The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Ceowulf
awaiting this spectacular looking game?
I've never really seen graphics like what they are showing as in game
footage... blows Doom3 and Half Life 2 away, AND the world is much larger
than the Morrowind world with over 1000 NPC's who are all unique and living
there own lives. This time the NPC's are going to be living day and night
cycles just like those in the best of Ultima's, with their own jobs, desires
and intentions. Something called Radiant AI {developed in house by Bethesda}
will be running the show here.
Excited anyone?
Ceo-
Mean_Chlorine
>I was wondering if there was a large portion of this news group eagerly
>awaiting this spectacular looking game?
Most likely, yes.
>Excited anyone?
Sure. But it's still a year off, isn't it?
Mark Morrison
Yep - excited, but patient.
--
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes !
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses !
And what's with all the carrots ?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway ?
Bunnies ! Bunnies ! It must be BUNNIES !
BombayMix
>Yep - excited, but patient.
And sceptical it will look like that and run at a decent framerate on
any PC most people have.
Crpgnut
"BombayMix" <bomb...@altavista.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1108052889.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Bethesda even admits that they're developing the game for a cutting edge
system. That's cutting edge at the release date, not cutting edge today!
Bethesda is basically a modern day Origin. Origin built the best games they
could envision technically and expected you to upgrade your computer to play
their games. Bethesda does the same. I upgraded my system to play Morrowind
and I'll upgrade to play Oblivion. I haven't been disappointed yet.
shadows
Why?
Any MMO has this kind of world. SWG does it better with honest to
goodness players setting up museums and charging for entry.
Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
The only people who like Morrowind are those that haven't tried
real MMOs or those who like to download mods that adds a +5 sword
to their inventory and makes little butterflies appear around
their avatars head.
1000 unique NPCs? How about clones spurting out the same wav file
as you walk by them in-game and a cardboard pop up with about 200
meaningless words that amount to "kill foozle #72"
Have you seen the Morrowind chit chat thread? It's not that they
need a life. They need a brain beyond "i downloaded mod
that gives me a three story home." How wonderfully shallow.
Name me a memorable character from Morrowind and tell me why they
are memorable.
littlemute
Killer Apps drive hardware sales and thus hardware development. We
wouldn't be in the wonderful world of 3D with farcry, HL2, Doom 3
without the driving force of applications needing better hardware for
the past 8 years.
Nostromo
+0800, Anno Domini:
Sound about as fun as MW, except with more lifeless world to traverse & more
lame 'swinging the sword at air' or 'jumping around like a dickhead' to
improve some numbers based on a shitty, shitty skill system. Yeah, all in
all mildly excited, mainly about the day/night cycle - at least we'll know
when to officially fall asleep at the chair. >8^D
--
No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again.
Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit?
I feel like the maid; "I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for... for ten minutes!"
Replace 'spamfree' with the other word for 'maze' to reply via email.
Crpgnut
"Nostromo" <nost...@spamfree.net.au> wrote in message
news:o5hn01l5h2lua77bu...@4ax.com...
Aha! There are several members from the Elder Trolls in the above posts.
These are dweebs who jump in ANY and EVERY thread about TES and bash it.
Believe it or not, children, people like games for different reasons. I
loved Morrowind because of the massive amount of exploration in a land that
was beautifully rendered. I enjoyed the unrivaled alchemy skill. I loved the
graphical representation of spells. So what if it had weak NPCs? I loved
flying over Vivec and looking down at the city. For every one of your hates,
I have a love.
littlemute
bit cardboard, but for it's time it was an incredible feat. Bethesda
has stated that they are well aware of the limitations to interaction
Morrowind has and seeks to go beyond it. I see the ES series as a MMO
without the annoying part: other players... packing servers, waiting
for spawns in long lines, waiting for use of the forge in long lines,
waiting to get wood to build useless furniture (except dropping it
around a player to trap them until a GM comes of course!), waiting to
get next to a training dummy to sit with a key depressed next to it to
build up your sword skill, begging for money to get leet. all this
paying 20$ a month for little to no new game content? Players setting
up museums? Oh my that's exciting. You know the people who make time
for that type of thing, and they ain't people you want to really
socialize with. Here's a nice product of the MMO's:
"Kanos is a peaceful guy, but we do have other members, 2 members have
now been kicked/asked to leave because of grefing now. Funny thing is
more and more people are now trying to tell I greif, now this is BS, my
pk score is 65 and all of them had it coming :P Well g2g now, "doing
sin quest" " Yeech.
As for the Morrowind mods, there aren't many that stretch what's
already done in the game. The firemoth keep is cool, the guy who
designed all the custom heads prettied up the game amazingly and I did
a series of ambushes for some friends that made life a lot more
dangerous (granted they were very Doom-esque).
A memorable character? That dude that falls from the sky near the
first town. So awesome. The last living dwarf is great too. I don't
remember too many people I've PK'ed, except that a lot of them typed in
"Why???" a lot. Funny!
What I hope ES IV does is integrate the living cities of games like
GTA. You can interact with the world as sort of a toy for awhile, then
delve into the quests and mission strings.
Courageous
>The only people who like Morrowind are those that haven't tried
I regard it is patently absurd that you equate a massively /multiplayer/
experience with a single player game, and then make this ridiculous
assertion that you are acquainted with all the values, desires, and
motivations of all human game players.
C//
shadows
Actually all Human and Orc game players. I'm not *that* absurd.
shadows
> MMO's make me greif. In fact the only fun is greifing. Morrowind is a
> bit cardboard, but for it's time it was an incredible feat. Bethesda
> has stated that they are well aware of the limitations to interaction
> Morrowind has and seeks to go beyond it. I see the ES series as a MMO
> without the annoying part: other players... packing servers, waiting
> for spawns in long lines, waiting for use of the forge in long lines,
> waiting to get wood to build useless furniture (except dropping it
> around a player to trap them until a GM comes of course!), waiting to
> get next to a training dummy to sit with a key depressed next to it to
> build up your sword skill, begging for money to get leet. all this
> paying 20$ a month for little to no new game content? Players setting
> up museums? Oh my that's exciting. You know the people who make time
> for that type of thing, and they ain't people you want to really
> socialize with. Here's a nice product of the MMO's:
>
> "Kanos is a peaceful guy, but we do have other members, 2 members have
> now been kicked/asked to leave because of grefing now. Funny thing is
> more and more people are now trying to tell I greif, now this is BS, my
> pk score is 65 and all of them had it coming :P Well g2g now, "doing
> sin quest" " Yeech.
See. You Morrowind players do need to grow a brain :) No modern
MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
isn't possible.
> What I hope ES IV does is integrate the living cities of games like
> GTA. You can interact with the world as sort of a toy for awhile, then
> delve into the quests and mission strings.
Nail. Hammer. Head. It's a toy. Not a game.
Nostromo
Anno Domini:
I didn't *hate* it Mr Elder Drolls - it was just boring & plain tedious
after a short while. Stick that in your fanboy shorts >;-p
Marcel Beaudoin
news:slrnd0nub4....@helena.whitefang.com:
> No modern
> MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
> isn't possible.
Please tell me that you were drunk, or really tired, or that someone else
forged you account when you wrote this.
--
Marcel
Crpgnut
> I didn't *hate* it Mr Elder Drolls - it was just boring & plain tedious
> after a short while. Stick that in your fanboy shorts >;-p
I agree but it took me several hundred hours before I got bored. I feel
that I got my money's worth out of the game and that includes the $400
video card that I bought just so I could play it. I love exploration and I
found the history and background story very interesting. Morrowind's
biggest weakness was NPCs. I truly hope they address this in Oblivion.
shadows
It's true unless you look at Lineage II or very very specific
instances of exploits that are fixed.
joe~V~3838
'Morrowind world with over 1000 NPC's who are all unique and living
there own lives'
Well as far as that statement , I'm kind of worried about that....
That's why I liked Gothic series so much, fewer NPCs, but more interesting.
I'd rather have a 100 npcs in a gameworld that are more interesting and have
better ai then a 1000 walking around just in as filler....
just my opinion though......
Still will get OBlivion, not unless reviewers trash it when it comes out......
joe
"Ceowulf" <c...@NOSPAMii.ATALLnet> wrote in message news:420b71f9$0$1441$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
James Garvin
> Why?
>
> Any MMO has this kind of world. SWG does it better with honest to
> goodness players setting up museums and charging for entry.
SWG!!?? YUCK!!! I tend to shy away from MMORPGs anymore...why? I've
gotten tried of the power gamers and lamers ALWAYS screaming about
something...just play the damn game....
> Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
> with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
No lie there. Morrowind needs a system made NOW to play well....
> The only people who like Morrowind are those that haven't tried
> real MMOs or those who like to download mods that adds a +5 sword
> to their inventory and makes little butterflies appear around
> their avatars head.
The moding in MW is actually pretty nice. You can add quite a bit of
content as well as adding some neat features. I love the GIANTS mod...
> 1000 unique NPCs? How about clones spurting out the same wav file
> as you walk by them in-game and a cardboard pop up with about 200
> meaningless words that amount to "kill foozle #72"
Agreed...
> Name me a memorable character from Morrowind and tell me why they
> are memorable.
My own ;-) Morrowind is actually a decent game, it just lacks the
amount of depth that it should have had. I wish more RPGs be more open
ended and less constricting, but at the same time have worlds that feel
alive...
James Garvin
> On 2005-02-10, littlemute <littl...@woodenmen.org> wrote:
>
>>MMO's make me greif. In fact the only fun is greifing. Morrowind is a
>>bit cardboard, but for it's time it was an incredible feat. Bethesda
>>has stated that they are well aware of the limitations to interaction
>>Morrowind has and seeks to go beyond it. I see the ES series as a MMO
>>without the annoying part: other players... packing servers, waiting
>>for spawns in long lines, waiting for use of the forge in long lines,
>>waiting to get wood to build useless furniture (except dropping it
>>around a player to trap them until a GM comes of course!), waiting to
>>get next to a training dummy to sit with a key depressed next to it to
>>build up your sword skill, begging for money to get leet. all this
>>paying 20$ a month for little to no new game content? Players setting
>>up museums? Oh my that's exciting. You know the people who make time
>>for that type of thing, and they ain't people you want to really
>>socialize with. Here's a nice product of the MMO's:
>>"Kanos is a peaceful guy, but we do have other members, 2 members have
>>now been kicked/asked to leave because of grefing now. Funny thing is
>>more and more people are now trying to tell I greif, now this is BS, my
>>pk score is 65 and all of them had it coming :P Well g2g now, "doing
>>sin quest" " Yeech.
> See. You Morrowind players do need to grow a brain :) No modern
> MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
> isn't possible.
?????????????????????????????
shadows
> shadows wrote:
>> See. You Morrowind players do need to grow a brain :) No modern
>> MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
>> isn't possible.
>
> ?????????????????????????????
Please name an MMO released in the last two years which is not
all PvP (Eve Online and Lineage II) which allows griefing.
They don't exist anymore. You can try to grief but your impact
will be minimal.
littlemute
game ever made, just look at the forums for all of those games. They
cannot keep up. It's not just PKing, it's min maxing, and all sorts of
trickery including people selling scamming items outside the games
themselves for real money. Ragnorok - people summoning deathknights to
the early level practice fields to see everyone slaughtered. UO Miners
doing that two-step to move piles of ore from the mountains to a forge
and it gets picked up by someone else who hands it to a friend bit by
bit to smelt it while the original miners run around yelling for a GM.
WOW has corpse camping GALORE. And the mind control? ha! Let alone all
the verbal cons and tricks that experienced (read bored) players try to
do to others that have no in-game fix.
And don't you think it's these very fixes: no final death, no loss of
items, no looting, no PK'ing, 'safe' trading, invincible teleporting
town guards, that make MMO games even more boring, more predictable and
less of a 'game' environment than they were back in the zany UO beta
days? It's basically like those old rail-shooters where you follow a
path that everyone else has gone down, you only have the illusion of
freedom to do what you want because of alll the safeguards put in place
to keep you a happy paying customer limit player interaction to just a
chat room, oh and healing. You can be healed by other players, but not
killed by them. Bollocks.
You're just not backing your shit up with any facts at all. We KNOW
morrowind's NPC's are wooden and don't talk and sit in the same place
all the time night or day, but the game is still awesome, it's a minor
drawback. the game has a lot of flaws, but overall the positives
outweigh the negatives for singleplayer by a landslide.
Courageous
>And don't you think it's these very fixes: no final death, no loss of
>items, no looting, no PK'ing, 'safe' trading, invincible teleporting
>town guards, that make MMO games even more boring, more predictable and
>less of a 'game' environment than they were back in the zany UO beta
>days?
I had more fun in the UO beta and fresh post beta days than any other
time. I have vivid memory of an episode where I continuously teleport
hopped just out of range of an angry mob of 20 pks, until I was
just on the other side of a river. I was paralyzed the entire time.
C//
shadows
> WOW has corpse camping GALORE. And the mind control? ha! Let alone all
> the verbal cons and tricks that experienced (read bored) players try to
> do to others that have no in-game fix.
Corpse camping? Here's a clue. You don't have to do PvP on any of
the servers except the PvP ones.
> You're just not backing your shit up with any facts at all. We KNOW
> morrowind's NPC's are wooden and don't talk and sit in the same place
> all the time night or day, but the game is still awesome, it's a minor
> drawback. the game has a lot of flaws, but overall the positives
> outweigh the negatives for singleplayer by a landslide.
You brought up UO and Raganork. Neiter are modern by my
standards.
James Garvin
> On 2005-02-11, James Garvin <jgarv...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>shadows wrote:
>
>
>>>See. You Morrowind players do need to grow a brain :) No modern
>>>MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
>>>isn't possible.
>>
>>?????????????????????????????
>
>
> Please name an MMO released in the last two years which is not
> all PvP (Eve Online and Lineage II) which allows griefing.
IMHO griefing isn't just PKing, it is more than that. The powergamers
can greif the noobs (and do), the spawn camping is a place where some
sort of griefing ALWAYS happens (mind control comes to mind), people
stealing, lying, and cheating...it all falls under greifing. Hell
corpse camping is worse than ever...
I mean come on...have your read the WoW forums or SWG forums lately?
It is so nice be me mobbed too....can't beat that! What about being
harassed by someone screaming into the ether about some nonsense or
another.
Greifing ANY TIME someone decides to be a pain in the ass, just to be a
pain in the ass. MMORPGs are full of it.
> They don't exist anymore. You can try to grief but your impact
> will be minimal.
WTF? Corpse camping is minimal? What about those lvl 22903857
jackasses that follow around your level -94875 character and hope you
wander into a PvP zone or just harass you by kill stealing?
What about those that create a pet and camp spawns that are FAR too low
for them and just take all the spawn point XP away from those that
actually want it?
shadows
> Greifing ANY TIME someone decides to be a pain in the ass, just to be a
> pain in the ass. MMORPGs are full of it.
I've been playing MMOs for the last two years. I've experienced
maybe a couple of incidents of KSing where it didn't even matter.
> WTF? Corpse camping is minimal? What about those lvl 22903857
> jackasses that follow around your level -94875 character and hope you
> wander into a PvP zone or just harass you by kill stealing?
A myth. You think they have time to do this?
> What about those that create a pet and camp spawns that are FAR too low
> for them and just take all the spawn point XP away from those that
> actually want it?
Honestly, this is rare.
Mark Morrison
wrote:
I plan to upgrade a few months before it appears, depending on
recommended specs.
Hell, I may finally be able to play Morrowind at max resolyion and
detail now I've upgraded my mobo and graphics card...
Nostromo
Anno Domini:
>Snipped old junk....
>
>> I didn't *hate* it Mr Elder Drolls - it was just boring & plain tedious
>> after a short while. Stick that in your fanboy shorts >;-p
>
>I agree but it took me several hundred hours before I got bored. I feel
It took me less than 10hrs after I realised the world had almost no cohesive
elements (like story!) to drive the player along. Some ppl like medieval
sandpits, but not me tx.
>that I got my money's worth out of the game and that includes the $400
>video card that I bought just so I could play it. I love exploration and I
>found the history and background story very interesting. Morrowind's
>biggest weakness was NPCs. I truly hope they address this in Oblivion.
MW had plenty more weaknesses than that, but once someone becomes a ES
fanboy/fanatic, they justify the system & world to themselves no matter
what. Same as Ultima (bring on the flames! >;-). And it's not just my D&D
origins, as I've enjoyed many excellent rpgs based in totally non-D&D
settings & systems (e.g. Fallout1/2). TES are just flawed in so many ways
(staring with its lead designer lol!) that I just haven't got the energy to
go there any more...*huge Shrek sigh*...
Scorcho
Nostromo wrote:
>
> It took me less than 10hrs after I realised the world had almost no
cohesive
> elements (like story!) to drive the player along. Some ppl like
medieval
> sandpits, but not me tx.
>
I worked my way through the main story. It had plenty of story and
background. It didn't drive you on rails and you had to go looking for
it, but it was there. I lost interest with the game after completing
the main storyline, but it definitely had one. I didn't bother
finishing the first add-on. I never did get the second.
There just aren't enough RPGs coming down the pike to dismiss the next
TES. I'll definitely be
playing it shortly after release.
David Carson
> On 2005-02-11, littlemute <littl...@woodenmen.org> wrote:
>> WOW has corpse camping GALORE. And the mind control? ha! Let alone all
>>the verbal cons and tricks that experienced (read bored) players try to
>>do to others that have no in-game fix.
>
> Corpse camping? Here's a clue. You don't have to do PvP on any of
> the servers except the PvP ones.
But if you go to a PvE server, watch out for people mind controlling
mobs you're fighting to get your PvP flag turned on; or shadowmelding in
front of postboxes in the hope that you'll accidentally right-click on
them; or using whatever exploits they were using in cross-faction duels
that is causing Blizzard to totally remove the feature..
Griefing is a state of mind, an attitude, not some particular act which
can be stopped by game changes. As long as there are players who get
their enjoyment out of messing with other peoples' enjoyment, there will
be something they find to do to mess with you.
Having said that, I don't think it's a particularly serious problem. But
that's not because "the game mechanics are setup so griefing
isn't possible" (what a ridiculous statement), it's because the griefers
are actually a very small minority amongst the 600,000 players.
Cheers!
David...
Nostromo
Anno Domini:
Hey, I've still got PST, Gothic 2 & BG2:ToB to complete & VTMB to even
start! And I've somehow gotten sucked back into the RTS world with RON/RTW
after many years away (since the MoM/Warcraft/Starcraft era). I don't think
I need to be in any hurry to give TES another chance >;-)
shadows
> Having said that, I don't think it's a particularly serious problem. But
> that's not because "the game mechanics are setup so griefing
> isn't possible" (what a ridiculous statement), it's because the griefers
> are actually a very small minority amongst the 600,000 players.
They are though. People will find loopholes which are closed in
the next patch as you describe.
Ceowulf
news:5YKdndcFmMQ...@comcast.com...
>> 1000 unique NPCs? How about clones spurting out the same wav file
>> as you walk by them in-game and a cardboard pop up with about 200
>> meaningless words that amount to "kill foozle #72"
>
> Agreed...
This has been a point in case for Bethesda. Its still a learning curve for
them too. With each new incarnation of TES they improve on it. The reason
for only ~1000 NPC's is because they are giving them all personality. They
are going to be unique, when you think about it 1000 people for a world the
size of Morrowind isnt very much... and Oblivion is going to be larger. What
makes them fill the space is that they are mobile as well, they wont just be
sitting around in one location.
And hopefully, with luck, Oblivion wont be the last, they will continue to
improve upon their formula, and one day, we will have a truely living,
breathing world which provides true Frontier:Elite style single player
gaming goodness :)
And MMO's dont count, I've played them all except EQ2, and I think they are
all rather poor in comparison to the early UO days.
Ceo-
Ceowulf
news:0tidndd-i6F...@gbronline.com...
> 'Morrowind world with over 1000 NPC's who are all unique and living
> there own lives'
>
> Well as far as that statement , I'm kind of worried about that....
> That's why I liked Gothic series so much, fewer NPCs, but more
> interesting.
> I'd rather have a 100 npcs in a gameworld that are more interesting and
> have
> better ai then a 1000 walking around just in as filler....
> just my opinion though......
>
> Still will get OBlivion, not unless reviewers trash it when it comes
> out......
Morrowind had many more than 1000 NPC's, true the vast majority were
cardboard NPC's {guards etc}.
Its "claimed" that Oblivion will have far less, with this new AI running
them all. Its agreed that the game is going to be _very_ CPU intensive not
to mention graphically.
I know its too early to get excited {though I am still checking the TES site
once a week :)} but these are the only games I've got to look forward too
now days. No one else makes CRPG's worth a grain now that the Infinity
series is dead (Gothic 3 might be a blast too hopefully).
And dont forget all you Bethesda nay sayers... they have the Fallout license
now, you would do well to wish them good fortunes and success with this
game. Because its almost garunteed that any new successful technology they
produce for the TES games will be incorporate into any forthcoming version
of Fallout!
Ceo-
James Garvin
> But if you go to a PvE server, watch out for people mind controlling
> mobs you're fighting to get your PvP flag turned on; or shadowmelding in
> front of postboxes in the hope that you'll accidentally right-click on
> them; or using whatever exploits they were using in cross-faction duels
> that is causing Blizzard to totally remove the feature..
Agreed...
> Griefing is a state of mind, an attitude, not some particular act which
> can be stopped by game changes. As long as there are players who get
> their enjoyment out of messing with other peoples' enjoyment, there will
> be something they find to do to mess with you.
Agreed....and it seems like those same greifers play every MMORPG ;-)
> Having said that, I don't think it's a particularly serious problem. But
> that's not because "the game mechanics are setup so griefing
> isn't possible" (what a ridiculous statement), it's because the griefers
> are actually a very small minority amongst the 600,000 players.
No, but it only takes a few to ruin the fun for many...
James Garvin
The problem is there are ALWAYS loopholes and the greifers ALWAY take
advantage of them...
Nostromo
+0800, Anno Domini:
You don't have to twist it around after sticking it in ffs!
Pathesda can only do one thing with the Fallout franchise, and it's another
type of 'sticking it in' & then breaking it off...*huge Shrek sigh*
James Garvin
> You don't have to twist it around after sticking it in ffs!
>
> Pathesda can only do one thing with the Fallout franchise, and it's another
> type of 'sticking it in' & then breaking it off...*huge Shrek sigh*
I donno. They may actually have something to run with*. Since the
original universe was so rich, they can only build on it. Plus, they
are making Call of Cthulu.
If CoC is bad, then maybe FO3 will be...but we'll have to wait and see.
*Bethesda: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't make FO3 first person. Also,
please try to keep with the flavor of the universe. FO was dark, FO2
wasn't as dark, but did leave us with a feeling that the world hadn't
really changed even with all that did.
Ceowulf
> Thus spake "Ceowulf" <c...@NOSPAMii.ATALLnet>, Sat, 12 Feb 2005 13:24:37
> +0800, Anno Domini:
>>And dont forget all you Bethesda nay sayers... they have the Fallout
>>license
>>now, you would do well to wish them good fortunes and success with this
>>game. Because its almost garunteed that any new successful technology they
>>produce for the TES games will be incorporate into any forthcoming version
>>of Fallout!
>
> You don't have to twist it around after sticking it in ffs!
>
> Pathesda can only do one thing with the Fallout franchise, and it's
> another
> type of 'sticking it in' & then breaking it off...*huge Shrek sigh*
lol, Nos your such a negative bastard :)
Chant with me... Fallout 3 WILL be good, Fallout 3 WILL be good... ;)
Ceo-
Nostromo
+0800, Anno Domini:
ARGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!@##@%%$^&^**&*() *whimper*
Nostromo
-0700, Anno Domini:
>Nostromo wrote:
>
>> You don't have to twist it around after sticking it in ffs!
>>
>> Pathesda can only do one thing with the Fallout franchise, and it's another
>> type of 'sticking it in' & then breaking it off...*huge Shrek sigh*
>
>I donno. They may actually have something to run with*. Since the
>original universe was so rich, they can only build on it. Plus, they
>are making Call of Cthulu.
Never grabbed me, the CoC universe - aren't there books, rpgs, movies about
it?
>If CoC is bad, then maybe FO3 will be...but we'll have to wait and see.
At least we'll have a benchmark. When is CoC out?
>*Bethesda: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't make FO3 first person. Also,
>please try to keep with the flavor of the universe. FO was dark, FO2
>wasn't as dark, but did leave us with a feeling that the world hadn't
>really changed even with all that did.
Oh yes. But I may be the only one listening *huge Shrek sigh*
It seems most software on pcs is getting dumbed down for consoles & the 3D
thing never helped non-fps games in general, imo. For instance, I'm enjoying
Rise on Nations much more than RTW & I think it's the graphics, among other
things. Some things, like party-based rpgs are just better suited to 2D
pre-rendered tilesets e.g. BG1/2 vs. NWN. OTOH, single player/char rpgs,
like Gothic1/2 can work well in fps mode, though I prefer the Kotor
over-the-shoulder view. If Fallout 3 has regular NPCs in the party as per
the 1st 2, then it *should* be 3rd-person, w/o a question. It could be made
into fps style w/o fucking up the universe & what makes it unique too much,
but it's going to take all that much more effort & care, not really
hallmarks of Bethesda from what I've seen in the past. Oh well, time & the
marketplace will tell...
Mean_Chlorine
>Agreed....and it seems like those same greifers play every MMORPG ;-)
OK, I took it as long as I could, I can't take it no more: GRIEFERS.
Grief, griefing, griefers. As in "causing others grief".
Sorry, I know I'm being anal, but "greif" just hurts my eyes.
--
The US employs divide-and-conquer against EU
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-02/10/content_2567438.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3981499.stm
http://www.fsfinalword.com/archive/Divide_and_conquer.html
The US is no longer our ally: Federalize NOW!
Xocyll
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
Training mobs, teleporting mobs into stores etc.
Both of those have and do happen in COH.
Sure the impact is minimal, but it's still griefing.
Any and likely every online game has griefing in one form or another.
PvP is not a requirement for this, just the ability to fuck up someone
else's play experience in some way.
Just because something doesn't bother YOU doesn't mean that it doesn't
bother anyone.
Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
Knight37
> I was wondering if there was a large portion of this news group
> eagerly awaiting this spectacular looking game?
>
> I've never really seen graphics like what they are showing as in game
> footage... blows Doom3 and Half Life 2 away, AND the world is much
> larger than the Morrowind world with over 1000 NPC's who are all
> unique and living there own lives. This time the NPC's are going to be
> living day and night cycles just like those in the best of Ultima's,
> with their own jobs, desires and intentions. Something called Radiant
> AI {developed in house by Bethesda} will be running the show here.
>
> Excited anyone?
If it truely has 1000 unique NPCs that are actually worth talking to I
might be interested.
Morrowind was just "eh" for me. And it had a broken game system. I hope
they fix that some.
--
Knight37
The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
shadows
> shadows <sha...@whitefang.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
> the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>
>>On 2005-02-11, James Garvin <jgarv...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>> shadows wrote:
>>
>>>> See. You Morrowind players do need to grow a brain :) No modern
>>>> MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
>>>> isn't possible.
>>>
>>> ?????????????????????????????
>>
>>Please name an MMO released in the last two years which is not
>>all PvP (Eve Online and Lineage II) which allows griefing.
>>
>>They don't exist anymore. You can try to grief but your impact
>>will be minimal.
>
> Training mobs, teleporting mobs into stores etc.
> Both of those have and do happen in COH.
>
> Sure the impact is minimal, but it's still griefing.
>
> Any and likely every online game has griefing in one form or another.
So we shouldn't play MMOs because of some minimal griefing and
stick to Morrowind. That's the argument that was presented which
is ludicrous.
Courageous
>Morrowind was just "eh" for me. And it had a broken game system. I hope
>they fix that some.
DF and MW both were the same for me: lots of promise, kind of dry in
execution. Perhaps whatever it was that makes me consider Planescape: Torment
the best game of all time made DF and MW seem kind of hollow to me...
C//
Andrew Chew
"shadows" <sha...@whitefang.com> wrote in message
news:slrnd0nahq....@helena.whitefang.com...
> Why?
>
> Any MMO has this kind of world. SWG does it better with honest to
> goodness players setting up museums and charging for entry.
>
Some people don't like paying monthly to play their games.
> Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
> with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single bug. My
FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia FX
video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
Ceowulf
news:ajqs01tg7c5r8512r...@4ax.com...
> DF and MW both were the same for me: lots of promise, kind of dry in
> execution. Perhaps whatever it was that makes me consider Planescape:
> Torment
> the best game of all time made DF and MW seem kind of hollow to me...
To be fair I think every game created except for perhaps Baldurs Gate 2 is
hollow in comparison to Planescape: Torment. In terms of material and depth
there is no par.
Ceo-
Peter Huebner
and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg says...
>
> > Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
> > with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>
> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single bug. My
> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia FX
> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
>
No bug? This is majorly weird. *Everybody* on alt.games.morrowind
reports encountering the memory leak bug, and the slowdown and C2D that
goes with it. For me, that is the single major turnoff of Morrowind.
In Daggerfall you kept falling through the scenery. Put one foot wrong
when crossing a threshold in a dungeon and you'd go sailing off through
the walls ... it happened to me countless times.
Arena is mostly remembered for its integer overflow exploits, as well as
random crashes.
Nevertheless I have really enjoyed playing Arena and now still play
Morrowind. FPS are totally immaterial to a game like this, who gives a
flying fig.
But it would be nice if the programming were a little less shoddy.
(Yes, I regard variable overflows and memory leaks as shoddy programming
- that sort of thing is elemental practices stuff and just shouldn't
happen).
-Peter
Andrew Chew
"Peter Huebner" <no....@this.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c79d2f27...@news.nzl.ihugultra.co.nz...
> In article <110825746...@despina.uk.clara.net>,
> and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg says...
>>
>> > Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
>> > with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>>
>> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single bug.
>> My
>> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia FX
>> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
>>
>
> No bug? This is majorly weird. *Everybody* on alt.games.morrowind
> reports encountering the memory leak bug, and the slowdown and C2D that
> goes with it. For me, that is the single major turnoff of Morrowind.
I played Morrowind 2x through and didn't experience any slowdowns or C2Ds..
Fps can be an issue even for rpgs. Too low and the game stutters.
Mean_Chlorine
>and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg says...
>>
>> > Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
>> > with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>>
>> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single bug. My
>> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia FX
>> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
>>
>
>No bug? This is majorly weird. *Everybody* on alt.games.morrowind
>reports encountering the memory leak bug, and the slowdown and C2D that
>goes with it.
I think Andrew is misremembering. I really, truly, a _lot_ doubt you
could play through morrowind and not encounter _any_ CTD's, graphics
glitches, corrupted savegames, quest characters which'd fallen through
the map, getting stuck on scenery, slowdowns, or other bugs.
However, AFAIK none of them were showstoppers.
Briarroot
>
> I played Morrowind 2x through and didn't experience any slowdowns or C2Ds..
> Fps can be an issue even for rpgs. Too low and the game stutters.
I consider this to be a minor miracle!
For me, Morrowind crashed-to-desktop with regularity, but that didn't
stop me from enjoying the game. I soon learned the symptoms of an
approaching crash, and played around them. I loved the game despite
its design and programming flaws.
Andrew Chew
"Briarroot" <woo...@iwonantispam.com> wrote in message
news:110ufng...@corp.supernews.com...
> Andrew Chew wrote:
>>
>> I played Morrowind 2x through and didn't experience any slowdowns or
>> C2Ds.. Fps can be an issue even for rpgs. Too low and the game stutters.
>
> I consider this to be a minor miracle!
Seems you're not the only one.
>
> For me, Morrowind crashed-to-desktop with regularity, but that didn't stop
> me from enjoying the game. I soon learned the symptoms of an approaching
> crash, and played around them. I loved the game despite its design and
> programming flaws.
Just to satisfy my curiosity, may I ask what video card and drivers you use?
Andrew Chew
"Mean_Chlorine" <mike_no...@NOSPAMyahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:78au01598l503mgko...@4ax.com...
> Thusly Peter Huebner <no....@this.address> Spake Unto All:
>
>>and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg says...
>>>
>>> > Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
>>> > with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>>>
>>> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single
>>> bug. My
>>> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia
>>> FX
>>> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
>>>
>>
>>No bug? This is majorly weird. *Everybody* on alt.games.morrowind
>>reports encountering the memory leak bug, and the slowdown and C2D that
>>goes with it.
>
> I think Andrew is misremembering. I really, truly, a _lot_ doubt you
> could play through morrowind and not encounter _any_ CTD's, graphics
> glitches, corrupted savegames, quest characters which'd fallen through
> the map, getting stuck on scenery, slowdowns, or other bugs.
>
> However, AFAIK none of them were showstoppers.
I did not experience those problems you listed except perhaps the character
getting stuck but I didn't consider that a bug, more like a feature. Just
because you were unfortunate enough to experience those bugs doesn't mean
someone else on a different setup would experience them.
Knight37
with:
> I think Andrew is misremembering. I really, truly, a _lot_ doubt you
> could play through morrowind and not encounter _any_ CTD's, graphics
> glitches, corrupted savegames, quest characters which'd fallen through
> the map, getting stuck on scenery, slowdowns, or other bugs.
>
> However, AFAIK none of them were showstoppers.
Maybe he played the Xbox version. :)
Oh wait, no, it was buggy too.
Andrew Chew
"Knight37" <knig...@email.com> wrote in message
news:Xns95FC55D9F...@130.133.1.4...
> Mean_Chlorine <mike_no...@NOSPAMyahoo.co.uk> once tried to test me
> with:
>
>> I think Andrew is misremembering. I really, truly, a _lot_ doubt you
>> could play through morrowind and not encounter _any_ CTD's, graphics
>> glitches, corrupted savegames, quest characters which'd fallen through
>> the map, getting stuck on scenery, slowdowns, or other bugs.
>>
>> However, AFAIK none of them were showstoppers.
>
> Maybe he played the Xbox version. :)
>
shadows
Try KOTOR2. There are things in that game I've never seen done
before in any RPG.
shadows
>
> "shadows" <sha...@whitefang.com> wrote in message
> news:slrnd0nahq....@helena.whitefang.com...
>
>> Why?
>>
>> Any MMO has this kind of world. SWG does it better with honest to
>> goodness players setting up museums and charging for entry.
>>
>
> Some people don't like paying monthly to play their games.
That's a different argument which has been discussed in depth in
other threads.
>> Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
>> with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>
> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single bug. My
> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia FX
> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
Actually I had an Nvidia Geforce Ti 4200 when I played
Morrowind. I haven't tried it with the new Nvidia Geforce 5900
which, incidently, is a very good card. KOTOR2 runs without a
single frame being dropped.
Courageous
>Try KOTOR2. There are things in that game I've never seen done
>before in any RPG.
The reviews for K2 were kind of blah, saying that it wasn't
much above and beyond K1. You have a contrarian view. Why?
(I played K1, and thought it was okay, but was going to skip
K2).
C//
Adam Russell
"Peter Huebner" <no....@this.address> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c79d2f27...@news.nzl.ihugultra.co.nz...
> and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg says...
>>
>> > Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
>> > with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>>
>> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single bug.
>> My
>> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia FX
>> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
>>
>
> No bug? This is majorly weird. *Everybody* on alt.games.morrowind
> reports encountering the memory leak bug, and the slowdown and C2D that
> goes with it.
I didnt.
Xocyll
the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the
signs say:
>
Not once did Morrowind ever crash to desktop for me.
Not once did Tribunal ever crash to desktop for me.
Bloodmoon on the other hand really needed me to exit and reboot about
every hour or so or it would definitely CTD.
One serious memory leak in that addon.
That was with a geforce3ti200 with 28.xx - 30.xx drivers, 512 meg ram on
win98se.
I didn't/don't have loads of background apps running though and I don't
leave anything at the MS defaults.
Adam Russell
"Mean_Chlorine" <mike_no...@NOSPAMyahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:78au01598l503mgko...@4ax.com...
>
>>and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg says...
>>>
>>> > Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
>>> > with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>>>
>>> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single
>>> bug. My
>>> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia
>>> FX
>>> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
>>>
>>
>>No bug? This is majorly weird. *Everybody* on alt.games.morrowind
>>reports encountering the memory leak bug, and the slowdown and C2D that
>>goes with it.
>
> I think Andrew is misremembering. I really, truly, a _lot_ doubt you
> could play through morrowind and not encounter _any_ CTD's, graphics
> glitches, corrupted savegames, quest characters which'd fallen through
> the map, getting stuck on scenery, slowdowns, or other bugs.
LOL. One says he didnt have any bugs, and the other claims that EVERYBODY
reported memory leaks and slowdowns. Which is more exaggeration?
Personally, I had a *few* CTD, but never any slowdowns. It was not a major
problem, nor was it worse than many other good games I have played. To
imply that it shows that Bethesda makes crap products is completely
unjustified imo.
Jim Vieira
news:110829562...@despina.uk.clara.net...
>I did not experience those problems you listed except perhaps the character
> getting stuck but I didn't consider that a bug, more like a feature. Just
> because you were unfortunate enough to experience those bugs doesn't mean
I'm a bigtime MW supporter. And yet the idea that it's so utterly
bug free is just plain laughable. You can't have played it very
far really. Excellent game, been through the plot twice now.
But I too have had the occasional CTD and slowdowns from
memory leaks. Every 2-3 hours of play I have to reboot to get
smooth play again. Seriously, what you are saying doesn't
jive with reality. Either you are deliberately misinterpeting it,
or haven't played it much at all.
David Carson
> "Briarroot" <woo...@iwonantispam.com> wrote in message
> news:110ufng...@corp.supernews.com...
>>me from enjoying the game. I soon learned the symptoms of an approaching
>>crash, and played around them. I loved the game despite its design and
>>programming flaws.
>
> Just to satisfy my curiosity, may I ask what video card and drivers you use?
I wouldn't bother going down that road. As I recall, Morrowind crashed
every 5 minutes for some people, and never for others, but I don't
remember anyone finding any strong correlation between hardware and
drivers and crashes or lack or crashes. I mean, obviously some hardware
liked it and some didn't, but it definitely wasn't anything as simple as
"this video card is good" or "this driver revision is bad".
I think if you take every possible combination of video card, sound
card, CPU, motherboard, case fan, and drivers for all of the above: a
random selection of them will work reliably, the others won't.
Cheers!
David...
Xocyll
Not quite.
YOU jumped in saying that the only people who would like Morrowind
haven't played an MMO and/or are users of god-mode mods.
"The only people who like Morrowind are those that haven't tried
real MMOs or those who like to download mods that adds a +5 sword
to their inventory and makes little butterflies appear around
their avatars head."
Then you went farther out on the thin branch with "No modern
MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
isn't possible."
You've been given examples of griefing that exist in most MMORPGs and
have nothing to do with PvP.
Now you're trying to duck out and claim that this was suddenly about
MMORPGs and people playing Morrowind instead to avoid griefing.
You brought MMORPGs into this, the discussion wasn't about them.
Briarroot
> "Briarroot" <woo...@iwonantispam.com> wrote in message
> news:110ufng...@corp.supernews.com.
>
>>me from enjoying the game. I soon learned the symptoms of an approaching
>>crash, and played around them. I loved the game despite its design and
>>programming flaws.
>
>
> Just to satisfy my curiosity, may I ask what video card and drivers you use?
I'm still using a GeForce3 Ti 500 with NVidia 4403 drivers on a WinME
system.
Yes, everything's out of date - but still running beautifully! ;-)
Briarroot
>
> LOL. One says he didnt have any bugs, and the other claims that EVERYBODY
> reported memory leaks and slowdowns. Which is more exaggeration?
Heh!. I read everything with a skeptical mindset. Moronic "experts"
on UseNet abound.
> Personally, I had a *few* CTD, but never any slowdowns. It was not a major
> problem, nor was it worse than many other good games I have played.
Play style was a factor in how often the game crashed. Teleporting
frequently, or using the striders and boats, seemed to induce more
crashes, while walking everywhere seemed to induce less. Also, those
with 1GB of memory or more, reported far fewer crashes, or even none
at all.
I have an older system with only 512MB, and I had several CTDs until I
became accustomed to how the game operated. I simply learned to
restart about every 2 or 3 hours, which neatly avoided the problem.
> To imply that it shows that Bethesda makes crap products is completely
> unjustified imo.
Absolutely.
Ceowulf
Wow that's a hell of a claim! As Courageous said could you please
extrapolate a bit? Sounds like it might be worth getting afterall?
Ceo-
shadows
> shadows <sha...@whitefang.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
> the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>>So we shouldn't play MMOs because of some minimal griefing and
>>stick to Morrowind. That's the argument that was presented which
>>is ludicrous.
>
> Not quite.
>
> YOU jumped in saying that the only people who would like Morrowind
> haven't played an MMO and/or are users of god-mode mods.
>
> "The only people who like Morrowind are those that haven't tried
> real MMOs or those who like to download mods that adds a +5 sword
> to their inventory and makes little butterflies appear around
> their avatars head."
>
> Then you went farther out on the thin branch with "No modern
> MMO allows griefing. The game mechanics are setup so griefing
> isn't possible."
>
> You've been given examples of griefing that exist in most MMORPGs and
> have nothing to do with PvP.
>
> Now you're trying to duck out and claim that this was suddenly about
> MMORPGs and people playing Morrowind instead to avoid griefing.
>
>
> You brought MMORPGs into this, the discussion wasn't about them.
So what if I brought MMOs in? The argument turned to not playing
MMOs because of griefing. That's silly.
Andrew Chew
> Adam Russell wrote
>>
>> LOL. One says he didnt have any bugs, and the other claims that
>> EVERYBODY reported memory leaks and slowdowns. Which is more
>> exaggeration?
>
> Heh!. I read everything with a skeptical mindset. Moronic "experts" on
> UseNet abound.
>
>
>> Personally, I had a *few* CTD, but never any slowdowns. It was not a
>> major problem, nor was it worse than many other good games I have played.
>
> Play style was a factor in how often the game crashed. Teleporting
> frequently, or using the striders and boats, seemed to induce more
> crashes, while walking everywhere seemed to induce less. Also, those with
> 1GB of memory or more, reported far fewer crashes, or even none at all.
Yup, I have 1GB ram. The game runs really smooth on my x800 xtpe with all
graphic options maxed out :D
Andrew Chew
"Jim Vieira" <whip...@wi.rr.com.remove.this.to.reply> wrote in message
news:f3NPd.16992$0h5....@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com...
> "Andrew Chew" <and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg> wrote in message
> news:110829562...@despina.uk.clara.net...
>>I did not experience those problems you listed except perhaps the
>>character
>> getting stuck but I didn't consider that a bug, more like a feature. Just
>> because you were unfortunate enough to experience those bugs doesn't mean
>> someone else on a different setup would experience them. \
>
> I'm a bigtime MW supporter. And yet the idea that it's so utterly
> bug free is just plain laughable. You can't have played it very
> far really.
By and large I stuck to the main quest. Midway, I found the pace of game too
slow and used "coc" to move between cities.
I didn't go through all the quests as all I wanted was to see how the game
ended. I only played MW, even though I have Tribunal and Bloodmoon as well.
> Excellent game, been through the plot twice now.
> But I too have had the occasional CTD and slowdowns from
> memory leaks. Every 2-3 hours of play I have to reboot to get
> smooth play again.
As I said before, no slowdowns or CTDs whatsoever. If you look around, there
are others who don't experience these either. This is unlike say KotOR,
where I have experienced the occasional rare CTD.
> Seriously, what you are saying doesn't
> jive with reality.
Whose reality, yours or mine?
> Either you are deliberately misinterpeting it,
> or haven't played it much at all.
>
I guess how much you play is relative. I did play through the main quest
twice, albeit with a bit of cheating.
Some bugs could have been features to me, but I think nobody misses CTDs...
shadows
> "shadows" <sha...@whitefang.com> wrote in message
>> Try KOTOR2. There are things in that game I've never seen done
>> before in any RPG.
>
> Wow that's a hell of a claim! As Courageous said could you please
> extrapolate a bit? Sounds like it might be worth getting afterall?
I posted to his reply and I'd love to post more but I'll ruin
it.
I'll say it's NOT your typical Star Wars RPG. The villians in
this game have real depth. The artwork is beautiful even with the
out dated graphics. One villian makes Darth Vader look like
R2D2. Seriously, he was so creepy he gave me nightmares.
Greg Johnson
I have 1Gb of ram too, and it usually takes about 4 hours of normal play
before it crashes from the memory leak. This is apparently caused by a
bug in their object loading/unloading code, and there are several things
that make a crash more likely - changing cells often, having a large
view distance with lots of light or night eye on, or even just changing
your clothes. If you ever wanted to actually cause a crash you can
almost guarantee one if you spend a while changing your armour between
different models.
shadows
KOTOR2 was definetly rushed. You can tell by the little bugs here
and there. Also some of the writing takes a while to understand
because it hasn't been edited and revised.
That said it comes with a lot of goodness in it. Like PST
dialogue options are affected by stats and skills. Like PST
things aren't what they seem and sheer brute force isn't always
victorious. There is at least one battle that must be won in
words and not your lightsabre.
I could go on but I'm afraid I'll ruin it. It's a masterpiece
that needed about 3 more months of testing and refinement. Get it
if you have an Nvidia card or wait until they fix the ATI issues.
Andrew Chew
KotOR 2 runs on OGL, which Nvidia excels in apparently.
Andrew Chew
"Xocyll" <Xoc...@kingston.net> wrote in message
news:0c6v015ickpqdvtka...@4ax.com...
> "Andrew Chew" <and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg> looked up from reading
> the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the
> signs say:
>
>>
>>"Peter Huebner" <no....@this.address> wrote in message
>>news:MPG.1c79d2f27...@news.nzl.ihugultra.co.nz...
>>> In article <110825746...@despina.uk.clara.net>,
>>> and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg says...
>>>>
>>>> > Bethesda already proved numerous times to release a buggy product
>>>> > with no game balance and low FPS due to bad programming.
>>>>
>>>> Funny I played through the entire game and didn't encounter a single
>>>> bug.
>>>> My
>>>> FPS ranged from 40 to 260(mode). Methinks the weak link is your Nvidia
>>>> FX
>>>> video card, which don't perfrom too well with D3D games such as MW.
>>>>
>>>
>>> No bug? This is majorly weird. *Everybody* on alt.games.morrowind
>>> reports encountering the memory leak bug, and the slowdown and C2D that
>>> goes with it. For me, that is the single major turnoff of Morrowind.
>>
>>I played Morrowind 2x through and didn't experience any slowdowns or
>>C2Ds..
>>Fps can be an issue even for rpgs. Too low and the game stutters.
>
> Not once did Morrowind ever crash to desktop for me.
> Not once did Tribunal ever crash to desktop for me.
Thanks, at least somebody else didn't experience CTDs. I run MW on my
dedicated gaming machine with no other extraneous applications running in
the background.
Sarah Jaernecke
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg:
> Origin built the best games they could envision technically and
> expected you to upgrade your computer to play their games. Bethesda
> does the same. I upgraded my system to play Morrowind and I'll
> upgrade to play Oblivion.
Same here -- except for Dragon Age (which is also a way off) I'm not
really looking forward to anything else, so I can hold off upgrading
until Oblivion is released. As long as it's not delayed by a year or
two, that is. :p
*If* Bethesda pulls this off (and I must admit I'm skeptical but
hopeful), it could be the closest thing to a successor that the Ultima
series has ever had. I have to say I'm worried about bugs, though --
Morrowind still has a ton of 'em despite three-odd patches. So I
probably won't grab Oblivion right off the shelf. Sometimes being a
second-rate customer (i.e. European) has its advantages, meaning that
there may be a patch already when the game becomes available over here.
--
Sarah Jaernecke
Nightfire --==(UDIC)==--
"Don't let the people who live on hate and fear govern how you live."
- Melissa Etheridge
James Garvin
> So what if I brought MMOs in? The argument turned to not playing
> MMOs because of griefing. That's silly.
You are the one that stated that griefing can no longer happen in modern
MMORPGs. That statement was refuted and yet, you kept on...
shadows
Kept on what? Someone else claimed Morrowind with its static
clones walking around with cardboard signs saying "hi, kill
fozzle jingo-bingo and i will give you +4 sword of darkness" is
better than an MMO where everyone griefs.
My response, and I maintain it, is that the griefing on MMOs is
vastly overstated. Most of the time in-game mechanics protect you
from it.
James Garvin
> Kept on what? Someone else claimed Morrowind with its static
> clones walking around with cardboard signs saying "hi, kill
> fozzle jingo-bingo and i will give you +4 sword of darkness" is
> better than an MMO where everyone griefs.
Kept claiming that somehow MMORPGs == Morrowind
> My response, and I maintain it, is that the griefing on MMOs is
> vastly overstated. Most of the time in-game mechanics protect you
> from it.
This just isn't true.
Mean_Chlorine
>Kept claiming that somehow MMORPGs == Morrowind
IMHO Morrowind DOES feel like a MMOG where you're the only player.
--
The US employs divide-and-conquer against EU
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-02/10/content_2567438.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3981499.stm
http://www.fsfinalword.com/archive/Divide_and_conquer.html
The US is no longer our ally: Federalize NOW!
noman
<jgarv...@comcast.net> wrote:
>Nostromo wrote:
>
>> You don't have to twist it around after sticking it in ffs!
>>
>> Pathesda can only do one thing with the Fallout franchise, and it's another
>> type of 'sticking it in' & then breaking it off...*huge Shrek sigh*
>
>I donno. They may actually have something to run with*. Since the
>original universe was so rich, they can only build on it. Plus, they
>are making Call of Cthulu.
>
>If CoC is bad, then maybe FO3 will be...but we'll have to wait and see.
Bethesda is only publishing Call of Cthulhu. The game is developed by
Headfirst - their previous titles include Simon the Sorceror, Elvira,
Waxworks etc.
>*Bethesda: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't make FO3 first person. Also,
>please try to keep with the flavor of the universe. FO was dark, FO2
>wasn't as dark, but did leave us with a feeling that the world hadn't
>really changed even with all that did.
Todd Howard (project lead - Oblivion and Fallout3) on 'things which
differentiate Fallout games'
".... Outside of the obvious flavor and setting, the number one thing
is stronger characters. Fallout really set the standard for me on
believable people, good dialogue, and character choice and
consequence. With Elder Scrolls, we do aim for something enormous, and
we simply can't focus on say - 20 to 40 really deep strong characters
and just do them. With Oblivion, we're doing a much better job than
we've done before, but the scale of game is so different that without
sacrificing some of what makes The Elder Scrolls what it is, I don't
think we'd be able to have the same level of characterization in NPCs
Fallout did. So with Fallout 3, that's something we want to do well, a
limited number of super-deep NPCs..........."
http://www.duckandcover.cx/content.php?id=66
--
Noman
shadows
> Todd Howard (project lead - Oblivion and Fallout3) on 'things which
> differentiate Fallout games'
>
> ".... Outside of the obvious flavor and setting, the number one thing
> is stronger characters. Fallout really set the standard for me on
> believable people, good dialogue, and character choice and
> consequence. With Elder Scrolls, we do aim for something enormous, and
> we simply can't focus on say - 20 to 40 really deep strong characters
> and just do them. With Oblivion, we're doing a much better job than
> we've done before, but the scale of game is so different that without
> sacrificing some of what makes The Elder Scrolls what it is, I don't
> think we'd be able to have the same level of characterization in NPCs
> Fallout did. So with Fallout 3, that's something we want to do well, a
> limited number of super-deep NPCs..........."
>
> http://www.duckandcover.cx/content.php?id=66
Good thing they realize that but they don't have talent to write
the kind of dialogue FO3 needs. We'll see though.
Courageous
>> ".... Outside of the obvious flavor and setting, the number one thing
>> is stronger characters. Fallout really set the standard for me on
>> believable people, good dialogue, and character choice and
>> consequence."
Not to mention, pure and simple wit:
... your lawfully wedded, uh..., other?
The fallout writers had more intellect in their left pinky than
whatever bit of intelligence gets put into most computer games
these days.
C//
shadows
I agree. They are certainly very talented.
Sadly all these guys went to companies like Troika and Obsidian
Entertainment. In the last year both of these companies released
half polished games that needed some serious testing. Both
companies blame their publisher.
Now if you can get those talented designers, artists, and writers
to work for one company with solid project managers we'd see much
better games. On the other hand we might just be seeing growing
pains and better things to come. Too bad the KOTOR license and
the VTM license were casualties.
Now lets hope Obsidian gets KOTOR3 and a realistic timeline to do
it in along with better project management experience.
Nostromo
Anno Domini:
Yup. Even the manuals were so funny I read them twice! (Well, ok, I read
most manuals at least once...*blush*)
--
No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again.
Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit?
I feel like the maid; "I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for... for ten minutes!"
Replace 'spamfree' with the other word for 'maze' to reply via email.
James Garvin
> Sadly all these guys went to companies like Troika and Obsidian
> Entertainment. In the last year both of these companies released
> half polished games that needed some serious testing. Both
> companies blame their publisher.
Too true. Troika COULD be a great company, but sadly never will.
Obsidian could still prove themselves, I'll buy that KOTOR 2 was rushed
and that the publisher wanted to release it that way...but do it
again...once bitten twice shy.
> Now if you can get those talented designers, artists, and writers
> to work for one company with solid project managers we'd see much
> better games. On the other hand we might just be seeing growing
> pains and better things to come. Too bad the KOTOR license and
> the VTM license were casualties.
That is part of the problem, they are only designers, artists, and
writers. Where are the programmers?
VTM was never that great, but Troika didn't make it shine like they
should have. KOTOR could have grown into much much more, but it is just
a decent sequel with tons o' bugs.
> Now lets hope Obsidian gets KOTOR3 and a realistic timeline to do
> it in along with better project management experience.
Right...IMHO, it will be pushed out the door in a year. Console games
have to come out fast and furious, or how would people know to buy them? ;-)
shadows
> shadows wrote:
>> Now if you can get those talented designers, artists, and writers
>> to work for one company with solid project managers we'd see much
>> better games. On the other hand we might just be seeing growing
>> pains and better things to come. Too bad the KOTOR license and
>> the VTM license were casualties.
>
> That is part of the problem, they are only designers, artists, and
> writers. Where are the programmers?
Working or Valve, Id, and some other companies that make cutting
edge 3d engines. Other than that those of us without the
inclination to write 3d engines tend to work in fields outside of
the game industry (and probably are on average better off).
Incidently Troika was all about "Design, Art, Code" with
technology being the last thing on their list. Look where that
got them. Arrogance led to their downfall.
> Right...IMHO, it will be pushed out the door in a year. Console games
> have to come out fast and furious, or how would people know to buy them? ;-)
Why didn't Bioware rush KOTOR1? More project management
experience. Sure it had bugs on release but it all got fixed and
still made GOTY.
It was released on the Xbox first too.
Given the Euro patch for KOTOR2 just fixes the manual and nothing
else I suspect we won't see KOTOR2 get any major fixes.
James Garvin
> Working or Valve, Id, and some other companies that make cutting
> edge 3d engines. Other than that those of us without the
> inclination to write 3d engines tend to work in fields outside of
> the game industry (and probably are on average better off).
Generally, yes. However, every game shop needs at leasts a handful of
programmers...
> Incidently Troika was all about "Design, Art, Code" with
> technology being the last thing on their list. Look where that
> got them. Arrogance led to their downfall.
Exactly. They need to change their motto to "Code, Design, Art."
Arcanum was a bug fest, VTM:B is a bug fest and they haven't really done
ANYTHING as far as coding for a while...they need to think more about
code and less about Art and Design until they can release a stable game.
>>Right...IMHO, it will be pushed out the door in a year. Console games
>>have to come out fast and furious, or how would people know to buy them? ;-)
> Why didn't Bioware rush KOTOR1? More project management
> experience. Sure it had bugs on release but it all got fixed and
> still made GOTY.
> It was released on the Xbox first too.
I know...I was just pointing out the EA mentality of most companies
now...You have to have the yearly release or the world will end!
> Given the Euro patch for KOTOR2 just fixes the manual and nothing
> else I suspect we won't see KOTOR2 get any major fixes.
I'm not holding my breath. I'm really surprised that Lucas Arts would
allow a game to be released in such a condition...'course they did give
us Rebellion and Battlefront ;-)
shadows
> I'm not holding my breath. I'm really surprised that Lucas Arts would
> allow a game to be released in such a condition...'course they did give
> us Rebellion and Battlefront ;-)
If you want to see something funny go to www.obsidianent.com and
read their forums. The developers spend more time in their own
forum about game design pounding their chest than they do
replying to queries from customers. This isn't looking good at
all, and LA isn't the only one to blame.
Actually it's very disheartening. I could care less what magical
hoola hoops Chris Avellone can jump through. I want answers :)
Xocyll
reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good,
the signs say:
>"Andrew Chew" <and...@nospam.alumni.nus.edu.sg> wrote in message
>news:110829562...@despina.uk.clara.net...
>>I did not experience those problems you listed except perhaps the character
>> getting stuck but I didn't consider that a bug, more like a feature. Just
>> because you were unfortunate enough to experience those bugs doesn't mean
>> someone else on a different setup would experience them. \
>
>I'm a bigtime MW supporter. And yet the idea that it's so utterly
>bug free is just plain laughable.
Has anyone claimed Morrowind is bug free?
>You can't have played it very far really.
Multiple characters following different paths.
Completed the main quest in MW 3 timer with different characters.
Tribunal 2x with different characters (started in basic MW.)
No crashes.
>Excellent game, been through the plot twice now.
>But I too have had the occasional CTD and slowdowns from
>memory leaks. Every 2-3 hours of play I have to reboot to get
>smooth play again. Seriously, what you are saying doesn't
>jive with reality. Either you are deliberately misinterpeting it,
>or haven't played it much at all.
How much ram did you have, since that seems to have been a big part of
the slowdowns some people got, as did the OS they ran under.
MW got a bit choppy in cities, but for the most part the framerate never
dropped down into slideshow land.
At one point I had a vampire character with so much inherent speed as
well as the boots of blinding speed I crossed one of those map grids in
just a few seconds. Now that got a bit choppy when I was running full
out - something like a 336 speed it had - don't know how exactly, but I
suspect a bug in the vamp conversion routine that didn't count on the
BofBS and remove them from the stat boosting routine.
As I recall, a lot of the bad performance issues at release were due to
the copy protection used and stopped when Bethesda neutered it with the
first patch.
You're forgetting the first rule of game bugs - they never hit everyone.
Just an aside, but remember all the bugs Diablo2 had?
I played the release version unpatched until LoD came out and I was then
brought up to 1.07. I never ran into any of the various bugs present
from 1.00 to 1.06 barring of course the unseen ones like bow damage not
being calculated properly that you couldn't avoid if you used a bow.
None of the showstopper bugs or the crashes hit me, but they sure hit
other people.
Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
Hong Ooi
>
>Working or Valve, Id, and some other companies that make cutting
>edge 3d engines. Other than that those of us without the
>inclination to write 3d engines tend to work in fields outside of
>the game industry (and probably are on average better off).
>
>Incidently Troika was all about "Design, Art, Code" with
>technology being the last thing on their list. Look where that
>got them. Arrogance led to their downfall.
You know, I seem to recall Ion Storm having a similar motto....
--
Hong Ooi | "COUNTERSRTIKE IS AN REAL-TIME
ho...@zipworld.com.au | STRATEGY GAME!!!"
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/ | -- RR
Sydney, Australia |
Bateau
>shadows wrote:
>
>
>> Working or Valve, Id, and some other companies that make cutting
>> edge 3d engines. Other than that those of us without the
>> inclination to write 3d engines tend to work in fields outside of
>> the game industry (and probably are on average better off).
>
>Generally, yes. However, every game shop needs at leasts a handful of
>programmers...
>
>> Incidently Troika was all about "Design, Art, Code" with
>> technology being the last thing on their list. Look where that
>> got them. Arrogance led to their downfall.
>
>Exactly. They need to change their motto to "Code, Design, Art."
>Arcanum was a bug fest, VTM:B is a bug fest and they haven't really done
>ANYTHING as far as coding for a while...they need to think more about
>code and less about Art and Design until they can release a stable game.
Morrowind crashes every time I press the Enter key.
You can't use "Escape" to choose "Cancel" or "Exit" on any windows.
When you click on the middle of a scroll bar it moves the bar a tiny
amount in that direction instead of moving it to that spot (that's what
the scroll arrows are for dickheads).
RPG developers must be allergic to good coders.
Simon Nejmann
wrote:
>On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:53:56 GMT, shadows <sha...@whitefang.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Working or Valve, Id, and some other companies that make cutting
>>edge 3d engines. Other than that those of us without the
>>inclination to write 3d engines tend to work in fields outside of
>>the game industry (and probably are on average better off).
>>
>>Incidently Troika was all about "Design, Art, Code" with
>>technology being the last thing on their list. Look where that
>>got them. Arrogance led to their downfall.
>
>You know, I seem to recall Ion Storm having a similar motto....
And they did make Deus Ex...
Of course, all the "geniuses" were hard at work with Dikatana at the
time, so perhaps that left some breathing room for the guys working on
Deus Ex. And we also know what the result were when the kings saw the
success that was Deus Ex, and decided to come down and bestow their
wisdom on the heir...
--
Regards
Simon Nejmann
shadows
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:04:19 +1100, Hong Ooi <ho...@zipworld.com.au>
> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:53:56 GMT, shadows <sha...@whitefang.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>Working or Valve, Id, and some other companies that make cutting
>>>edge 3d engines. Other than that those of us without the
>>>inclination to write 3d engines tend to work in fields outside of
>>>the game industry (and probably are on average better off).
>>>
>>>Incidently Troika was all about "Design, Art, Code" with
>>>technology being the last thing on their list. Look where that
>>>got them. Arrogance led to their downfall.
>>
>>You know, I seem to recall Ion Storm having a similar motto....
>
> And they did make Deus Ex...
That's another Ion Storm Austin which had different talent than
Ion Storm Dallas. The one in Dallas failed with Daikatana. The
one in Austin did the new Deus Ex and Thief Dead Shadows. Two
different teams.
Alexander Kay
>Morrowind crashes every time I press the Enter key.
>You can't use "Escape" to choose "Cancel" or "Exit" on any windows.
>When you click on the middle of a scroll bar it moves the bar a tiny
>amount in that direction instead of moving it to that spot (that's what
>the scroll arrows are for dickheads).
>RPG developers must be allergic to good coders.
Technically, all but one of those complaints aren't due to bad coding,
they are bad interface design. Now, often enough the interface design is
left to the coders by default, but it really is its own discipline, which
is not strongly related to coding.
Alexx
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers.
alexx@carolingiaSPAMBL@CK.org http://www.panix.com/~alexx
"I didn't resolve the questions... and I find that entertaining.
And if my life were to end tomorrow, it would be fulfilled in
that manner. I would say, 'The questions have been terrific.'"
-- Jack Kirby on his work
Courageous
> Now, often enough the interface design is
>left to the coders by default, but it really is its own discipline, which
>is not strongly related to coding.
It's only related to coding insofar as coding is required to implement
the interface. The discipline itself is really the intersection between
art (aesthetics) and human usability (ergonomics).
C//
hammerstein
wrote:
>It's only related to coding insofar as coding is required to implement
>the interface. The discipline itself is really the intersection between
>art (aesthetics) and human usability (ergonomics).
>
>C//
It all comes under the heading of Cognitive Science, and most of the
programmers here (where I work, not c.s.i.p.g.r) don't understand it
worth a shit.
The biggest hindrance to teaching someone something is knowing it
yourself. Which is analogous to the problem that occurs when you get a
programmer that knows a system inside out to define its human
interface.
j.
James Garvin
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 07:50:02 -0800, Courageous <dont...@spam.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>It's only related to coding insofar as coding is required to implement
>>the interface. The discipline itself is really the intersection between
>>art (aesthetics) and human usability (ergonomics).
>>
>>C//
>
>
> It all comes under the heading of Cognitive Science, and most of the
> programmers here (where I work, not c.s.i.p.g.r) don't understand it
> worth a shit.
Agreed. I've pushed for my programmers and students to read "The Design
of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman. It is an excellent book that
explains how to design things properly and why poor design is so
prevalent.
> The biggest hindrance to teaching someone something is knowing it
> yourself. Which is analogous to the problem that occurs when you get a
> programmer that knows a system inside out to define its human
> interface.
Agreed again. Programmers seem to forget that users aren't as "smart"
as they are and don't know the system as well. This has plagued the
Linux front for some time, but it seems to be creeping into more and
more software packages.