Heh as far as I can tell your not optimistic about much, regardless :P

I can't comment on how good or bad a games tools will be until it is out.

It's mostly just about games... And politics, and religion. I think it's got a lot to do with Oblivion (the games part). It was the biggest disappointment I ever had in a game and the fact that it's just so ridiculously popular and I can't for the life of me fathom why other than insane conclusions like they're all mindless idiots, or minded idiots who jump into a knee jerk defensive reaction whenever they sense even a hint of criticism against themselves or their beliefs.

I mean, it's so popular Pete Hines feels comfortable outright lying about the fact that there was any criticism leveled against it at all.

Really? I thought the NWN2 one was way better. Well okay there was elanee but creepy hippies like her can be dumped in the inn never to be seen again

WEll I like what I like and I don't like what I don't like. I don't worry about why other people like things or dislike 'em. Life is to short for that I think.

I know alot of people that disliked oblivion, but I know as many that liked it.

I *love* fallout 3 and I know people that would disembowel me for that. Why? It's just a game, sheez.

To be perfectly honest, I think the good game to bad game ratio is about the same as it always has been. It's just that the hobby is so much bigger so it seems there are more *bad* games. Then again, for every bad game we get, we have novel indie games like super meat boy or cool experiments like shadow complex.

And if you want really hard core old school gaming, there are sites like Gog.com, or games like Eschalon book 1 and 2 and the like. I just...There is so much out there. I think we are in one of the best times to be a gamer ever....
....anway...
Oh my gosh I did the same thing! Her and the little...was it a gnome? I dropped him off too.

Also the way games are produced and advertised has changed a lot, in the 80s & 90s, advertising budgets were more likely to go to games that had the best chance of being reviewed well and more often than not, turds were quietly ignored after an initial magazine ad (or became running jokes like the Romero Bitch-Maker 2000). These days however the pressure to recoup the investment has meant that advertising has often goes into full tilt even if a game is breathtakingly shit and is likely to do more harm than good to the business rep. That sort of thing makes bad games a LOT more noticeable

There was always a pressure to recoup investments. Don't kid yourself, it's just on a bigger scale now. I remember the same advertisments telling us things like that back in the day.

You may say it makes them a lot more noticeable? I don't know. I remember a ton of bad games on the NES that were hidden because of advertisements and paid reviews and the need to make money.

Same situation, bigger industry.


Heck ROB the Robot was just a marketing ploy and it was advertised as the greatest thing ever!

PC had it's share of game advertisement like that too.


I agree. ...well except for King Crimson. Never really listened to them.

Yeah but the amount needed to get the money back from one of the thousands of generic side scrolling platform games was substantially lower than for a multimillion dollar turd like kane & lynch 2

True. But for every Kane and lynch, there are awesome indie studios putting out some stellar titles. I mean I do not remember indie studios being so prevelant and able to make a living like they do now.

Thati s why I like PC gaming. AN open platform where you can still make a living just by sitting down and creating something.

Then going through hell to get it certified for XBLA XD

I only liked having Sand around. The rest I wasn't too keen on. Ranged from tolerable to annoying.

I was particularly annoyed that they hang around in the inn even when I would like to tell them to get lost in the swamps...

In my opinion, the single player campaign isn't worth the ten bucks. Add Shadows of Undredtide and you're getting closer. Hordes of the Underdark puts it over the top. I can't comment on the other Diamond Edition content because I only had the Platinum Edition until today (currently downloading from GOG).

But the wealth of community modules makes this game worth far more than this pittance that they're charging for it. Buy the game, get so much extra free content that you won't know where to start. (Other threads on the forum can point you in the right direction)

It's like buying hundreds of games that just happen to use the same game engine.

As for the campaign editor, it's in my opinion one of the best. It uses a simplified (by that I mean easy, not stripped-down) derivative of C++ as its scripting language, which means it's basically unlimited. That's why some of the fan-made modules are better than the official campaigns. The tools are there; it just takes a good storyteller with some knowledge of computers.

So if you absolutely have to have a good single player campaign, NWN is probably worth the price but you might be better off spending your money on something else. But if you're willing to do a little digging, you can find more than enough good community-created adventures to satisfy you.

All this without once mentioning multiplayer.

I think the toolkit for Dragon Age has that potential. It's not easy. It's intimidating when you first open it. But it is the *exact* same toolkit that Bioware used internally for creating the game. That means that anything Bioware could do with the game, you can do as well.

It's taken a while, but now, a year later, it seems that we're finally starting to see some good community content coming out for it as people are getting used to the tools. It also helps that there are tutorial videos now available for it, as well as community content contests that spur people to focus just on particular aspects of the toolkit, like area design, or head morphs, or scripts.

I'd say the major place they could have improved it was to have a "basic" and an "advanced" mode. I think if they had done that, more people would have dived in and created simple modules upon its release, and then stepped up to using the more advanced features once they outgrew the basic ones.

With that in mind, I have high hopes that as the collection of models, settings, textures, scripts and other supporting assets increases, the number of high-quality playable modules will also increase. Let's just hope that Dragon Age 2's release doesn't kill that momentum.

I don't think it will. I think that focusing Dragon Age II on a different style of game play will give the original Dragon Age room to breath and expand, especially among those looking for more of a Baldur's Gate type experience. As usual with sequels, especially ones that are released so soon after the original, there will be people that won't buy it because of the price. Often this leads many peole to want to be "part of the universe" yet not fork over sixty bucks on the newest project.

I don't think the Dragon Age Toolset community is going anywhere, even with DAII currently on the horizon. I honestly believe that DA:O will have a longer shelf life then the sequel because of the toolset. I know Games like Morrowind and Oblivion are still played *years* after their release because of the tools Bethsoft released for the games (among many others) so I don't foresee DA:O going anywhere for a long time.

i don't hate the official campaign; I just think if you just want to play the game through once, you're better off with something like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. It's the community content that puts Neverwinter Nights ahead.

I'm inclined to agree, especially after reading yesterday that DA2 most likely won't provide its own toolset. It also sounds like they are basically building it with the DA engine with only slight modifications (which makes sense, given the quick release time). In a way it's probably a smart move, community-wise - the NWN2 toolset was a mess at launch, and it took so long to build a community around it that there still appear to be more NWN modders than NWN2 ones.

Maybe by keeping it limited to a single toolset, we won't see that same fracturing of the fan community that occurred with the NWN series.

Yup. Plus I think Bioware likes promoting their own toolset. They allowed the NWN2 crew to post on their forums (Or were told to let them... I am not sure) but they always used the NWN tool when promoting design contests and the like.

I'm actually planning a module using the DA:O toolset. I have the basic game document written, I just need to start learning the tools. I waited awhile to see wht kind of assets the community would bring out.