Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Xorlarrin 09-24-05, 10:01 PM	Sorry if this is posted in wrong area but since DragonShard is an Eberron game I posted it here. I have been playing D&D for about 14 years. Huge fan! I don't like to think how much money I have spent on books and computer games. I even had the orginal Pools of Radiance when it came out on floppy disks. However, I now know that if Atari had any part of making a new D&D game I can save my money. All D&D games that have come out in a while that were made in part by Atari have been crap. They look like older games. The graphics are LOWER quality then games that are years older. I can't even begin to express how disapointed I am by the Dragonshard Demo. More so after how shocked I was at how bad Demon Stone was. Demon Stone btw I bought and threw it in the trash with in 2 days. I am not asking for much. Its just if they can't come out with a game thats even close to the graphics of Neverwinter Nights or even Baulder's Gate they are just tring to pump out cheap games to make money and not give quality. rant over...
Tek 09-24-05, 10:12 PM	You're absolutely right. This (http://winterblink.com/image/screens/nwn_4.jpg) looks so much better than this. (http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/9881/11b4ir.jpg) That's a shame you threw out DS, because I thought it was a fun, short, action packed game. If you want a direct D&D - computer RPG simulation, well, stop looking, play D&D, and enjoy the games for what they are.
Xorlarrin 09-24-05, 10:55 PM	In Demon Stone I thoguht the control was alright for the most part. Flipping between the 3 was ok. The leveling up and magic was cheesy. Magic was too altered to be D&D. The magic was more a power then a spell (ie being able to cast flaming arrow and such 5000 times and not needed to rest.) Thats kind of a joy kill for wizard fans that like to figure out what spells to use. Anyone who plays wizards can tell you that some of the non-damge spells are what save the day and make things more fun than just blasting all the time. Too unlike D&D. As for your example, nice background shots are in all games, but its just that.. Background. Its how the interactive graphics and cam views that make a game more playable. Model detail is better thats a given but if its not used well then its not better. If the game has the more free range of movement and view like NWN had it would be MUCH better. Games that keep tring to force your views just do not flow as well. My simple point is who hasn't looked at games like Dungeon Siege, the new Dungeon Siege II, Final FantasyXI and other games of the like and thought "Oh my god this would be so good for a D&D game". Speaking of the graphics, style, flow, and so on. Then a D&D game comes out and its a let down. I don't expect any game to be perfect and I know trying to fit all the D&D rules into a game isn't easy but I would prefer to wait a year for a really good D&D game then to have 3 sad D&D games released each year........ :clap:
Tek 09-25-05, 01:52 AM	My simple point is who hasn't looked at games like Dungeon Siege, the new Dungeon Siege II, Final FantasyXI and other games of the like and thought "Oh my god this would be so good for a D&D game". Uh, not me. I liked Dungeon Siege because it wasn't D&D. If it had D&D attached to it people would yell at it for being purely hack and slash.
Xorlarrin 09-25-05, 02:17 AM	and Demon Stone isn't hack and slash???? :banghead:
Tek 09-25-05, 02:21 AM	Yeah, it was. And I liked it. I didn't say -I- would yell at Dungeon Siege for being Hack and Slash, I said other people would. Like you are now, people would be doing the same for DS.
Xorlarrin 09-25-05, 02:56 AM	um...Where did I say one word about Dungeon Siege being bad because its hack and slash? Where did I say Demon Stone is bad because its hack and slash? I didn't.......... All D&D games have to be partly hack and slash because that is after all were XP comes from. Monsters you overcome to get a quest done grants more xp then the quest its self most times. I don't know if you have seen Dungeon Siege II but it has much more quests then one did. It also has quest that are dependant on who travels with you. Reguardless, your twisting my words to find things to argue against. In context to the games listed I said. Speaking of the graphics, style, flow, and so on. I didn't say slap a D&D logo on it and ship it out. The games format would make a good D&D game, not the content. Again, simple point. Quality over quantity. Come on Tek, what would you really prefer? A really good indepth game. Or, three games that take you a few days each to blow through. I thought it was a fun, short, action packed game. Your words, you said the game was short. At the end of the game did you think "Thats it?" More so, are you really going to try and argue that a more indepth game thats done well isn't better then a "short" game???
a_psh 09-25-05, 03:10 AM	I am not asking for much. Its just if they can't come out with a game thats even close to the graphics of Neverwinter Nights or even Baulder's Gate they are just tring to pump out cheap games to make money and not give quality. I think you mean gameplay. Graphics have been pretty clearly getting better. While I haven't played Demon Stone, just googling a few screenshots shows me graphics much better than Neverwinter Nights. Atari publishes the games. That means they mostly deal with marketing and distribution. Most of the actual technical and design qualities of the game are determined by the developers. Bioware, which is a very serious full-on developer, did the NWN and BG lines. Black Isle, which is kind of weird because of the things it doesn't do itself (e.g. engines), was also involved with BG, if I recall correctly, and did the IWDs and Torment based on Bioware's Infinity engine. Short of the occasional NWN modules Bioware creates, neither of these companies are producing D&D-based content anymore (Black Isle is dead, a casualty of Interplay's recent woes). Bioware went on to make Knights of the Old Republic, based on Star Wars d20 (Obsidian, which picked up most of Black Isle after it was disbanded, made a sequel). It seems that, based on its huge amount of experience with Neverwinter Nights, Bioware has since decided that the d20 ruleset is rather limiting and incongruous for CRPGs, particularly multiplayer ones, and that one built from the ground up to be specifically tailored to the medium is in order. This is the design philosophy behind their big new project (called Dragon Age, IIRC). Games published under the Atari label now are very different because, well, completely different people are making them. Atari is the name slapped onto D&D games because Hasbro owns WotC and Atari owns Hasbro Interactive, which is a part of Hasbro that has the rights to video/computer game versions of things like Scrabble, Magic, and D&D (Atari doesn't own Hasbro or vice versa, I believe). Or, to be more specific, Hasbro Interactive bought the rights to Atari's trademarks and intellectual property and stuff, then Infogrames bought HI and and, using their new rights to the name "Atari," decided to rename themselves, or at least a big part of themselves, Atari. Trying to keep track of all the relevant details in the corporate shell game makes my head hurt.
GuruChaz 09-25-05, 03:13 AM	I agree with this. What's up with taking an RPG license and making a strategy game out of it or a lame action game? At least Bioware made some decent games with the license. Give it back to Bioware. Keith Baker and Bioware need to talk.
a_psh 09-25-05, 03:24 AM	More so, are you really going to try and argue that a more indepth game thats done well isn't better then a "short" game??? Well, the problem is that a big "indepth" game is a lot more money and man-hours spent on one product. If it costs 10 times as much as a lesser game to produce, it needs to get substantially higher profits. More people just flat out need to buy it. This is where the niche market hurts: there's a limit to how many people will buy D&D-based CRPGs. Now, KOTOR's amazing success showed us that if you make an absolutely shiny d20 game with good story, decent gameplay, and amazing graphics and voice acting, and then make it available on both computers and consoles, you can sell a lot of 'em. However, there's always the threat of another Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines: a very large and thorough game that just doesn't get sales due to lack of interest, poor retail timing, &c., causing the developer to fold. If you make one totally huge hyper-complicated game and, for whatever reason, nobody buys it, you are pretty dead as a developer (and the publisher has just thrown away a lot of money). It's risky. Easier to release 3-4 games that are themselves less impressive and count on the law of averages to keep your business afloat. E.g. Torment, which had an absolutely amazing storyline (better than 99% of the printed fantasy genre, not to mention other CRPGs), still doing suckily when it comes to sales. I love truly momentous games, but I recognize that producing them is an involved and risky task. It's not something every game can live up to.
Xorlarrin 09-25-05, 03:29 AM	a_psh Yes engines is part of what I ment. I should have said that instead of saying style. In my example games listed they do not use the exact same engine but the over all style is alike. So ya get the idea.
a_psh 09-25-05, 03:37 AM	Yes engines is part of what I ment. I should have said that instead of saying style. In my example games listed they do not use the exact same engine but the over all style is alike. So ya get the idea. Are we talking style as in flavor and theme or style as in interface? Honestly, a lot of the old BG-style interface is terrible if you actually try to apply it to three-dimensional stuff. The camera navigation in NWN, for example, is just plain abyssmal, in my opinion. Now, the *flavor*... let's just say that BG2 was the only thing that ever got me to play FR and like it. I see KOTOR as a fairly capable successor to that lineage.
Xorlarrin 09-25-05, 04:07 AM	Great example with Torment. I had never even heard of Planescape untill I came across Torment. I got the game but I would have never have even come across it if I hadn't been bored killing time looking down the games isle. There are 1000's of tried and ture D&D books they could make a game from and sell big. If the books a new york times best seller it goes without thinking to hard that they could make a game that sells big out of it. For example a game set in Waterdeep. A place so complex you could play the whole game in the city and never leave. Settings for the game are not really the problem. I am sure they have ideas comming out there.....um... ears. By style I ment more the engine but not the controls. I am not mixing the game world your character interacts in with the way you interact with your character. Thats a whole different nightmare. The look, flow, and interaction of the game world (engine) of the games I listed are better for a D&D game then the newer D&D games have been. The controls, onscreen menus, and cam views I am not really getting into. However, NWN had 3 different cam views you could change to. So at least you could pick something you can live with instead of Demon Stone where your cam view is forced and at some times it pushes you. You can't rotate view at will so you can't even see whats going on at times.
Eronthar 09-26-05, 02:06 AM	IMO NWN and NWN:HoU are the best RPG games i've ever played. Followed by ToEE and Demon Stone. I must confess 'till i played NWN i have no interest in D&D and RPG. I was a Comic-boy before it. And i found new playground for myself. Some think to think over and create somenthings. Even sometimes my Comic book history cause some struggling about game system and mechanics, i'm spending very enjoyable time with RPG. Enough babbling. Demon Stone is completely Hack and Slash. Anyway it's a good game. Amazing character moves, music, voices and the story make it worth to play. And for the wizard thing, Illius is a sorcerer not wizard. Which can cast spells without preperation. I know even for a sorcerer his powers unbelieveable, but i love this game. :D If you wanna play a real RPG there's ToEE. With game's turn based system, 3,5 edition rules and party creation, playing is fun. Altough story was simple and there's so many bugs that can make a man crazy. At least for NWN. This game is fantastic (Sharwyn, Aribeth, Deekin and Valen was super ;) ). And all of these games have Atari logo on it. I don't know why but if i loved a game there is always Atari.
Bud Green 09-27-05, 02:56 PM	I cannot in good faith recommend ToEE to anybody. I *wanted* to like it, but, as the other poster said, it is so full of bugs, some of them completely showstopping bugs, that it's hardly worth it. I think the base system is good, but they need to make a new game. The game is unplayable out-of-the-box, and requires user-made jimmy-rigged fixes to make it work as intended. Even then, there are many problems. NWN is excellent. The support shown to this game has been second to none. It has been regularly patched since it's release right on through til now, and the patches usually provide extra content and features, not just bug fixes. By now, all bugs in the game are quite minor, and it is about as close as you can get to the tabletop rules on a computer. Yes, the graphics are beginning to look a bit dated, but the huge amount of custom content and modules freely available means that NWN will still be on many people's HD 2 to 3 years from now. The NWN toolset was revolutionary and innovative, and people have done some amazing things with it. It is customizable like no other CRPG before or since. I have high hopes for NWN2, and I will pick it up at the earliest opportunity. It promises to be even more customizable than NWN, and new features and UI improvements are being done to the toolset that will make it an even better tool than it already is. Dragonshard - I have been through the tutorial but have not started the main game yet. I had trouble getting the automatic patcher to work (still haven't gotten it to work actually). The game does seem to add some interesting twists to the RTS genre, and I'm looking forward to playing it. I've never heard of Demonstone.
a_psh 09-27-05, 08:18 PM	I don't know why but if i loved a game there is always Atari. It's simple: the Atari name and logo developed a good reputation years and years ago, so companies have been buying and reusing the Atari name/logo to cash in on the good vibes ever since. ;)
Orion Polaris 09-27-05, 08:52 PM	What are the three playable factions again? -Umbragen -? -?
Tek 09-27-05, 09:04 PM	Umbragen Lizardfolk Silver Flame (which is kinda a mix of all Khorvaire)