[MUD-Dev] It's About Time Department (Mule Characters)

[Valerio Santinelli]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com>
> from shren [mailto:shren at io.com]

>>> It seems to me like a good idea ruined by a nonsensical twist to
>>> the implementation.

>> That's Dungeon Siege.  You've summed up the whole game in one
>> sentence.  It's the first game I've played that has made the user
>> interface so friendly that it practically beats the game for you.
>> I put the CD back in it's case when I fell asleep playing it, and
>> haven't gotten it back out since.

> Glad I'm not the only one who found that, as the game received so
> many accolades I was wondering what was wrong with me. As far as I
> can tell, its progressquest (www.progressquest.com) with a nicer
> 3d engine.

You couldn't define Dungeon Siege any way better than that. Except
that it takes the player efforts to progress instead of doing it all
by itself :)

> I think one can see the lead designers background in RTS games
> (Total Annihilation etc.) shine through as it all seems like one
> big tank rush.

> If the character customisation/magic/control had been richer I
> think it could have been a very good game, although it has half
> convinced me that controlling multiple PCs in realtime dilutes a
> lot of what I like about RPGs. It was just too much effort to play
> the game tactically as it meant constantly pausing it, and even
> then I seldom felt in control. The other thing I disliked was the
> balance, which forced me to constantly exploit the aggro range of
> the enemy mobs so that I could pick them off one at a time, if I
> let too many attack at once I'd die. Balancing a game on that is
> about as meritous as doing it based on the expectation of
> constantly quicksaving.

I used the same tactic to bring enemies down one by one. There are
situations where you just can't handle all of them at the same
time. But maybe this was a designer's choice.  I wouldn't call
Dungeon Siege an RPG. You're not roleplaying a character.  You're
just driving a party of characters around a world killing whatever
moves and collecting items along your way. I wouldn't call that
roleplaying ;)

Neverwinter Nights is doing better in this field as you control only
one character and you're actually involved in quests that are more
than just "go there and grab this and bring it back to me". But i've
still got to play it much more before I can expose my impressions
about this game.

--
Valerio Santinelli
HateSeed.com Founder (http://www.hateseed.com)
In Flames Italia Webmaster (http://www.inflames.it)
My Lab (http://tanis.hateseed.com)



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev