(no subject)

[theweaselking]

New videogame technology.

Click on the video for the DMM demonstration. WOW.

And no, not just because they're throwing droids through walls.

I really want to see this with different kinds of material and different objects. Blasters, lightsabers, Force-Pushed Stormtroopers...

Bwahahahahahaha.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Fuck LucasArts. They buried Sam & Max, they ruined KOTOR2, and they can just go right to hell.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They say they'll license it out in 4th quarter 2008.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

KOTOR2 was D20. It was *always* going to suck.

(Burying Sam & Max, bad. Making spiffy new videogame technology, great - especially if other people see it and figure out how to duplicate it.)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

KOTOR was D20 and it didn't suck. I find your anti-D20 prejudice disturbing.

The problem with KOTOR2 was that they rushed it out the door and chopped off a good 30% of the story in doing so.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

KOTOR was D20 and sucked mightily in ways that it didn't have to suck. It, like Neverwinter Nights, was only redeemable because the computer did 90% of the pointless math *for* you.

My dislike of D20 is not a prejudice. It is a well-considered and perfectly defensible position to hold, reached after long consdieration and multiple attempts to give it a chance, wherein I maintain that classes and levels were excessively limiting and obsolete in *1980*, feats are unbalanced and ill-considered, and a single large flat randomiser with no built-in "cheat" mechanic to let you succeed more often on things you consider important results in unsatisfying mechanics that shatter the suspension of disbelief and quite often result in the mechanics denying a perfectly reasonable action simply because *they aren't equipped to handle it*.

In 1979, D20 would have been a revelation and a great step forward.

More than two decades later, it's an amusing throwback whose brand-name-loyalty-inspired following doesn't make up for the gaping, unfixable holes DELIBERATELY DESIGNED INTO the system.

It's like saying that the unit control limit in StarCraft or Warcraft III is a feature, just because the programmers couldn't figure out a good way to let you run more than 8 (or 12) units at a time or handle order queueing, all of which were in the competition for YEARS before.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

The computer did all of the math for you if you asked it to, making it unnecessary to do anything but enjoy the story.

...I just can't imagine not loving every second of that game.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If you're referring to character creation, then

#1: no, the computer could *not* do that math for you, unless you liked failing at everything and constantly being unable to perform even the simplest, most logical of actions, because you hadn't maxed out the critical skills at every opportunity.

#2: That wasn't what I was referring to. I was referring to your pretty well constant need to minmax your equipment, the modifiers to your lightsabers, and the like, as well as your constant need to check the computer's math and make sure you will still optimised to stay competitive in the stupid D20 way, because once you fall behind enemies who are "at your level", you're screwed forever and can never catch up.

It was a decent game, with a good story that only had a few moments of slapping my head and saying "WHAT? That doesn't make any sense" (as well as a few moments of cinematic stupidity - dammit, I *beat* the Dark Jedi's ass in 4 rounds without her landing a hit on me, what do you MEAN you're "saving" me from her by making sure I can't finish her off?)

That, and skill and tactics had absolutely nothing to do with how well you succeeded. There was only "did I optimise my character enough" or "will I get my butt kicked and have to reload".

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

You sir, are a purist.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

No, I just hate wasting my time on crap that insults my intelligence when there's been better for most of the last three decades.

[fearmeforiampink]

I agree. I've seen one vaugely interesting take on d20, where you raise the different areas seperately, but even there it suffers from being far too based on min maxing.

Feats and suchlike also have the stupidity of many of them falling into one of three sucky catagories - useful early on but utterly sucky when you're higher level (and thus a liablility due to the limit on feats you can take), overpowered, or something you need to take early on so you can twink out with it later.

My biggest beef is with the XP curve - the sheer speed at which your character becomes so, so much stronger is silly (level one character - single arrow in chest = death. Level 20 character - a dozen arrows in chest = vauge annoyance), and the fact that it therefore that if death = losing your character and not getting one of about the same XP, then death is a really annoying thing OOC, and thus people go to stupid lengths to protect them. Admittedly, the last one there is at least partly a bleedover from fantasty LARP games where that's much more of a problem.

I quite liked NWN, because I found it being a computer game a setting where D&D/D20 seemed to work - it takes away much of the annoying maths, and as a computer game it's acceptable for most things to be about combat and the plot to be fairly linear. NWN2 made me spit rivets though, both because of the crappy interface, and also because of the far far far too railroaded plot - no matter how much I tell them to fuck off, these NPCs will join my party, and when I offer the bandit chief his life for some gold (thus being a sneaky, treacherous bastard) he suddenly becomes entirely impossible for me to doublecross, as I can no longer attack him.

It is possible for a D20 game to be good, fun, well run and immersive in its RPing. It's just rather harder than in most other systems.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Heeee.