35 replies to this topic

[Jason Stillion]

Phouchg, on 05 December 2012 - 19:40, said:

I think I've already said in another thread some time ago that I'm not so sure about this. Skyrim is an ARPG, a different type of game. Overhyped, I might add. It didn't have any competition, too. And mods pull half of the weight (if not more) of its popularity.
CRPG and open world kind of doesn't go together. It's prone to creating very unbalanced gameplay, losing most of the tactical aspect. Can remedy "pulling" (but I doubt it will), but will possibly introduce MMORPGy grinding and "twenty bear asses quests". Also, one has to fill the world somehow. DAO didn't have to, it was linear tac-crawler, but DA2 managed to totally suck at that - Sundermount was as interesting as climbing Mount Chilliad in GTA IV. And Skyrim for the most part is quite like that, too - empty. One could very well not have any story at all and player could wander around anyway.

Elder Scrolls pulls off a game where you make a character you get dropped in a world, and if feels more like your a person in a world.

I loved Dragon Age / Dragon Age Origins even though the plot and direction you go is very linear / sequential, you follow a structured story from point a -> b -> c -> d
Didn't like DAII.

Curious to what elements they exactly pull from skyrm,

[+Phouchg]

I agree. But that's also where the difference between these games is - in Elder Scrolls one crafts his own little story, because otherwise it doesn't really have a good one, and no memorable characters to speak of, too (other than narm, cheese, large ham and done to death elements). In Dragon Age it's complete opposite. As Yahtzee more or less jokingly said, Dragon Age: Origins was Mass Effect "Brown Edition" - which, frankly, is spot on comparison.

Perhaps changes are a good thing, to avoid "milking the franchise" verdicts, but given how they indeed dropped the ball with DA2, it's not always for the better. Borrowing someone else's ideas rather than continuing to do what they're good at is a risky path to take.

[Gerowen]

I've decided that unless something changes, I will never buy another game from Electronic Arts. Their methods of squeezing every last dollar out of the customer is borderline robbery. They've gotten worse and worse with requiring you to pay extra to play a game online if you buy it used, leaving things out and then selling them back to you later as "DLC", etc. It seems like every EA game I've bought in the past few years has gotten progressively worse and worse, and although I almost always buy my games new and haven't personally had to shell out a bunch of extra money, the ethics of the matter just bother me too much for me to continue funding their micro-transaction business model. If I buy a game, I want the whole game, all of it, every last bit, especially at $60 a pop. If something is created later as additional content, I'll buy that, but EA has been taking things way too far in recent years in my opinion.

[+Phouchg]

Gerowen, on 05 December 2012 - 20:18, said:

I've decided that unless something changes, I will never buy another game from Electronic Arts. Their methods of squeezing every last dollar out of the customer is borderline robbery. They've gotten worse and worse with requiring you to pay extra to play a game online if you buy it used, leaving things out and then selling them back to you later as "DLC", etc. It seems like every EA game I've bought in the past few years has gotten progressively worse and worse, and although I almost always buy my games new and haven't personally had to shell out a bunch of extra money, the ethics of the matter just bother me too much for me to continue funding their micro-transaction business model. If I buy a game, I want the whole game, all of it, every last bit, especially at $60 a pop. If something is created later as additional content, I'll buy that, but EA has been taking things way too far in recent years in my opinion.

True.

However, that's also quite like not going to movies because they've started charging for the popcorn (for the sake of argument let's assume that at some point they used not to).

[Gerowen]

Phouchg, on 05 December 2012 - 20:26, said:

True.

However, that's also quite like not going to movies because they've started charging for the popcorn (for the sake of argument let's assume that at some point they used not to).

I sent a nastygram to a local theater I went to in Lakewood, WA when I lived there because for one bag of popcorn, two "medium" drinks and an hour and a half of movie time for my wife and I, I paid a little over $25. There was a good hundred or so people in that theater with me alone, so if you only count the $9.50 per person ticket price, and multiply that by a hundred people, they made $950 just off the tickets sold for that one theater room, for that 1.5 hour time slot alone, not counting what everybody spent on refreshments (It was $5 for a single drink) and how many people were in the other viewing areas. I don't have a problem with companies making a profit, that's the reason they're in business, but some of them are getting a little out of control, and you'd think that in a time of economic uncertainty, they would want to encourage MORE people to come and partake of their product, not make them angry and resentful by blatantly tugging at their wallets at every turn.

Sorry, I guess I should stop ranting, /exhale :-P

[Deranged]

Gerowen, on 05 December 2012 - 20:44, said:

I sent a nastygram to a local theater I went to in Lakewood, WA when I lived there because for one bag of popcorn, two "medium" drinks and an hour and a half of movie time for my wife and I, I paid a little over $25. There was a good hundred or so people in that theater with me alone, so if you only count the $9.50 per person ticket price, and multiply that by a hundred people, they made $950 just off the tickets sold for that one theater room, for that 1.5 hour time slot alone, not counting what everybody spent on refreshments (It was $5 for a single drink) and how many people were in the other viewing areas. I don't have a problem with companies making a profit, that's the reason they're in business, but some of them are getting a little out of control, and you'd think that in a time of economic uncertainty, they would want to encourage MORE people to come and partake of their product, not make them angry and resentful by blatantly tugging at their wallets at every turn.

Sorry, I guess I should stop ranting, /exhale :-P

They also probably want to pay rent.

[Shadrack]

ahhell, on 05 December 2012 - 18:45, said:

I'm playing DA:O now and I think it would be FAR better if you could roam around freely. I can't stand the way you "travel" in the game.

I agree...it makes the game feel small like Fable. Just a bunch of "levels" to play through. As much as I loved Skyrim and thought that it was a game that did it mostly right, I've played quite a few of these "single player MMORPGs" that weren't so great. I wasn't very impressed by Oblivion, for instance.

[Wyn6]

Gerowen, on 05 December 2012 - 20:44, said:

I sent a nastygram to a local theater I went to in Lakewood, WA when I lived there because for one bag of popcorn, two "medium" drinks and an hour and a half of movie time for my wife and I, I paid a little over $25. There was a good hundred or so people in that theater with me alone, so if you only count the $9.50 per person ticket price, and multiply that by a hundred people, they made $950 just off the tickets sold for that one theater room, for that 1.5 hour time slot alone, not counting what everybody spent on refreshments (It was $5 for a single drink) and how many people were in the other viewing areas. I don't have a problem with companies making a profit, that's the reason they're in business, but some of them are getting a little out of control, and you'd think that in a time of economic uncertainty, they would want to encourage MORE people to come and partake of their product, not make them angry and resentful by blatantly tugging at their wallets at every turn.

Sorry, I guess I should stop ranting, /exhale :-P

Just a bit of information on the way most theaters work. Theaters make very little money off of actual box office sales. Most of that money goes to the distributors of the films. Depending on the theater and/or theater chain, they may get a dollar or so of the total ticket price.

So, how do movie theaters make their money, you may be asking. Okay. Maybe you're not asking that, plus you've probably figured it out by now. Yep. Concessions. That is why popcorn and drinks and candy cost so much at a theater because this is their bread and butter, or extra butter as it were.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not necessarily a proponent of this, but neither am I an opponent. I don't usually buy concessions when I got the movies. But, I understand for these guys to stay in business, they have to do this. Anyway, I just wanted to shed a simple overview of how this usually works. Entirely, off-topic by the way.

[Tweaky Nippleton]

TheLegendOfMart, on 05 December 2012 - 19:14, said:

I seem to remember Steam being complete ***** in the beginning and now people think Valve is the second coming. Give it chance to grow, but I forgot its cool to hate EA....

Steam made huge increases in quality over the course of it's first year. Origin has made none. It was a turd at launch and, a year later, it's still a turd.

[sanctified]

Skyrim gameplay + Dragon Age: Origins story = Winning recipe.

[Javik]

Am I the only one here that actually enjoyed Dragon Age II?

[Shadrack]

Javik, on 05 December 2012 - 23:37, said:

Am I the only one here that actually enjoyed Dragon Age II?

Probably... I couldn't get pass how boring all the quests in that "first port" were.

[Javik]

Some of the side quests are pretty crap that I will agree on but I enjoyed the main story.

[Gerowen]

Wyn6, on 05 December 2012 - 22:11, said:

Just a bit of information on the way most theaters work. Theaters make very little money off of actual box office sales. Most of that money goes to the distributors of the films. Depending on the theater and/or theater chain, they may get a dollar or so of the total ticket price.

So, how do movie theaters make their money, you may be asking. Okay. Maybe you're not asking that, plus you've probably figured it out by now. Yep. Concessions. That is why popcorn and drinks and candy cost so much at a theater because this is their bread and butter, or extra butter as it were.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not necessarily a proponent of this, but neither am I an opponent. I don't usually buy concessions when I got the movies. But, I understand for these guys to stay in business, they have to do this. Anyway, I just wanted to shed a simple overview of how this usually works. Entirely, off-topic by the way.

I totally read your post in the voice of David Attenborough when I got to "you may be asking". :-P

On topic, the mode of "travel" between zones was kind of annoying in DAO, the environments looked really nice to me and I loved the storyline and the lore, I'd get into the game just in time to be jolted back to reality when I was presented with a little map and cutsie little footprints that reminded me of the map of Hogwarts in Harry Potter that showed where everybody was at. An open world game would be the way to go in my opinion.

[qdave]

Javik, on 05 December 2012 - 23:37, said:

Am I the only one here that actually enjoyed Dragon Age II?

No i quite liked it too! Also those two dlc's were quite good.

Somehow i didnt like Skyrim...its too large, and it wasnt fascinating as DA world is.