets updated.
First of all, I'm not sure the posts need comments. We're pretty fine with the forum, I think.
Now on the games.
Thief 4 - I have no idea what game this is going to be. I'm hugely pessimistic by default. Deus Ex HR will show, I guess, what I have to expect.
Arkane Studios - Looking forward to their new game. Somehow I feel this is going to be Arx 2, but anyway. An extremely strong team is working there, that definitely knows what emergent gameplay is, immersive sim is, and I'm more than confident the next Arkane game will be a bomb. All the best luck, guys.
BioShock Infinite - Looks the next big game to me since the original BioShock. Ken Levine is one rare guy in the industry nowadays who has the privilege of doing what he wants. And he does great things. No matter what TTLG moaners say, BioShock is for the people who liked System Shock and Thief, and Infinite is going to be the same, but more complex gameplay-wise. And in design and setting BSI looks totally mindblowing.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - during the whole period of production I've been very pessimistic about that one, and I still think that there are a lot of very wrong steps taken by Eidos Montreal (third person cover system? no shadow stealth? my ass). But somehow I ended up preordering Augmented Edition with all the bonus content, and am anxiously waiting for it. Go figure.
Dead Space - Not that I'm a fan of horror games, let alone third-person Resident Evil - like third-person horror games, but the fact that Dead Space started as System Shock 3 back in the days makes me follow the games and even bying them. I'm currently waiting for my DS2 Collectors Edition to arrive.
Skyrim, Fallout, Stalker, Esther, The Witcher, Amnesia, XCOM, E.Y.E - I'm actually not sure what these games are doing on TTLG. Don't think I'll ever even visit the corresponding threads.
