Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
made something great out of it.

This post is not about those games.

What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
problems that it fell by the wayside?

There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.

Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
game, if you will.

But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
it.

Pity.

Any other ideas?

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.

Well, the Sims should be counted in this category ... hey, no spitting
[grin]!

>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

There are a few that I can think of:

1) That god-game that Molyneaux thought up (so memorable I can't even
remember the name [grin]) where you were the god of a group of people and
trained your own monster pet, etc, etc.  Great idea, everyone was excited
about, lots of hype ... and then when it came out it was reviewed as being
so horribly implemented that I didn't even want to play it anymore, and so
never bought it.

2) Controversially ... Neverwinter Nights.  Hey, it was a cool concept, and
giving the ability to create all these user-made modules was great and
novel.  But the OC was hailed as boring and uninspired, and even module
creation was much more difficult than it needed to be.  Yes, it was
well-known, and yes, there are a ton of modules ... but is it ever mentioned
in the same sentence as Torment, Baldur's Gate, or even Icewind Dale?

3) Star Wars:  Force Commander.  A Star Wars RTS.  The ability to command
AT-ATs and snowspeeders against each other.  Oh, doesn't this sound cool?
Well, except that they messed up the camera and had a very awkward strategy
system, and screwed up the theme song and basically just made a very, very
bad game.

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?

Evil Genius

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?
>
>
> -- 
>
> "We're not going to have any casualties."
>
> - G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

Black & White?
P.S., Dungeon Keeper was good!

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?

Descent to Undermountain.  Wasn't revolutionary, but there hadn't been any 
other AD&D games for quite a while when it was released.  Was flubbed so 
badly by Interplay it quickly became a laughingstock.  Don't think this one 
even had a single fan I've ever heard of.

BC3K.

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:06:04 GMT, "Aquila" <Aquila@Aquila.net> wrote:

>Black & White?
>P.S., Dungeon Keeper was good!

Agreed to both of those, I don't know why the OP doesn't like DK.
-- 
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
>
> Any other ideas?
>

Not so much a bad game, but Giants-Citizen Kabuto could have been a classic. 
It just tried too hard to be everything to everyone.
Those first missions were sheer genius, though. 

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in 
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com:

> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

Interesting. I would say "Magic Realm". Its a boardgame. 
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=22
EXCELLENT game but it had a horrible long setup time and put-away time. And 
that was to create a wonderful randomized playing field. It came out JUST 
as PCs were beginning to hit. I cannot believe that they didnt see the 
possiblity of that game rewritten for computers.


Gandalf  Parker

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name "Allan C Cybulskie" <allan.c.cybulskie@yahoo.ca>:

>
>"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
>news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>>
>> This post is not about those games.
>>
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
>There are a few that I can think of:
>
>1) That god-game that Molyneaux thought up (so memorable I can't even
>remember the name [grin]) where you were the god of a group of people and
>trained your own monster pet, etc, etc.  Great idea, everyone was excited
>about, lots of hype ... and then when it came out it was reviewed as being
>so horribly implemented that I didn't even want to play it anymore, and so
>never bought it.

That'd be Black & White.

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

In article <Xns958CAFF958AA3dbohnenbergeryahooco
@216.196.97.142>, Dweeb <dbohnenberger@yahoo.com> wrote:


>BC3K.


LOL.  Don't you know the BC series *cough* are the most revolutionary 
games in gaming history ?

Jim :-)

I wouldn't sya that Dungeon Keeper was a missed opportunity - its a
classic! However, Evil Genius most certainly was; largly because it
lacked the character of Dungeon Keeper.

I don't think that Neverwinter Nights was really a missed opportunity,
the story is essentily lacking in originality and was very cliced. The
Forgotten Relms thing had been done before and was never going to work
again untill someone comes up with a truly original concept.

Ben Sisson wrote:
> 
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
> 
> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

My choice would be the Close Combat series.  I realize they
were successful enough for the original to spawn five sequels,
but I think they were a magnificent opportunity wasted by poor
programming wich resulted in inept AI, inadequate sound, small
battlefields and badly thought out campaign structures.  CC3
came the closest to achieving what I want to see in an ideal
tactical wargame, though it too suffered from all the above
problems.  I still fire up a modded version of CC3 on occasion,
only to end up lamenting what might have been, if only...  :-/

Quoth The Raven "Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca>" in
134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?

are you kidding? DK was one of the most fun games I ever played, sure some 
points it got a little monotonous in the final battles, but DK2 improved on 
all that so much more. I loved the first person perspective too. after I'd 
set the dungeon the way I liked it, I would release my hordes on the enemies 
dungeon and lead the charge personally as the horned reaper himself. I 
always hope there will be a third edition made by someone who buys the 
licence off the new owners of DK since bullfrog died.

-- 
Take out the _CURSEING to reply to me

Never buy a car you can't push. 

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?
>
>
> -- 
>
> "We're not going to have any casualties."
>
> - G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

Giants: Citizen Kabuto (sp?)

Great concept.  The one thing that ruined it for me was the lack of save 
anywhere.  Some missions could last ages and ages and have obscure ways of 
completing them.  I am sure the lacklustre consumer response was fuelled by 
this.

Deus Ex:IW? Does this qualify?  They did totally drop the ball with this - 
but is it the end of the franchise? This take on the FPS genre was/is the 
only future available for it - but Ion Storm's mess up may turn people off 
in the future.

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...

> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it?

Warlords, if you count the evolution of the franchise as part of the 
flubbing.

-- 
Bob Perez

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they 
quit playing."
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 20:34:23 GMT, Ben Sisson
<ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
>There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
>sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.

I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
Black & White (already mentioned several times), Dungeon Keeper, Theme
Park, Theme Hospital, and pretty much every other game he's designed.
The man is an absolute genius at coming up with interesting game
design ideas, but he utterly lacks the talent needed to make a game
fun for more than an hour or two.

Its like he's only half of a game designer:  he's able to do the
high-level work of creating a game concept and the rough outline of
what the game will be like, but when you get down the nitty-gritty
details of exactly how the interface should work, how gameplay powers
should be balanced, how levels should be layed out, etc, he completely
falls apart.  Every single one of his games winds up being pretty much
the game:  ALMOST the greatest game ever made, but impossible to play
for any length of time because its annoying and repetative.

I see that BC3k has been mentioned (semi-jokingly), but actually, I
would put Derek Smart in a similar category as Molyneux.  Well, the
exact opposite category, actually - Smart is great at figuring out the
details, but is completely incompetent at coming up with an
overarching gameplay idea that holds the details together.  You wind
up with a game that's made up of several dozen gameplay elements that
are, individually, absolutely brilliant, but don't fit together in any
way, shape or form.  

To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  Star
Wars: Galaxies suffers from the same problems.

<semajyhout@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1098654007.500384.83790@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I don't think that Neverwinter Nights was really a missed opportunity,
> the story is essentily lacking in originality and was very cliced. The
> Forgotten Relms thing had been done before and was never going to work
> again untill someone comes up with a truly original concept.
>

Mostly, the missed opportunity I was referring to was the ability to
popularize the "Create your own Module" notion with their editor, which they
seemed to have missed due to Neverwinter Nights being uninteresting in and
of itself.  MORROWIND seems to have popularized that idea more ... and it
didn't even try [grin].

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
>sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.

DK was a typical Molyneaux game... too focused on gimmics and small
details to see the gaping holes in the core gameplay.


Znegva

-- 
http://www.kewlrule.de

"Gandalf Parker" <gandalf@most.of.my.favorite.sites> wrote in message
news:Xns958C9482AC42Egandalfparker@208.201.224.154...
> Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in
> news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com:
>
> > What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> > category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> > game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> > behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> > problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> Interesting. I would say "Magic Realm". Its a boardgame.
> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=22
> EXCELLENT game but it had a horrible long setup time and put-away time.
And
> that was to create a wonderful randomized playing field. It came out JUST
> as PCs were beginning to hit. I cannot believe that they didnt see the
> possiblity of that game rewritten for computers.

And on a more PC front, not turning the board game "Babylon 5 Wars" into a
PC game.  They'd just done something similar with Star Trek games, and B5
Wars had such complicated calculations that a PC game was about the only way
to really make the game fun [grin].

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?


My vote goes for LOMAC and the IL2:FB (and it's expansions) for their vapid
"you must pass this mission before going on to the next one" style of
campaigns.

I'm soooo happy the Silent Hunter 3 devs listened to fanbase and decided it
would be wise to give SH3 a dynamic campaign.   Scripted, canned missions
for any type of sim just sucks.

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:38:00 GMT, bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly) wrote:

>In article <Xns958CAFF958AA3dbohnenbergeryahooco
>@216.196.97.142>, Dweeb <dbohnenberger@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>BC3K.
>
>
>LOL.  Don't you know the BC series *cough* are the most revolutionary 
>games in gaming history ?
>
>Jim :-)

No, that would be Grimoire.

-- 
Michael Cecil
http://home.comcast.net/~macecil/

Ben Sisson wrote:

> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
> 
> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
> 
The Gothic series definitely constantly plagued by publishers who don�t 
do their job only to be known to a handful of gamers outside of germany, 
the games however belong to the best there is in the RPG genre, but the 
problems mostly were the publishers and in part 1 the control scheme.
LSL8 good to have another Larry, but the game seems to be if you check 
the demo awful.


> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
> 
Yes the whole Sim-Dungeon ruined the game entirely. Mainly because it was
advertised as the next big thin in RPGs. It was less Sim-Dungeon and more
Command and Conquer Dungeon style. Excellent choice.

> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
> 
> Pity.
> 
> Any other ideas?
> 
Yes, Ultima 9 could have been what Gothic 2 nowadays is, could have been 
a worthy U7 successor with a free rotating 3d engine (actually around 
94-95 they had the engine finished before they switched perspective)
Constant engine switching, technical problems which were close to 
unsolvable on the cards back then and an EA who just had enough of 
dumping money into the project basically killed it.

Andrew wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:06:04 GMT, "Aquila" <Aquila@Aquila.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Black & White?
>>P.S., Dungeon Keeper was good!
> 
> 
> Agreed to both of those, I don't know why the OP doesn't like DK.
Well for me it was that I dumped it after mission 8 mainly because I 
wanted an RPG as advertised secondly I did not want another measly 
Command and Conquer clone.
The final dumping point probably was the level design. The first 8 
missions were that you had to build up your units (sorry monsters)
and then once the knight came you just dropped everything you had onto him.

After doing that 8 times I simply had enough and dumped the CD into the 
garbage bin instead of monsters onto the knight.

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com: 


> 
> Any other ideas?
> 
>  

I'll add another one: Trespasser by Dreamworks Interactive.

Even in the state it was released it was fun for me - mainly because 
I didn't know about it beforehand and thus didn't have any 
expectations. So I could just enjoy the "dinosaur" atmosphere 
without being frustrated by promises not fulfilled by the dev team.

Anyway, had they been able to pull off what had been planned - an  
intelligent action game, where you wouldn't just shoot at everything 
that moves, but had the chance to outwit the dinosaurs at times, 
puzzles that e.g. involved the for that time very advanced, but 
flawed physics engine (well, those who played the game surely 
remember the crate stacking ;-), it would have had the potential to 
be a truly great game.

To this day, I wish there was someone who'd try to remake it and do 
it right this time.

--
O.

Ben Sisson wrote:
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?

Outpost.

I played the damn thing for more than a month, despite how badly screwed up 
it was, just hoping that *maybe* it would work . . .


-- 
chainbreaker 

Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> 
> <semajyhout@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1098654007.500384.83790@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > I don't think that Neverwinter Nights was really a missed opportunity,
> > the story is essentily lacking in originality and was very cliced. The
> > Forgotten Relms thing had been done before and was never going to work
> > again untill someone comes up with a truly original concept.
> >
> 
> Mostly, the missed opportunity I was referring to was the ability to
> popularize the "Create your own Module" notion with their editor, which they
> seemed to have missed due to Neverwinter Nights being uninteresting in and
> of itself.  MORROWIND seems to have popularized that idea more ... and it
> didn't even try [grin].

People seem to be creating their own modules at a steady clip with both
games.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Ben Sisson wrote:
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
> 
> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
> 
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
> 
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
> 
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
> 
> Pity.
> 
> Any other ideas?
> 
>  

Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it 
turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls 
of accountants.

I would like to Add FreeLancer and X2 The Threat.


I wished they did not turn them into fucked up shootemups :(





On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 20:15:18 -0400, "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>
wrote:

>Ben Sisson wrote:
>> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
>> it.
>>
>> Pity.
>>
>> Any other ideas?
>
>Outpost.
>
>I played the damn thing for more than a month, despite how badly screwed up 
>it was, just hoping that *maybe* it would work . . .

Ben Sisson wrote:
> A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
> name "Allan C Cybulskie" <allan.c.cybulskie@yahoo.ca>:
> 
> 
>>"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
>>news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>>
>>>This post is not about those games.
>>>
>>>What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>>>category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>>>game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>>>behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>>>problems that it fell by the wayside?
>>
>>There are a few that I can think of:
>>
>>1) That god-game that Molyneaux thought up (so memorable I can't even
>>remember the name [grin]) where you were the god of a group of people and
>>trained your own monster pet, etc, etc.  Great idea, everyone was excited
>>about, lots of hype ... and then when it came out it was reviewed as being
>>so horribly implemented that I didn't even want to play it anymore, and so
>>never bought it.
> 
> 
> That'd be Black & White.
> 
>  

Here's why I like Black & White:

I taught my animal pet to heal my worshipers. He would go around and 
look for injured people to heal, and, when he couldn't find any, he 
became upset. So upset that he would pick them up, hurl them into a 
wall, and then heal them. Eventually, he began doing this ALL OF THE 
TIME. Any time he wanted to heal someone, he'd pick someone up, beat the 
crap out of them, and then heal them.

I cannot possibly find fault with that game on the sole basis of this 
behavior.

(Well, I can find fault: WTF? I'm God, okay? I don't need to fucking 
*look* for the rock - I can just *go* to the fucking thing.)

Michael Cecil wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:38:00 GMT, bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly) wrote:
> 
> 
>>In article <Xns958CAFF958AA3dbohnenbergeryahooco
>>@216.196.97.142>, Dweeb <dbohnenberger@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>BC3K.
>>
>>
>>LOL.  Don't you know the BC series *cough* are the most revolutionary 
>>games in gaming history ?
>>
>>Jim :-)
> 
> 
> No, that would be Grimoire.
> 

Do you get to attack a soda machine in Grimoire?

Superpower.

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name Werner Punz <w.punz@inode.at>:

>Ben Sisson wrote:
>
>> Any other ideas?
>> 
>Yes, Ultima 9 could have been what Gothic 2 nowadays is, could have been 
>a worthy U7 successor with a free rotating 3d engine (actually around 
>94-95 they had the engine finished before they switched perspective)
>Constant engine switching, technical problems which were close to 
>unsolvable on the cards back then and an EA who just had enough of 
>dumping money into the project basically killed it.

Ah now there you are on to something. If I were to have a second
choice, it would be Ultima 8. That was the game that betrayed the
whole Ultima series.

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

"Julie d'Aubigny" <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:417C4B18.6FF6DEAC@comcast.net...
> Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> >
> > <semajyhout@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:1098654007.500384.83790@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > > I don't think that Neverwinter Nights was really a missed opportunity,
> > > the story is essentily lacking in originality and was very cliced. The
> > > Forgotten Relms thing had been done before and was never going to work
> > > again untill someone comes up with a truly original concept.
> > >
> >
> > Mostly, the missed opportunity I was referring to was the ability to
> > popularize the "Create your own Module" notion with their editor, which
they
> > seemed to have missed due to Neverwinter Nights being uninteresting in
and
> > of itself.  MORROWIND seems to have popularized that idea more ... and
it
> > didn't even try [grin].
>
> People seem to be creating their own modules at a steady clip with both
> games.

Yeah, but Morrowind seems to be FAMOUS for it -- even with a lot of posts on
good mods here -- whereas there's much less discussion of the Neverwinter
Nights ones ...

Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> <semajyhout@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1098654007.500384.83790@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> I don't think that Neverwinter Nights was really a missed
>> opportunity, the story is essentily lacking in originality and was
>> very cliced. The Forgotten Relms thing had been done before and was
>> never going to work again untill someone comes up with a truly
>> original concept.
>>
>
> Mostly, the missed opportunity I was referring to was the ability to
> popularize the "Create your own Module" notion with their editor,
> which they seemed to have missed due to Neverwinter Nights being
> uninteresting in and of itself.  MORROWIND seems to have popularized
> that idea more ... and it didn't even try [grin].


??  NWN has a ton of original modules.

Morrowind does have some, but not anywhere near as much as NWN. Most
user content is just addional houses or buildings.

NWN might not do anything great, but it does more than just about any
other PC RPG.  Single player? Yes. Single player with additional
characters (aka, Henchmen)? Yes. Multiplayer? Yes.  Multiplayer with a
DM/GM? Yes. Persistent Worlds? Yes.

"bioderm" <not@here.com> wrote in message 
news:10nods6t7anl18d@corp.supernews.com...
 IL2:FB (and it's expansions) for their vapid
> "you must pass this mission before going on to the next one" style of
> campaigns.


Turn on Auto Success in the options 

"Rastak" <rasta@spacestar.net> wrote in message 
news:prjon0hi7cm99t7124ev36oh8dlutvb4nv@4ax.com...
>
>
> Superpower.
>
>

Agreed, waiting for sequel to see if the idea can be saved. 

"Highlandish" <ckreskay_CURSEING@dodo.com.au> wrote in message 
news:2u2mq1F20e9noU1@uni-berlin.de...
> are you kidding? DK was one of the most fun games I ever played, sure some 
> points it got a little monotonous in the final battles, but DK2 improved 
> on all that so much more. I loved the first person perspective too. after 
> I'd set the dungeon the way I liked it, I would release my hordes on the 
> enemies dungeon and lead the charge personally as the horned reaper 
> himself. I always hope there will be a third edition made by someone who 
> buys the licence off the new owners of DK since bullfrog died.
>
> -- 
> Take out the _CURSEING to reply to me
>
> Never buy a car you can't push.
>

It was pretty good game, in fact I played it about three times through. But 
at the end the game is pretty much the same thing over and over again. You 
can play with the following template on pretty much all levels. Secure gem, 
monster portal, and space for rooms. Fortify all walls so enemy can't get 
in. Train all monster until level 9. Break fortify wall in training room. 
Wait for heros to come to training rooms. Hell it become so boring in one 
level I just have a super long corridor with traps and walls with level 1 
monsters doing the fighting.
And don't even talk about multiplayer, rush for vampires, and whoever have 
the vampires wins. Don't forget to research disease and  chicken but lucky 
vampires do research just fine and your opponents can't get them once you 
have the vamps. 

  Dungeon Keeper was OK.  Not the greatest game ever but OK.

  Black and White was deeply flawed gameplay and a poor interface.

  Evil Genius looks like it has a great game idea, but is hamstrung by
design decisions (for instance, why is there no way to control the minions
globally through some kind of sliders or settings, which leads to things
like guards ignoring people walking in the base unless you personally tag
them (which shouldn't happen, Dr. Evil should be able to set the policies of
uninvited guests entering the base, right? "OK, if they don't touch anything
or take pictures, just mess with their mind a bit and try to get them to the
front door... otherwise, capture/kill them").  And when you click on the
evil genius icon, it jumps to the location of the evil genius right away,
which makes it harder to interact with some of the objects (say you want to
"make an example of" a person in the game, but he's on the other side of the
map)  It ends up being alot of babysitting where a more steramlined design
might have worked better.

sandtiger wrote:
> Michael Cecil wrote:
>> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:38:00 GMT, bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly)
>> wrote:
>>> In article <Xns958CAFF958AA3dbohnenbergeryahooco
>>> @216.196.97.142>, Dweeb <dbohnenberger@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> BC3K.
>>>
>>>
>>> LOL.  Don't you know the BC series *cough* are the most
>>> revolutionary games in gaming history ?
>>>
>>> Jim :-)
>>
>>
>> No, that would be Grimoire.
>>
>
> Do you get to attack a soda machine in Grimoire?

You're mixing genres--no fair.

-- 
chainbreaker 

sandtiger wrote:
> 
[snip] 
> Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it
> turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the 
> souls of accountants.

Yep. And when JtLS is released, that will also make the list. :/

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 20:34:23 GMT, Ben Sisson
<ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
>in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
>Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
>made something great out of it.
>
>This post is not about those games.
>
>What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>problems that it fell by the wayside?

I'm tempted to nominate MOO3 for that, but some (not all, but some) of
it's fumbling came from the fact that many fans expected it to be
something that wouldn't fit into this category: an updated derivative
of previous incarnations.

It had other problems as well, none of which were gamebreakers for me
but clearly were for others.

>But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
>design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
>action. 

Someone on the dev team was listening to Eep too much?

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 23:01:32 GMT, drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:

<Snip>
>To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
>Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
>overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  

I wouldn't say Ultima Online was a 'fumble.'  It *suceeded* at setting
a standard and creating it's own subgenre.  In it's time it was
absolutely brilliant, and without it games like EQ would likely have
not even gotten off the ground.

In article <t9con0l9ogc6r3h9jc1j0lt3681s78j843@4ax.com
>, drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:

>To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
>Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
>overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  Star
>Wars: Galaxies suffers from the same problems.


Couldn't disagree more. UO remains for me the seminal, most
amazing gaming experience, period.

Sept 97, spawning in Yew, and being totally blown away by the
most interactive online game ever, even until today. Nothing has
approached the impact UO had on online gaming and it's development,
and my eagerness to experience it.

I too was really disappointed in SWG, but there are many aspects 
and pressures involved in bringing a game to market which I'm not 
privy too, but Raph goes down in the gaming HOF for UO, no subsequent
game can erase that.

JIm

In article <k1eon01kous7nucrrvp6va1tjgtfmhqpdk@4ax.com>
, macecil@comcast.net wrote:

>>LOL.  Don't you know the BC series *cough* are the most revolutionary 
>>games in gaming history ?
>>
>>Jim :-)
>
>No, that would be Grimoire.


LOL. I stand corrected. :-)

Jim

In article <DMGdnXmv86R00-HcRVn-sw@comcast.com>,
 sandtiger <sandtiger01@comcast.net> wrote:

>Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it 
>turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls 
>of accountants.

Yep, or uninspired drek dictated by accountants to designers.

SWG was the first MMORPG I beta tested but didn't buy.

HUGE disappointment.

Jim

In article <prjon0hi7cm99t7124ev36oh8dlutvb4nv@4ax.com>
, Rastak <rasta@spacestar.net> wrote:

>
>
>Superpower.


Have to add COH. Only MMORPG I've ever bought and canceled
before my ' free ' 30 days was up. Pissed my money away buying 
that game.

Jim

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name Kaos <kaos@ecn.ab.ca>:

>On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 23:01:32 GMT, drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
><Snip>
>>To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
>>Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
>>overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  
>
>I wouldn't say Ultima Online was a 'fumble.'  It *suceeded* at setting
>a standard and creating it's own subgenre.  In it's time it was
>absolutely brilliant, and without it games like EQ would likely have
>not even gotten off the ground.

That's not likely, EQ was in development a considerable time period
before UO was released.

However EQ and later games would have had to learn UO's lessons
(especially about nonconsensual pvp) on their own. Mmorpgs would be
quite different today. A completely different game might have been top
dog.

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

sandtiger wrote:

> Here's why I like Black & White:

During the first chapter I chained my pet around a bunch of musicians. I 
went to do some other things, when I came back five minutes later I saw my 
cow gracefully dancing for everyone. All the people were cheering and 
shouting. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen in a game. Unfortuately 
for me half way through chapter 2 is when the game lost it's appeal for me. 
If Molyneux had done away with the animal fighting and story and had more of 
a sandbox-type game I think it would have been better. 

"Bob Perez" <myfirstname@thecomdomaincalledSHADOWPIKE> writes:

> Warlords, if you count the evolution of the franchise as part of the 
> flubbing.

I was thinking of this one too. Definitely peaked at 2, and has been
declining since.

Myth is another franchise that broke my heart in the end.

Nick

-- 
#  sigmask  ||  0.2  ||  20030107  ||  public domain  ||  feed this to a python
print reduce(lambda x,y:x+chr(ord(y)-1),' Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAcboefstobudi/psh?')

"rob" <roball@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:4GYed.1004$lF1.44408@news.xtra.co.nz...
>
> "bioderm" <not@here.com> wrote in message
> news:10nods6t7anl18d@corp.supernews.com...
>  IL2:FB (and it's expansions) for their vapid
> > "you must pass this mission before going on to the next one" style of
> > campaigns.
>
>
> Turn on Auto Success in the options
>
>

True  but I was thinking along the lines of Falcon 4's campaign of which
neither IL2FB (even with DCG) and LOMAC can hold a candle to.

Thus spake "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>, Sun, 24 Oct 2004 20:15:18
-0400, Anno Domini:

>Ben Sisson wrote:
>> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
>> it.
>>
>> Pity.
>>
>> Any other ideas?
>
>Outpost.
>
>I played the damn thing for more than a month, despite how badly screwed up 
>it was, just hoping that *maybe* it would work . . .

Wow! Another 'opinions are like arseholes - everybody has one' useless
thread from Sissy-boy, who looks to be on the try-hard side of 'most posts
in my threads = best content' - NOT!

Yer all wrong - it's clearly Planescape: Torment, based on the money &
sequels it *didn't* make, more's the pity.

--
Replace 'spamfree' with ('k__umcgl_' + ascii 123456789) to reply via email.

sandtiger wrote:
> 
> Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it
> turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls
> of accountants.

I am extremely disappointed that my pre-live criticisms turned out to be
true...and turned out to not be the game's biggest flaws.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> 
> > People seem to be creating their own modules at a steady clip with both
> > games.
> 
> Yeah, but Morrowind seems to be FAMOUS for it -- even with a lot of posts on
> good mods here -- whereas there's much less discussion of the Neverwinter
> Nights ones ...

I suppose it depends upon where you look. I would hazard a guess that
NWN has at least as many addons as Morrowind, if not many times more.
Morrowind gets more discussion here, but many of the posters here either
do not care for or actively dislike NWN, to the point of disbelieving
that anyone could find something to like. Given the sheer volume of
fan-produced content, I have trouble seeing it as having failed at what
it was designed to do.

I do agree that the module editor is needlessly complex, though.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name Nick Vargish <nav+posts@bandersnatch.org>:

>Myth is another franchise that broke my heart in the end.

Ah good call on a franchise that peaked in its first incarnation and
then went downhill every time afterwards.

But I don't think people were really *expecting* much from Myth 2
(definately not Myth 3).

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 22:34:20 +0100, "redTed" <redted@nthelloworld.com>
wrote:

>Not so much a bad game, but Giants-Citizen Kabuto could have been a classic. 
>It just tried too hard to be everything to everyone.
>Those first missions were sheer genius, though. 

That was a great game spoiled by its save system and the RTS levels,
IMO.
-- 
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

> 
> are you kidding? DK was one of the most fun games I ever played, sure
> some points it got a little monotonous in the final battles, but DK2
> improved on all that so much more. I loved the first person
> perspective too. after I'd set the dungeon the way I liked it, I would
> release my hordes on the enemies dungeon and lead the charge
> personally as the horned reaper himself. I always hope there will be a
> third edition made by someone who buys the licence off the new owners
> of DK since bullfrog died. 
> 

I also enjoyed it also but you could say it had some broken game mechanics.
They never did get a dungeons auto defense to work properly even in DKII.  
Remember the guard post, alarm trap, patrol routes etc.  Who ever bothered 
with them when you could use the hand of god to pickup your monsters and 
drop them.
They basically said they kept the hand as they never got the auto defense 
to work properly.  Pity as personnaly I would have loved a slower paced 
encounter with the goodie heros slowly working there way in past traps and 
guard (and maybe resting) than the usual monstor drop. I'd love it if it 
looked like a real D&D adventure when they came in :P
  
I'd love a remake with up-to-date graphics so I could posess an imp and do 
the tour. Gotta love the Dark Mistress hehe

BTW for you guys who played DKI and II.  Didn't you miss the real nastiness 
of the pre/post mission narrator talk about the land you are attacking from 
DKI.  Thought some of those descriptions of what you did to the residence 
of the land in DKI were down right nasty :P

drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<t9con0l9ogc6r3h9jc1j0lt3681s78j843@4ax.com>...
> I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
> Black & White (already mentioned several times), Dungeon Keeper, Theme
> Park, Theme Hospital, and pretty much every other game he's designed.
> The man is an absolute genius at coming up with interesting game
> design ideas, but he utterly lacks the talent needed to make a game
> fun for more than an hour or two.

Syndicate had pretty good followings in 1994 though. However, the
Magic Carpet series in 1995 was so uncontrollable I gave up.

"magnulus" <magnulus@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<H2Zed.195233$as2.146198@bignews3.bellsouth.net>...
>   Evil Genius looks like it has a great game idea, but is hamstrung by
> design decisions (for instance, why is there no way to control the minions
> globally through some kind of sliders or settings, which leads to things
> like guards ignoring people walking in the base unless you personally tag
> them (which shouldn't happen, Dr. Evil should be able to set the policies of
> uninvited guests entering the base, right? "OK, if they don't touch anything
> or take pictures, just mess with their mind a bit and try to get them to the
> front door... otherwise, capture/kill them").  And when you click on the
> evil genius icon, it jumps to the location of the evil genius right away,
> which makes it harder to interact with some of the objects (say you want to
> "make an example of" a person in the game, but he's on the other side of the
> map)  It ends up being alot of babysitting where a more steramlined design
> might have worked better.

From what I've seen so far, it is part of the design to force the
players to micro-manage the tag settings so that you have spent time
preventing the agents from doing nasty things to your base. A default
tag of "weaken" will be so powerful that there will be almost no risk
to your base (with current game design that is). Seems to me the
"feature" is there to ensure the player will experience enemy agents
shooting up the bases, gold being stolen etc.

The greatest challenge in this game is to give the players so many
things to micromanage, he is going to screw up somewhere.   :-)

"Martin Thelen" <martin_t@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:clhctp$d4s$04$1@news.t-online.com...
> Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> >There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> >sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> DK was a typical Molyneaux game... too focused on gimmics and small
> details to see the gaping holes in the core gameplay.

Funny, a lot of people liked it and its sequel. Come to think of it, the
only 'bad' game I can think of (where he had involvement) was Black and
White.-

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com>...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
> 
> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

American McGee's Alice. In the hands of someone with some literary
talent and sense, this could have been an amazing action adventure.
Instead it ended up being just a silly platform shooter. What a
goddamned waste.

Gandalf  Parker <gandalf@most.of.my.favorite.sites> wrote in message news:<Xns958C9482AC42Egandalfparker@208.201.224.154>...
> Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in 
> news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com:
> 
> > What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> > category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> > game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> > behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> > problems that it fell by the wayside?
> 
> Interesting. I would say "Magic Realm". Its a boardgame. 
> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=22
> EXCELLENT game but it had a horrible long setup time and put-away time. And 
> that was to create a wonderful randomized playing field. It came out JUST 
> as PCs were beginning to hit. I cannot believe that they didnt see the 
> possiblity of that game rewritten for computers.

Atomic Games was talking about doing a Magic Realm computer game back
in '97 or '98, but nothing ever came of it. Not sure why. I wish I had
the resources to do it myself. I've had a very promising realtime
design for it worked out for years now.

> 
> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
> 

From a RPG perspective there are two games which could have been
fantastic if they had only used aspects of the other game. 'Arcanum'
had a large complex world with many quests and ways of completing
them. The idea of combining the usual fantasy settings with an
industrial civilization was a great idea. However, the combat sucked
the fat one and the game had lots of other irritations that ruin the
game for me.
On the other had 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' had a brilliant turn
base combat system but the game lacked depth, was too short and full
of annoying bugs even after patches.

If a game designer were to take the best of these games and combine
them he would have a sure fire hit that would rival the BG games.

Badbark
 "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd
have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate physicist

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:27:04 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
<kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:

>Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
>> 
>> > People seem to be creating their own modules at a steady clip with both
>> > games.
>> 
>> Yeah, but Morrowind seems to be FAMOUS for it -- even with a lot of posts on
>> good mods here -- whereas there's much less discussion of the Neverwinter
>> Nights ones ...
>
>I suppose it depends upon where you look. I would hazard a guess that
>NWN has at least as many addons as Morrowind, if not many times more.
>Morrowind gets more discussion here, but many of the posters here either
>do not care for or actively dislike NWN, to the point of disbelieving
>that anyone could find something to like. Given the sheer volume of
>fan-produced content, I have trouble seeing it as having failed at what
>it was designed to do.
>
>I do agree that the module editor is needlessly complex, though.

I'd quibble over the word 'needlessly,'  but then I'm not that skilled
at finding ways to simplify without sacrificing utility.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 03:04:09 GMT, Ben Sisson
<ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
>name Kaos <kaos@ecn.ab.ca>:
>
>>On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 23:01:32 GMT, drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>><Snip>
>>>To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
>>>Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
>>>overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  
>>
>>I wouldn't say Ultima Online was a 'fumble.'  It *suceeded* at setting
>>a standard and creating it's own subgenre.  In it's time it was
>>absolutely brilliant, and without it games like EQ would likely have
>>not even gotten off the ground.
>
>That's not likely, EQ was in development a considerable time period
>before UO was released.

Aye, and it probably would have been released.  But I doubt it would
have had near the success it did had UO not 'paved the way' so to
speak.  UO had the massive Ultima franchise to draw folks in, which
helped it get established.  Once it was, EQ could successfully market
itself on the "Like UO, but with half the problems!" front, either
directly or through word of mouth.

Pure speculation, of course, and biased by the fact that I *still*
think UO was a better game overall, though :p

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:23:31 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
<kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:

>sandtiger wrote:
>> 
>> Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it
>> turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls
>> of accountants.
>
>I am extremely disappointed that my pre-live criticisms turned out to be
>true...and turned out to not be the game's biggest flaws.

A lot of the promises appealed to me, but in the end I succumbed to my
distaste for highly canonized worlds and stayed away.  Seems I was
saved by an irrational moment ;)

But now I'm wondering if I should listen to that little voice
reminding me WoW has the same issue, or the one pointing out the
massive difference in scale between the two...

chainbreaker wrote:
> Ben Sisson wrote:
> 
>>gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
>>it.
>>
>>Pity.
>>
>>Any other ideas?

> Outpost.
> 
> I played the damn thing for more than a month, despite how badly screwed up 
> it was, just hoping that *maybe* it would work . . .

Couldn't agree more. The idea was so convincing, it could have spawned a
whole subgenre if it had been done right. And then - no discernible
intelligence in the AI, unimplemented features, bugs. The worst part
was that you could see that a little bit of competent programming and
some more time could have salvaged it. Instead, incompetence and bad
management wrecked it. Easily the worst disappointment ever.

Werner

Kaos wrote:
> 
> >I do agree that the module editor is needlessly complex, though.
> 
> I'd quibble over the word 'needlessly,'  but then I'm not that skilled
> at finding ways to simplify without sacrificing utility.

There are points in the editor where the steps needed to accomplish
certain results seem to be multiplied beyond the minimum necesssary
without an apparent increase in utility.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Kaos <kaos@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

> without [UO] games like EQ would likely have not even gotten off the
> ground.

Incorrect, as Ben Sisson pointed out. Adding graphics to "MUD"
technology was not even something Verant were alone in trying, though
EQ was the first and major commercial success for the concept.

drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> writes:

> I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.

No, the first Populous was great.

Kaos wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:23:31 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
> <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> >sandtiger wrote:
> >>
> >> Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it
> >> turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls
> >> of accountants.
> >
> >I am extremely disappointed that my pre-live criticisms turned out to be
> >true...and turned out to not be the game's biggest flaws.
> 
> A lot of the promises appealed to me, but in the end I succumbed to my
> distaste for highly canonized worlds and stayed away.  Seems I was
> saved by an irrational moment ;)

Probably.

Before it went live, many features were publicized. I disliked those
features and expressed my disbelief that they would work out...and
having spoken to people who played the game, some of them agreed. Others
were more annoyed with even larger issues - stupid stuff like how a
particular character type was incredibly powerful in combat, how a CSR
saw someone playing that character type and winning against stupid odds,
and banning the player for exploiting...or the more recent case of CSRs
teleporting characters from Naboo into deep space after banning several
players for cheating because one player used an exploit to dupe money
and used the tip feature to pass it around.

> But now I'm wondering if I should listen to that little voice
> reminding me WoW has the same issue, or the one pointing out the
> massive difference in scale between the two...

Well, I would say that if you like that kind of game (fantasy stuff),
WoW seems pretty cool at the low levels. It has some elements that
really annoy me, and I had some experiences with "socializing" in
non-instanced mission areas that convince me that I'm not that big on
the kind of socializing that such things encourage, but.

I didn't play it past 10th level, but that's mainly because I ran into
several quests I couldn't solo, and when I tried to form groups, I ended
up with fucktards.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

On 25 Oct 2004 10:30:32 +0200, Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
<tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:

>Kaos <kaos@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
>
>> without [UO] games like EQ would likely have not even gotten off the
>> ground.
>
>Incorrect, as Ben Sisson pointed out. Adding graphics to "MUD"
>technology was not even something Verant were alone in trying, though
>EQ was the first and major commercial success for the concept.

Hrm.  Implying that either UO was both later and not successful or
that it was something completely different to begin with.

I could live with the latter, but I'd have to question the former.  

bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly) writes:

> Have to add COH. Only MMORPG I've ever bought and canceled
> before my ' free ' 30 days was up. Pissed my money away buying 
> that game.

No, CoH does what it does well (but it does very little); does not fit
the "fumbled opportunity" requirement: In fact, it has been the
blessing of many jaded MMORPG gamers who have given up on the real
fumbles, like Horizons.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 08:26:50 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
<kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:

>Kaos wrote:
>> 
>> >I do agree that the module editor is needlessly complex, though.
>> 
>> I'd quibble over the word 'needlessly,'  but then I'm not that skilled
>> at finding ways to simplify without sacrificing utility.
>
>There are points in the editor where the steps needed to accomplish
>certain results seem to be multiplied beyond the minimum necesssary
>without an apparent increase in utility.

I'll take your word on it - like I said, I'm not good at seeing those
things, in general.  

Quoth The Raven "inferno2000 <inferno2000@my-deja.com>" in
a9390719.0410242242.1cd48ead@posting.google.com
>However, the Magic Carpet series in 1995 was so uncontrollable I gave up.

that had so much promise and the visuals were beyond anything I had ever 
seen, alas I too gave up quickly. speaking of early games, Witch Haven was 
beautiful to look at, getting through a few levels was so much fun, then 
without warning, the game would bog down to a grinding halt. it had a bad 
memory leak and even today on the latest computers the game is still 
unfinishable.

-- 
Take out the _CURSEING to reply to me

I've tried to be passionate about my career, but my career just wants to
be friends. -John Donne, No Man Is An Island 

Quoth The Raven "Cutter Slade <confed@evilemail.com>" in
2f36b65e.0410242335.4a9b1410@posting.google.com
> Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
> news:<134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com>...
>> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
>> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
>> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
>> made something great out of it.
>>
>> This post is not about those games.
>>
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> American McGee's Alice. In the hands of someone with some literary
> talent and sense, this could have been an amazing action adventure.
> Instead it ended up being just a silly platform shooter. What a
> goddamned waste.

now you're just trolling, Alice was a fantastic game and more atmospheric 
than most games I have ever played. I look forward to Oz if it is ever going 
to be made.

-- 
Take out the _CURSEING to reply to me

If the pen is mightier than the sword, and a picture is worth a thousand
words, how dangerous is a fax? 

> 
> Any other ideas?

Messiah.

The concept was excellent - you are a weedy Angel who can't even wield
a gun. You can barely run, people tend to react negatively to your
presence. Your only saving grace is the ability to glide down from a
height, and a limited flying ability.

Oh, and you can possess anyone you meet. And become them, playing the
game as them, getting their security access, special skills and
weapons.

Possessing a character was sometimes difficult, but this improved,
rather than spoilt the game. If you were seen possessing a character,
then your new body would still be treated as an Angel (ie. with
distrust, or shot at usually), so you had to get it right. This aspect
was implemented extremely well.

The possession concept also allowed the game to vary pace between
firefights, puzzles, stealth - something which they generally did
well.

So what went wrong? Why was this not a classic? Perhaps the graphics
were't that great. The character animation was good enough (for the
time), but the surrounding scenery was very samey - despite a variety
of locations. Perhaps they didn't make the most of the opportunity to
include even more variety in terms of gameplay? Perhaps there was too
much variety and it was "jack of all trades, master of none"?

I enjoyed it, but it wasn't Half-Life. Or Deus Ex. It didn't quite hit
that sweet spot, and for the life of me I can't work out why. Or why
there hasn't been a sequel. Because the basic concept is fantastic.

rob wrote:
> "Rastak" <rasta@spacestar.net> wrote in message 
> news:prjon0hi7cm99t7124ev36oh8dlutvb4nv@4ax.com...
> 
>>
>>Superpower.
>>
>>
> 
> 
> Agreed, waiting for sequel to see if the idea can be saved. 
> 
> 

I loved "Shadow President" and "Cyber Judas". Well, the idea at least. A 
world simulator that *isn't* about going to war all the time and has 
some complexity to it.

Balance of Power was an interesting take on the world simulator too, 
though it was preachy as fuck.

Hank the Rapper wrote:
> sandtiger wrote:
> 
> 
>>Here's why I like Black & White:
> 
> 
> During the first chapter I chained my pet around a bunch of musicians. I 
> went to do some other things, when I came back five minutes later I saw my 
> cow gracefully dancing for everyone. All the people were cheering and 
> shouting. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen in a game. Unfortuately 
> for me half way through chapter 2 is when the game lost it's appeal for me. 
> If Molyneux had done away with the animal fighting and story and had more of 
> a sandbox-type game I think it would have been better. 
> 
> 

See, if I'd chained my pet to musicians, I'd have come back to my pet 
rubbing her belly and burping. I swear to god, every time I played that 
game my pet would find a new way to make my people suffer while amusing me.

On 25 Oct 2004 02:40:29 -0700, chadwick110@hotmail.com (Chadwick)
wrote:

>Messiah.
<snip>
>I enjoyed it, but it wasn't Half-Life. Or Deus Ex. It didn't quite hit
>that sweet spot, and for the life of me I can't work out why. Or why
>there hasn't been a sequel. Because the basic concept is fantastic.

Scrapland is one to look out for in terms of being able to take over
other characters. Just the Scrapland demo has given me far more
entertainment than Messiah did.
-- 
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

"Jeremy Reaban" <jer@connectria.com> wrote in message
news:10nolmm95l1672@corp.supernews.com...
> Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> > <semajyhout@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:1098654007.500384.83790@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >> I don't think that Neverwinter Nights was really a missed
> >> opportunity, the story is essentily lacking in originality and was
> >> very cliced. The Forgotten Relms thing had been done before and was
> >> never going to work again untill someone comes up with a truly
> >> original concept.
> >>
> >
> > Mostly, the missed opportunity I was referring to was the ability to
> > popularize the "Create your own Module" notion with their editor,
> > which they seemed to have missed due to Neverwinter Nights being
> > uninteresting in and of itself.  MORROWIND seems to have popularized
> > that idea more ... and it didn't even try [grin].
>
>
> ??  NWN has a ton of original modules.
>
> Morrowind does have some, but not anywhere near as much as NWN. Most
> user content is just addional houses or buildings.

Yeah, NWN has a ton of them ... and hardly anyone talks about them.  They
talk more about Morrowind's than NWN.  Which was my entire point.

"bombelly" <bombelly@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:SPZed.21681$Pl.9372@pd7tw1no...
> In article <prjon0hi7cm99t7124ev36oh8dlutvb4nv@4ax.com>
> , Rastak <rasta@spacestar.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >Superpower.
>
>
> Have to add COH. Only MMORPG I've ever bought and canceled
> before my ' free ' 30 days was up. Pissed my money away buying
> that game.

I don't know if I agree with that.  CoH did exactly what it set out to do,
and was implemented properly to take advantage of that.  And I think it
managed to get -- and so far it seems keep -- the numbers they wanted or
expected to achieve.  I actually see it as a game that made the most of the
opportunity it saw, to create a more casual gamer oriented game with a
setting that worked to that end.  Basically, what DAoC sort of tried.

"Julie d'Aubigny" <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:417C8098.7212687C@comcast.net...
> Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> >
> > > People seem to be creating their own modules at a steady clip with
both
> > > games.
> >
> > Yeah, but Morrowind seems to be FAMOUS for it -- even with a lot of
posts on
> > good mods here -- whereas there's much less discussion of the
Neverwinter
> > Nights ones ...
>
> I suppose it depends upon where you look. I would hazard a guess that
> NWN has at least as many addons as Morrowind, if not many times more.
> Morrowind gets more discussion here, but many of the posters here either
> do not care for or actively dislike NWN, to the point of disbelieving
> that anyone could find something to like. Given the sheer volume of
> fan-produced content, I have trouble seeing it as having failed at what
> it was designed to do.
>
> I do agree that the module editor is needlessly complex, though.

The reason I say it failed is basically precisely because people tend to
hate it so much that they don't talk about it here ... whereas if the game
had actually been good it would have been popular and all the modules would
have been shouted out from the rooftops [grin].

inferno2000 wrote:
> drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<t9con0l9ogc6r3h9jc1j0lt3681s78j843@4ax.com>...
> 
>>I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
>>Black & White (already mentioned several times), Dungeon Keeper, Theme
>>Park, Theme Hospital, and pretty much every other game he's designed.
>>The man is an absolute genius at coming up with interesting game
>>design ideas, but he utterly lacks the talent needed to make a game
>>fun for more than an hour or two.
> 
> 
> Syndicate had pretty good followings in 1994 though. However, the
> Magic Carpet series in 1995 was so uncontrollable I gave up.

Oh, man! We need a modern version of Syndicate!

Persuade-A-Tron, baby!

Nothing was cooler than watching my mindless hordes strip weapons off of 
our enemies and then fire at the remainder, watching the screen fill 
with their muzzle flashes.

CP cut to .rpg, as this is straying OT a bit.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 08:35:42 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
<kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:

>Kaos wrote:
<Snip>
>> But now I'm wondering if I should listen to that little voice
>> reminding me WoW has the same issue, or the one pointing out the
>> massive difference in scale between the two...
>
>Well, I would say that if you like that kind of game (fantasy stuff),
>WoW seems pretty cool at the low levels. It has some elements that
>really annoy me, and I had some experiences with "socializing" in
>non-instanced mission areas that convince me that I'm not that big on
>the kind of socializing that such things encourage, but.

My tastes are... odd, and likely influenced heavily by UO.  I like
games that have open-PvP zones, tho I absolutely hate attempts to
bribe nonPvPers into them on principle.  Mild preference for fantasy,
but not so extreme I'll pass on something just because it's a
different genre.  Dislike 'forced group' games - I want to group at my
own discretion, not because the game requires me to do so in order to
advance.  I also dislike being told who to group with, which is one of
the things feeding my naysayer voice - WoW seems to prohibit you from
grouping outside your 'racial allegiance' from what I've heard.  If
it's just discouragement rather than full prohibition, I can live with
it.

I also like games with meaningful tradeskills, and from reports EQ2
would appear to have WoW beat on that ground.  But EQ2 isn't likely to
support PvP any better than EQ did (if even that much.)

Honestly, what I *really* want is for Raph and Garriot to remake UO
with their original vision, modern technology and some attention paid
to some of the mistakes they made implementing that vision (no, not
the 'mistakes' that were deliberate parts of the vision.)

Kaos wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:23:31 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
> <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>sandtiger wrote:
>>
>>>Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it
>>>turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls
>>>of accountants.
>>
>>I am extremely disappointed that my pre-live criticisms turned out to be
>>true...and turned out to not be the game's biggest flaws.
> 
> 
> A lot of the promises appealed to me, but in the end I succumbed to my
> distaste for highly canonized worlds and stayed away.  Seems I was
> saved by an irrational moment ;)

Here's the scary part:

Had they *stayed* with the canon, SWG would have been nearly infinitely 
better. That's how bad their "original" ideas were implimented. 
Honestly, if the game had just been WMV files of all of Jar-Jar Binks' 
scenes in Episode I, that would have been better. At least then it would 
have been a game - "How long can I watch this before I poke my eyes out 
with a spork?"

If movie dialogue were based on the game:

Vader: The force is strong... In this one, and this one, and that one, 
and this one, and him over there, and oh - another over there and this 
one and that other guy too...

My favorite part were the theme-park missions for Jabba. You go and talk 
to people. Not the leg-breaking kind of talk, more the "click this 
button at this location, and maybe you will solve the mission, maybe you 
won't" kind of talking. You get a mission, and ride out somewhere, and 
the guy shoots you and if he shoots at you first, you have to kill him 
and restart the mission. And he isn't even a challenge - 1 shot from a 
nearly useless pistol and he's down for the count. But then you can go 
back, get the mission again, and ride out to the guy. At 200 feet out, 
you type /conv and the mission is done. You can't even see what he's 
saying at that distance. And then you go back to the mission giver and 
you get... wait for it...

A FISHING POLE!!!

On the fucking DESERT planet of Tatooine. My reward was a fishing pole. 
*whimper*

> But now I'm wondering if I should listen to that little voice
> reminding me WoW has the same issue, or the one pointing out the
> massive difference in scale between the two...
> 

Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> .or the more recent case of CSRs
> teleporting characters from Naboo into deep space after banning several
> players for cheating because one player used an exploit to dupe money
> and used the tip feature to pass it around.

Oh, wow. They aren't even pretending not to hate their customers 
anymore, are they?

bioderm wrote:
> True  but I was thinking along the lines of Falcon 4's campaign of
> which neither IL2FB (even with DCG) and LOMAC can hold a candle to.

But only after about 10,000 fan patches.  As released, Falcon 4.0 was pretty 
much DOA, and just another nail in the flight sim genre's coffin.

Maybe even a LOT of nails.

-- 
chainbreaker 

Kaos wrote:
> different genre.  Dislike 'forced group' games - I want to group at my
> own discretion, not because the game requires me to do so in order to
> advance.

<nods head vigorously>

I like playing the "Lone Ranger" type character--influenced heavily by 
Clayton Moore.  :-)

-- 
chainbreaker-whose childhood goes back a pretty long way 

sandtiger wrote:
> A FISHING POLE!!!
>
> On the fucking DESERT planet of Tatooine. My reward was a fishing
> pole. *whimper*

LOL!

Fortunately I'm a weirdo who never really liked the Star Wars' movies . . . 
uh, except for the parts in that one where Princess Layme wore that little 
skimpy harem girl outfit . . . . and was never really tantalized by the 
game.  :D

-- 
chainbreaker 

On 25 Oct 2004 00:35:41 -0700, during a voyage through the cold waters
of comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, i happened upon the crew of
confed@evilemail.com (Cutter Slade):

>Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com>...
>> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
>> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
>> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
>> made something great out of it.
>> 
>> This post is not about those games.
>> 
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
>American McGee's Alice. In the hands of someone with some literary
>talent and sense, this could have been an amazing action adventure.
>Instead it ended up being just a silly platform shooter. What a
>goddamned waste.

Indeed.  It had such a great backdrop to develop a fun game system in
and instead we got a platform shooter.   The atmosphere was excellent.
The pre-game story was interesting enough: the journal of the doctor
who was helping to treat Alice at the asylum was a nice addition for
those who picked up the original release of the game (the jewel case
release lacks this item).  The visuals were top notch for the time.
The gameplay itself simply stunk -jumping puzzles and tedious combat.
It's hard for me to pin down exactly where Alice went wrong but i
suppose it was the overly linear nature and the horrid combat that did
it for me.  It certainly wasn't nearly as entertaining as, oh let's
say, No One Lives Forever.   The visuals were beautiful and
entertaining in their own right while i could stand the game.  I did
manage to finish Alice but found the last half was a strain to get
through.

--
best regards, mat
np: [winamp not running]

I WILL round this Cape even if I have to keep sailing until doomsday!

Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> I suppose it depends upon where you look. I would hazard a guess that
> NWN has at least as many addons as Morrowind, if not many times more.
> Morrowind gets more discussion here, but many of the posters here
> either
> do not care for or actively dislike NWN, to the point of disbelieving
> that anyone could find something to like. Given the sheer volume of
> fan-produced content, I have trouble seeing it as having failed at
> what
> it was designed to do.

I like NWN much better than Morrowind, but don't feel strongly enough about 
either to stump much.
-- 
chainbreaker 

Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> The reason I say it failed is basically precisely because people tend
> to hate it so much that they don't talk about it here ... whereas if
> the game had actually been good it would have been popular and all
> the modules would have been shouted out from the rooftops [grin].

The Morrowind dialogue here won't fill many encyclopedias either.

And the NWN group remains fairly active.
-- 
chainbreaker 

Chadwick wrote:
> So what went wrong? Why was this not a classic? Perhaps the graphics
> were't that great. The character animation was good enough (for the
> time), but the surrounding scenery was very samey - despite a variety
> of locations. Perhaps they didn't make the most of the opportunity to
> include even more variety in terms of gameplay? Perhaps there was too
> much variety and it was "jack of all trades, master of none"?

I gave up on it because of the continuing game-stopping graphical glitches. 
Characters would be missing body parts, turn weird colors, become invisible, 
etc.  I don't remember what card I had at the time, but I've always been 
pretty near the top of the chain in those regards. As I recall, they patched 
a couple of times, but never really solved the problem.
-- 
chainbreaker 

chainbreaker wrote:
> Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> 
>>I suppose it depends upon where you look. I would hazard a guess that
>>NWN has at least as many addons as Morrowind, if not many times more.
>>Morrowind gets more discussion here, but many of the posters here
>>either
>>do not care for or actively dislike NWN, to the point of disbelieving
>>that anyone could find something to like. Given the sheer volume of
>>fan-produced content, I have trouble seeing it as having failed at
>>what
>>it was designed to do.
> 
> 
> I like NWN much better than Morrowind, but don't feel strongly enough about 
> either to stump much.

The absolute only problem I had with NWN was that the camera wasn't 
entirely free.

My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very 
non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options that made 
absolutely no sense to me.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:32:31 GMT, Ben Sisson
<ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
>name Nick Vargish <nav+posts@bandersnatch.org>:
>
>>Myth is another franchise that broke my heart in the end.
>
>Ah good call on a franchise that peaked in its first incarnation and
>then went downhill every time afterwards.
>
>But I don't think people were really *expecting* much from Myth 2
>(definately not Myth 3).

Well Myth 3 wasn't created by Bungie. Both the first ones were great
to incredible.


-- 
Alex
atheist #2007

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.

Nah - Dungeon Keeper was better than you say it was, at least DK1 was.

There were things that could be done in first-person view action that
weren't possible in the main overview. At least in DK1 - you could
actually run an imp over lava and make him dig on the other side even
while he was getting hurt, then go back to the overview and pick up the
gold by hand from ground you didn't own (ideal if you didn't have the
ability to build a bridge). Unfortunately the ability to force creatures
to do that was removed in DK2.

The DK2 way of grouping creatures would have been great in DK1 - go in
and actually take *command* of your minions before invading the enemy.
Would have been great in the last level of DK1, where you had to invade
the enemy kingdom without the ability to claim the land with imps as you
went.

DK2 didn't have dragons. One of the single worst decisions ever - I
mean, how can you be in charge of a dungeon and not have even one single
dragon on staff? The name "Salamander" for a fire-walking lizard just
doesn't cut it. Lose 1000 points of Coolness Value.

In DK2, creatures moved more slowly than in DK1. BIG messup. Things were
just too damn slow. A lot of nice slow swooping, like a helicopter above
circling around the target area, when you get a new creature or a new
room or a new level - or even when you want to go from one menu to
another, e.g. the main menu to the options menu. BAD MOVE. Moving
between menus should be simple, click-click-click, instant. And we don't
WANT the game interrupted for 20-30 seconds telling you that you've got
a new creature - no matter how nifty the graphic of it climbing out of
the portals is (and all at a weird diagonal angle that the game
instantly sets you to when you revert back to conventional gameplay,
even though you didn't WANT to be viewing at that angle.) In fact DK1
handled all of this better than DK2. And when you wanted to move to a
different part of the realm in DK1, you moved that much faster because
the graphics were much less processor-heavy.
     Worst of all was the massively slow, massively long graphic at the
end of each DK2 level showing Horny slowly arising out of the ground,
then padding his way towards the fallen Lord of the Land and taking the
gem. Once was cool: even twenty times, or every time you end a level,
and it gets really old.

The monsters were simply too damn small in DK2 compared to DK1. All the
graphics in fact were smaller, and thus harder to see and harder to
manipulate.

Some of the time limits on the levels in DK2 were just a bit impossible
to handle for the AVERAGE PLAYER - I'm not referring to the dedicated
gamer who can sit at a computer and play for hours, twitching faster and
faster to optimise his strategy. I'm talking about the ordinary person
who has an hour or two per day and will want to play several games, not
one intensively for a month.

No level editor for DK2 at all. (I'm not counting the thing that was
released three years late and with less than half the functionality it
could and should have had.)

Scripting language for DK1 was at best clunky (which handicapped
user-created levels), and the level editor was only half-finished -
there were things done in the main campaign that could not be re-created
in the level editor. A small amount of documentation was supplied but it
was COMPLETELY inadequate.

The main problem with multiplayer DK1 and DK2 was that there was no
chance for somebody who was losing a battle to actually have the ability
to duck out, regroup and return in force (unlike, say, in Civilization
2). Horrendously huge battles had a sort of tipping point - once you
were over it, *there was no comeback*.

(Incidentally the same problem was with the Scavenger Room in DK1. Once
you got beyond a certain level, there was no comeback.)

In DK2, although monsters could technically get up to level 10, *you
could not train them above level FOUR of your own volition until the
15th level of the 20*. That is FAR too long for your minions to be stuck
at LESS THAN HALF of their potential power. While it's okay to stop you
getting to the absolute top levels until the last few levels of the
original campaign, being stuck at less than half power for more than
three quarters of the game is simply bad.

DK1 actually had some cooler ideas in it - levels where some things
weren't possible, where you either were restricted to a lesser number of
creatures coming out of the portal, or didn't have a portal so you had
to build up your army by converting your enemies (or reduce the enemy's
numbers with traps), or didn't have access to a particular type of room
or spell no matter how hard you researched until you captured it from an
enemy, and so on. Unfortunately half the "Deeper Dungeons" extra levels
and even some of the main ones had broken scripting somewhere or other.
DK2 had some similar ideas but ran in the wrong direction with them, or
didn't take them far enough (like the level which you won by converting
three princes to your side: the next level should have begun with them
actually right there and fighting for you, that would have been
seriously cool.) And as mentioned before, the "time limit" levels sucked
since the time limits were too stringent.

DK2's *patches* introduced some new cool-ish stuff. Unfortunately, since
no new "official" levels were released, either for single player or
multiplayer, and those that did exist were not altered in any way to
allow the new content of creatures and traps, the only place you could
USE your new creatures and traps was in the severely-crippled "My Pet
Dungeon" testing levels where you had access to everything right from
the start, and could trigger monsters to come and attack whenever you
wanted and never when you didn't want.
     Or, of course, you could use them in new user-created levels...
except that there wasn't a level editor, so you couldn't really make
your own levels properly. Oops.

DK2 placed too much emphasis on the Horned Reaper being (a) not really a
part of your army, even as its leader, (b) unique, and (c) more powerful
than you. Like he shows up just for the purpose of showing off at the
end of every level, making it quite clear he could have handled all of
this without you and that it's his victory, not yours. MEGA-UNCOOL. DK1
handled him better even though you could have more than one Reaper - at
least you were properly in control of him although he would often go out
of control and have to be gotten rid of. (I mean, in DK2, if you slapped
him he would just disappear: in DK1, if you slap him, or don't pay him,
or just let him *exist* for too long without anything useful to do, he
runs amok and starts slaughtering your guys and you have to take him
down, which is much cooler.)

There are so many ways in which a *combination* of the two games with
some of the features from both would have been so amazingly great. But
when it comes down to it, DK1 is miles better than DK2 in most of the
ways that matter, and the only ways in which DK2 were better were the
bells-and-whistles ways (and, even in those cases, over two thirds of
the so-called "improvements" in fact made for worse gameplay or worse
tedium over the long term at the expense of an initial ten seconds of
coolness-value that actually got really old when it was ten wasted
seconds EVERY DAMN TIME.)

Apart from the fact that sometimes DK1 would simply overload the
graphics card and crash back to desktop. And doesn't always run properly
(or at all, or even install properly) on Windows XP...

Yup, that's a fumbled opportunity all right. Could, and should, have
been truly great: instead it got old.

Jonathan.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 07:19:32 GMT, "Mother Farquhar" <fake@ddress.com>
wrote:

>
>"Martin Thelen" <martin_t@gmx.net> wrote in message
>news:clhctp$d4s$04$1@news.t-online.com...

>> DK was a typical Molyneaux game... too focused on gimmics and small
>> details to see the gaping holes in the core gameplay.
>
>Funny, a lot of people liked it and its sequel. Come to think of it, the
>only 'bad' game I can think of (where he had involvement) was Black and
>White.-

I really liked Dungeon Keeper 2. There was almost nothing (major) I
didn't like about that game. I count the FPP as slightly positive btw.


-- 
Alex
atheist #2007

sandtiger wrote:
> My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
> non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options that
> made absolutely no sense to me.

I think my biggest problem with Morrowind is simply that the characters look 
like shit.

-- 
chainbreaker 

"Tor Iver Wilhelmsen" <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote in message
news:uu0sjdwr3.fsf@broadpark.no...
> drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> > I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
>
> No, the first Populous was great.

The second was too!

Alex <a@b.c> writes:

> Well Myth 3 wasn't created by Bungie. Both the first ones were great
> to incredible.

The second one was good, but the WW2 mods seemed to dominate the
multiplayer field, and that drove me away in the end. Myth 1 is still
my favorite game of all time. Though there are games I've played more,
none have had the sheer brilliance that was Myth.

Nick

-- 
#  sigmask  ||  0.2  ||  20030107  ||  public domain  ||  feed this to a python
print reduce(lambda x,y:x+chr(ord(y)-1),' Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAcboefstobudi/psh?')

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Andrew <spamtrap@localhost.> wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:06:04 GMT, "Aquila" <Aquila@Aquila.net> wrote:

>>P.S., Dungeon Keeper was good!

> Agreed to both of those, I don't know why the OP doesn't like DK.

I had some issues with DK1, but the sequel had addressed many of them (like
paying for spell with gold) making it a game I thoroughly enjoyed.

-- 
 ----
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Insert joke here.]                                                       ----
                                                                             --
anba@studcs.uni-sb.de (Andreas Baus)

confed@evilemail.com (Cutter Slade) wrote in
news:2f36b65e.0410242345.6a4a43a0@posting.google.com: 

> Gandalf  Parker <gandalf@most.of.my.favorite.sites> wrote in message
> news:<Xns958C9482AC42Egandalfparker@208.201.224.154>... 
>> Interesting. I would say "Magic Realm". Its a boardgame. 
>> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=22
>> EXCELLENT game but it had a horrible long setup time and put-away
>> time. And that was to create a wonderful randomized playing field. It
>> came out JUST as PCs were beginning to hit. I cannot believe that
>> they didnt see the possiblity of that game rewritten for computers.
> 
> Atomic Games was talking about doing a Magic Realm computer game back
> in '97 or '98, but nothing ever came of it. Not sure why. I wish I had
> the resources to do it myself. I've had a very promising realtime
> design for it worked out for years now.

There is an open source effort at SourceForge.net, and a number of other 
private efforts. One has a board setup (just the board, not the objects) 
last time I checked.
Gandaf  Parker

Andrew <spamtrap@localhost.> writes:

> Scrapland is one to look out for in terms of being able to take over
> other characters. Just the Scrapland demo has given me far more
> entertainment than Messiah did.

They both pale before the initial "taking-over foe" game: Paradroid on
the C64. PC port here:

http://paradroid.sourceforge.net/

On 25 Oct 2004 15:28:10 +0200, Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
<tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:

>They both pale before the initial "taking-over foe" game: Paradroid on
>the C64. PC port here:
>
>http://paradroid.sourceforge.net/

Sorry, but given the choice between:
http://paradroid.sourceforge.net/shot1.JPG
and
http://images.3dgamers.com/screenimages/games/scrapland/shot0010.jpg

I know where my money will be going next month.
-- 
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:58:17 +0100, "Jamie_Manic" <mmmm...pork rind>
wrote:

>
>Evil Genius
>

I think this is one of them games that you play for an hour and then
sit back and go...."why am I playing this?"...it's not bad, it just
more concept than game, and executed with the same drab mechanics as
Republic.

drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 20:34:23 GMT, Ben Sisson
><ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>>What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>>category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>>game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>>behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>>problems that it fell by the wayside?
>>
>>There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
>>sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
>I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
>Black & White (already mentioned several times), Dungeon Keeper, Theme
>Park, Theme Hospital, and pretty much every other game he's designed.
>The man is an absolute genius at coming up with interesting game
>design ideas, but he utterly lacks the talent needed to make a game
>fun for more than an hour or two.
>
>Its like he's only half of a game designer:  he's able to do the
>high-level work of creating a game concept and the rough outline of
>what the game will be like, but when you get down the nitty-gritty
>details of exactly how the interface should work, how gameplay powers
>should be balanced, how levels should be layed out, etc, he completely
>falls apart.  Every single one of his games winds up being pretty much
>the game:  ALMOST the greatest game ever made, but impossible to play
>for any length of time because its annoying and repetative.

Wow I remember saying almost exactly the same thing about him ages ago
hahahaha.

>I see that BC3k has been mentioned (semi-jokingly), but actually, I
>would put Derek Smart in a similar category as Molyneux.  Well, the
>exact opposite category, actually - Smart is great at figuring out the
>details, but is completely incompetent at coming up with an
>overarching gameplay idea that holds the details together.  You wind
>up with a game that's made up of several dozen gameplay elements that
>are, individually, absolutely brilliant, but don't fit together in any
>way, shape or form.  
>
>To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
>Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
>overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  Star
>Wars: Galaxies suffers from the same problems.

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:
>Kaos <kaos@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
>
>> without [UO] games like EQ would likely have not even gotten off the
>> ground.
>
>Incorrect, as Ben Sisson pointed out. Adding graphics to "MUD"
>technology was not even something Verant were alone in trying, though
>EQ was the first and major commercial success for the concept.

You could say the same thing about another game the original poster
mentioned: Diablo.

bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly) wrote:
>In article <t9con0l9ogc6r3h9jc1j0lt3681s78j843@4ax.com
>>, drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
>>Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
>>overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  Star
>>Wars: Galaxies suffers from the same problems.
>
>
>Couldn't disagree more. UO remains for me the seminal, most
>amazing gaming experience, period.
>
>Sept 97, spawning in Yew, and being totally blown away by the
>most interactive online game ever, even until today.

It had about one billionth of the interactivity of the MUDs of the time
though.

>Nothing has
>approached the impact UO had on online gaming and it's development,
>and my eagerness to experience it.
>
>I too was really disappointed in SWG, but there are many aspects 
>and pressures involved in bringing a game to market which I'm not 
>privy too, but Raph goes down in the gaming HOF for UO, no subsequent
>game can erase that.

Bateau wrote:
> Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:
> 
>>Kaos <kaos@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
>>
>>
>>>without [UO] games like EQ would likely have not even gotten off the
>>>ground.
>>
>>Incorrect, as Ben Sisson pointed out. Adding graphics to "MUD"
>>technology was not even something Verant were alone in trying, though
>>EQ was the first and major commercial success for the concept.
> 
> 
> You could say the same thing about another game the original poster
> mentioned: Diablo.

Meridian 64 as well.

Hell, I remember playing something about 20 years on a PLATO system 
where it was multi-user and had Wizardry 1 type graphics.

But there is a large difference between having an idea to do something, 
doing it, and making money at it.

inferno2000@my-deja.com (inferno2000) wrote:
>drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<t9con0l9ogc6r3h9jc1j0lt3681s78j843@4ax.com>...
>> I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
>> Black & White (already mentioned several times), Dungeon Keeper, Theme
>> Park, Theme Hospital, and pretty much every other game he's designed.
>> The man is an absolute genius at coming up with interesting game
>> design ideas, but he utterly lacks the talent needed to make a game
>> fun for more than an hour or two.
>
>Syndicate had pretty good followings in 1994 though. However, the
>Magic Carpet series in 1995 was so uncontrollable I gave up.

I thought it was pretty easy. Mouselook to change direction and keyboard
to fly. They were the only two good games he was involved with. Maybe
Populous too.

In article <6r6on05ibs0qg48aupcr7bq01v1knc2m0q@4ax.com>, Andrew wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:06:04 GMT, "Aquila" <Aquila@Aquila.net>
> wrote:
> 
>>Black & White?
>>P.S., Dungeon Keeper was good!
> 
> Agreed to both of those, I don't know why the OP doesn't like
> DK.

It was all atmosphere and interface with no gameplay.

Battle == drop all your minions in the same room as fast as you
can == idiotic.

-- 
Neil Cerutti
We're not afraid of challenges. It's like we always say: If you
want to go out in the rain, be prepared to get burned.
--Brazillian soccer player

In article <a9390719.0410242242.1cd48ead@posting.google.com>, inferno2000 wrote:
> drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<t9con0l9ogc6r3h9jc1j0lt3681s78j843@4ax.com>...
>> I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by
>> Molyneux'. Black & White (already mentioned several times),
>> Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, and pretty much
>> every other game he's designed. The man is an absolute genius
>> at coming up with interesting game design ideas, but he
>> utterly lacks the talent needed to make a game fun for more
>> than an hour or two.
> 
> Syndicate had pretty good followings in 1994 though. However,
> the Magic Carpet series in 1995 was so uncontrollable I gave
> up.

Syndicate was a fun game.  You could do lots of cool things, but
unfortunately you didn't need to do most of them to win. The
worst example is the tactical teaming possibilities that were
completely unrealized.  I never found a reason to split up my
four-headed hydra of death.

-- 
Neil Cerutti
If we stay free of injuries, we'll be in contention to be a
healthy team. --Chris Morris

Werner Arend <nefar@arcor.de> wrote:
>chainbreaker wrote:
>> Ben Sisson wrote:
>> 
>>>gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
>>>it.
>>>
>>>Pity.
>>>
>>>Any other ideas?
>
>> Outpost.
>> 
>> I played the damn thing for more than a month, despite how badly screwed up 
>> it was, just hoping that *maybe* it would work . . .
>
>Couldn't agree more. The idea was so convincing, it could have spawned a
>whole subgenre if it had been done right. And then - no discernible
>intelligence in the AI, unimplemented features, bugs. The worst part
>was that you could see that a little bit of competent programming and
>some more time could have salvaged it. Instead, incompetence and bad
>management wrecked it. Easily the worst disappointment ever.

It's a space colony building game right? I can think of 2 other such
games off the top of my head.

sandtiger <sandtiger01@comcast.net> wrote:
>Kaos wrote:
>> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:23:31 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
>> <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>sandtiger wrote:
>>>
>>>>Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it
>>>>turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls
>>>>of accountants.
>>>
>>>I am extremely disappointed that my pre-live criticisms turned out to be
>>>true...and turned out to not be the game's biggest flaws.
>> 
>> 
>> A lot of the promises appealed to me, but in the end I succumbed to my
>> distaste for highly canonized worlds and stayed away.  Seems I was
>> saved by an irrational moment ;)
>
>Here's the scary part:
>
>Had they *stayed* with the canon, SWG would have been nearly infinitely 
>better. That's how bad their "original" ideas were implimented. 
>Honestly, if the game had just been WMV files of all of Jar-Jar Binks' 
>scenes in Episode I, that would have been better. At least then it would 
>have been a game - "How long can I watch this before I poke my eyes out 
>with a spork?"

Haha I just saw the Ninja episode of South Park. Even my dad laughed
when Butters got shuruikened.

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:

If no one else is going to say it then I will: Half Life.

Knights of the Old Republic. Yes, I do know that many consider it a cool
game, but the simplified combat system to allow for "consolization" ruined
my day. They had the opportunity to let you fight in the Star Wars universe
using the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale system, and discarded it.

Neverwinter Nights didn't worked. I'm a pen and paper DM since 1984, and I
was really excited at the opportunity to DMastering online modules - I tried
it with my players (five computers linked up in the same room - one master
and four players) and it never really worked as a fun game. I returned to
pen and paper.

Enter the Matrix: please, do rip-off Max Payne and everybody will be happy.
They weren't even able to do this.

Star Wars Battleground: please, do rip-off 1942 and everybody will be happy.
They weren't able to give cohesion to the single player experience, and the
AI was much worse.

Alone in the Dark IV: the serie from which "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill"
stole half of their ideas comes back, and they aren't even able to up the
first RE.

Silent Hill 3: great, moody main character (Heather), cool visuals, many
scares... but why they werent' able to advance the plot beyond a boring
re-telling of SH1?

Master of Orion III. The lesser it is said about it, the better.

Oni: Tomb Raider + Tekken + Ghost in the Shell = a sure hit? Nope

Ultima VIII: I once took my boiling teapot with my bare hand, and it took a
month for the burns to heal. But to do this I only needed a moment of
foolishness, UVIII was actually discussed approved, designed, programmed...

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:27:28 +0800, Bateau <Gamera@work.stomping.aza>
wrote:

>Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>If no one else is going to say it then I will: Half Life.

What are you talking about, mang? It spawned the greatest RPG evar,
Counterstrike!


-- 
Hong Ooi                              | "I like snowballs."
hong@zipworld.com.au                  |    -- CA
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/ |
Sydney, Australia                     |

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:38:30 +1000, during a voyage through the cold
waters of comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, i happened upon the crew of
Hong Ooi <hong@zipworld.com.au>:

>On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:27:28 +0800, Bateau <Gamera@work.stomping.aza>
>wrote:
>
>>Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>>
>>If no one else is going to say it then I will: Half Life.
>
>What are you talking about, mang? It spawned the greatest RPG evar,
>Counterstrike!

It's true!
--
best regards, mat
np: [winamp not running]

I WILL round this Cape even if I have to keep sailing until doomsday!

Ben Sisson wrote:

> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
> 
> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

Trespasser and Battlecruiser 3000.

> 
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
> 
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
> 

Dungeon Keeper was a classic IMO.

-- 
Walter Mitty
-
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagiarism
http://www.tinyurl.com

Andrew <spamtrap@localhost.> writes:

> I know where my money will be going next month.

To the game with the best gameplay? Or will you be gritting your teeth
going "Argh, I spent $50 on this stinker when I could have downloaded
Paradroid for free!"?

:)

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:57:19 -0400, "magnulus"
<magnulus@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>  Dungeon Keeper was OK.  Not the greatest game ever but OK.
>
>  Black and White was deeply flawed gameplay and a poor interface.
>
>  Evil Genius looks like it has a great game idea, but is hamstrung by
>design decisions (for instance, why is there no way to control the minions
>globally through some kind of sliders or settings, which leads to things
>like guards ignoring people walking in the base unless you personally tag
>them (which shouldn't happen, Dr. Evil should be able to set the policies of
>uninvited guests entering the base, right? "OK, if they don't touch anything
>or take pictures, just mess with their mind a bit and try to get them to the
>front door... otherwise, capture/kill them").

Kind of like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the Palin
character tries (unsuccessfully) to explain to his guards
exactly what he wants them to do...

bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly) writes:
>In article <DMGdnXmv86R00-HcRVn-sw@comcast.com>,
> sandtiger <sandtiger01@comcast.net> wrote:
>>Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it 
>>turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls 
>>of accountants.

>Yep, or uninspired drek dictated by accountants to designers.

>SWG was the first MMORPG I beta tested but didn't buy.

>HUGE disappointment.

I think I'd have to put Eve in that category too, although the biggest
problem with that game was bad combat and trading design and poor roll-out
(when you don't include relatively simple features like increasing costs
for trade goods as the supply decreases and vice versa, you're making a
big mistake -- especially since TradeWars had that feature in _1992_).

-- 
Chas Blackwell <Black Isis>            	CITES Systems Management Group  
    <cblkwell@uiuc.edu>                	
					I don't even know what CITES stands
   					for, so I don't speak for them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"As we were forged we shall return, perhaps some day.	| VNV Nation,
I will remember you and wonder who we were."		|    "Further"

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote in message news:<uu0sjdwr3.fsf@broadpark.no>...
> drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> writes:
> 
> > I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
> 
> No, the first Populous was great.

I thought the second Populous was fantastic too, as was Syndicate

> If no one else is going to say it then I will: Half Life.

No one is saying it because no one else thinks it was a "fumbled 
opportunity". See ? If it was, then I only hope they fumble Half-Life 2 in 
the same way.
As usual, you are way out there in right field all on your own, just praying 
somebody will hit the ball near you so you can play too. 

Yes I would agree Black and White was a big fumble.  I got some enjoyment 
out of it but it had the potential to be so much more and easier to use too. 
It could have opened up a whole type of gaming for lots of different types 
of games.   It just didn't have it.  Maybe it was too much hype.
"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
news:s58on0lcv200jnk3o13mrbhl6eq1un863o@4ax.com...
>A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
> name "Allan C Cybulskie" <allan.c.cybulskie@yahoo.ca>:
>
>>
>>"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
>>news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>>>
>>> This post is not about those games.
>>>
>>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>>> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>>
>>There are a few that I can think of:
>>
>>1) That god-game that Molyneaux thought up (so memorable I can't even
>>remember the name [grin]) where you were the god of a group of people and
>>trained your own monster pet, etc, etc.  Great idea, everyone was excited
>>about, lots of hype ... and then when it came out it was reviewed as being
>>so horribly implemented that I didn't even want to play it anymore, and so
>>never bought it.
>
> That'd be Black & White.
>
>
> -- 
>
> "We're not going to have any casualties."
>
> - G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq 

This is a very interesting topic because I tend to agree with almost 
everybody which is pretty weird for a newsgroup like this.  Everytime I 
think of my list someone else mentions other great fumbles.  I guess it is 
kinda sad there are so many!


"Walter Mitty" <mitticus@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:clj67e$mtg$03$1@news.t-online.com...
> Ben Sisson wrote:
>
>> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
>> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
>> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
>> made something great out of it.
>>
>> This post is not about those games.
>>
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> Trespasser and Battlecruiser 3000.
>
>>
>> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
>> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>>
>> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
>> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
>> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
>> game, if you will.
>>
>
> Dungeon Keeper was a classic IMO.
>
> -- 
> Walter Mitty
> -
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagiarism
> http://www.tinyurl.com 

drocket wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 20:34:23 GMT, Ben Sisson
> <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> 
> 
> To add a new game to the list:  Ultima Online.  Designed by Raph
> Koster, who has the same problem as Molyneux - brilliant at the
> overall idea, couldn't do details if his life depended on it.  Star
> Wars: Galaxies suffers from the same problems.
> 

Oh, yeah, put SWG on the list of flubs. I do enjoy the game, but the 
designers never knew what to do with it once they had it. I don't put 
the flub in the design, but in how and what content was added after 
launch. Some was great, and well needed, but other pieces of needed 
content just never got developed. And thus, the world remains flat.

CH

"Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:clipur$b7h$1@news5.svr.pol.co.uk...
> The DK2 way of grouping creatures would have been great in DK1 - go in
> and actually take *command* of your minions before invading the enemy.

By far the best addition I've seen. That one feature has saved me so many times.

> DK2 didn't have dragons. One of the single worst decisions ever - I
> mean, how can you be in charge of a dungeon and not have even one single
> dragon on staff? The name "Salamander" for a fire-walking lizard just
> doesn't cut it. Lose 1000 points of Coolness Value.

I guess they wanted a little more variety in the second installment. In my opinion, if DK2
had the same creatures as DK1 I would have deleted it from my computer.

> And we don't
> WANT the game interrupted for 20-30 seconds telling you that you've got
> a new creature - no matter how nifty the graphic of it climbing out of
> the portals is (and all at a weird diagonal angle that the game
> instantly sets you to when you revert back to conventional gameplay,
> even though you didn't WANT to be viewing at that angle.)

Spacebar skips all cinematics. On the same subject, the voice-over or "Bitchin' Barry" as I
call him was so annoying. How many times do I need to be told to build a room I can't afford
or don't want in the first place?

> The monsters were simply too damn small in DK2 compared to DK1. All the
> graphics in fact were smaller, and thus harder to see and harder to
> manipulate.

I'd put that down to the resolution and the use of static meshes. DK1 was 640 x 480 (or
somewhere around there) at high detail, while DK2 was 800 x 600, I think.

> The main problem with multiplayer DK1 and DK2 was that there was no
> chance for somebody who was losing a battle to actually have the ability
> to duck out, regroup and return in force (unlike, say, in Civilization
> 2). Horrendously huge battles had a sort of tipping point - once you
> were over it, *there was no comeback*.

The AI in DK1 was terrible at this. I used to use the computer assistant (don't laugh lol)
and whenever two imps would attack each other, both AIs would simultaneously drop every
creature at the same point for a "final battle."

> (Incidentally the same problem was with the Scavenger Room in DK1. Once
> you got beyond a certain level, there was no comeback.)

Thank goodness they removed the Scavenger Room in DK2. The only positive thing to come from
that room is that it kept the vampires away from the warlocks.

> In DK2, although monsters could technically get up to level 10, *you
> could not train them above level FOUR of your own volition until the
> 15th level of the 20*. That is FAR too long for your minions to be stuck
> at LESS THAN HALF of their potential power. While it's okay to stop you
> getting to the absolute top levels until the last few levels of the
> original campaign, being stuck at less than half power for more than
> three quarters of the game is simply bad.

Normally I left my creatures at level 4 because monitoring the pit was too much
micro-management for me. I'd rather go into battle with ~20 level 4 creatures than have an
enemy patrol casually walk into my dungeon.

> DK1 actually had some cooler ideas in it - levels where some things
> weren't possible,

Sorry mate but I thought the levels in DK2 were much more interesting. Lava flows and
underground streams are more appealing to the challenge than a screenfull of rock.

> DK2's *patches* introduced some new cool-ish stuff. Unfortunately, since
> no new "official" levels were released, either for single player or
> multiplayer, and those that did exist were not altered in any way to
> allow the new content of creatures and traps

I'd put this down to the cancellation of the DK line.

> in DK1, if you slap him [Horny], or don't pay him,
> or just let him *exist* for too long without anything useful to do, he
> runs amok and starts slaughtering your guys and you have to take him
> down, which is much cooler.)

Drop them at the temple, keeps them happy. Once a horned reaper becomes unhappy you may as
well throw him back into the portal, they will never live peacefully with other creatures.
Oh, well not that this information matters much now lol.

> and the only ways in which DK2 were better were the
> bells-and-whistles ways (and, even in those cases, over two thirds of
> the so-called "improvements" in fact made for worse gameplay or worse
> tedium over the long term at the expense of an initial ten seconds of
> coolness-value that actually got really old when it was ten wasted
> seconds EVERY DAMN TIME.)

I sort of agree with you but like you said before - a combination of both games would have
been awesome. If Bullfrog had taken the graphics and _some_ features from DK2 and the
gameplay from DK1, the resulting game would have set the bar for future RTS games.

Ben Sisson wrote:


> 
> Any other ideas?
> 
>  

Real Time Strategy/First Person Shooting ... and all the games that 
didn't get made.

When RTS and FPS hit, they hit big, and EVERYONE jumped on the 
bandwagon, often dumping less interesting projects. That was a shame. It 
became an all-RTS all-the-time world or All-First-Person Shooter. Other 
game styles couldn't get made. This ultimately hurt the game industry, 
as entire game segments were lost at this time.

So all those games you never heard of because no one would fund them? 
THOSE are the games that would have revolutioned the game business.

CH

sandtiger wrote:

> Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> 
>> .or the more recent case of CSRs
>> teleporting characters from Naboo into deep space after banning several
>> players for cheating because one player used an exploit to dupe money
>> and used the tip feature to pass it around.
> 
> 
> Oh, wow. They aren't even pretending not to hate their customers 
> anymore, are they?

They are trying to do better. I view SWG as an education in on-line 
gaming. They are doing some things right. They are doing some things 
wrong. And for some things, the players are just dicks, and there's no hope.

I just went through JtL beta and they have a similar problem. The engine 
is great. The balance is odd. The storytelling is poor. But, they 
recognize that they do have problems, which is good.

CH

"Highlandish" <ckreskay_CURSEING@dodo.com.au> wrote in message news:<2u42nnF25f91cU4@uni-berlin.de>...
> now you're just trolling, Alice was a fantastic game and more atmospheric 
> than most games I have ever played. I look forward to Oz if it is ever going 
> to be made.

Please don't try to discern my motives. You're clearly not up to it.

Since you apparently have some trouble with reading comprehension, let
me walk you through this: The OP didn't ask for games that sucked, he
asked for games that, in our opinion, didn't live up to their
potential. That is exactly what I delivered: my opinion about a game
that didn't live up to its potential. You, on the other hand, just
want to tell us how much you enjoyed Alice, which is the subject of
some other thread but not this one. So you liked Alice. Bully for you.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, too, as far as it went. But it
was still a massively squandered opportunity, in my opinion, just as I
said.

In article <upt37dvsf.fsf@broadpark.no>, 
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:

>bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly) writes:
>
>> Have to add COH. Only MMORPG I've ever bought and canceled
>> before my ' free ' 30 days was up. Pissed my money away buying 
>> that game.
>
>No, CoH does what it does well (but it does very little); does not fit
>the "fumbled opportunity" requirement: In fact, it has been the
>blessing of many jaded MMORPG gamers who have given up on the real
>fumbles, like Horizons.


Actually you're right Tor, it was my fumble for not learning about the game 
first, instead just assuming it would contain the same elements as other 
MMORPGS from a different and interesting angle..

I did the same stupid thing and bought Alien Invasion, never for a minute
thinking an ' expansion pack ' would be a totally different game.

Jim

"Highlandish" <ckreskay_CURSEING@dodo.com.au> wrote in message news:<2u42nnF25f91cU4@uni-berlin.de>...
> > American McGee's Alice. In the hands of someone with some literary
> > talent and sense, this could have been an amazing action adventure.
> > Instead it ended up being just a silly platform shooter. What a
> > goddamned waste.
> 
> now you're just trolling, Alice was a fantastic game and more atmospheric 
> than most games I have ever played. 

Really?  I've never heard anyone describe it as a "fantastic game".
Yes it had great atmosphere and character design, but the gameplay
was pretty lousy.

His point was that American McGee's efforts in creating such a
cleverly twisted version of Wonderland were wasted on a very 
generic shooter/platform game.

It's not bad, but it could have been something much greater.

And I agree with the OP on Dungeon Keeper 1&2.  Great idea, but
disappointing execution.
-st

In article <clj7ed$kh3$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>, 
cblkwell@tower.cso.uiuc.edu (Chastity Blackwell) wrote:

>I think I'd have to put Eve in that category too, although the biggest
>problem with that game was bad combat and trading design and poor roll-out
>(when you don't include relatively simple features like increasing costs
>for trade goods as the supply decreases and vice versa, you're making a
>big mistake -- especially since TradeWars had that feature in _1992_).


I couldn't believe the minimum screen resolution of 1024x768. I had 
my nose pressed against the monitor and still couldn't read a damn 
thing. Kind of strange for a game to blow off people without young 
eyes.

Jim

Chastity Blackwell wrote:

> bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly) writes:
> 
>>In article <DMGdnXmv86R00-HcRVn-sw@comcast.com>,
>>sandtiger <sandtiger01@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead it 
>>>turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with the souls 
>>>of accountants.
> 
> 
>>Yep, or uninspired drek dictated by accountants to designers.
> 
> 
>>SWG was the first MMORPG I beta tested but didn't buy.
> 
> 
>>HUGE disappointment.
> 
> 
> I think I'd have to put Eve in that category too, although the biggest
> problem with that game was bad combat and trading design and poor roll-out
> (when you don't include relatively simple features like increasing costs
> for trade goods as the supply decreases and vice versa, you're making a
> big mistake -- especially since TradeWars had that feature in _1992_).
> 

Total inability to trade/research the markets while in long boring star 
jump sequences - unbelievable. Only Privateer 2 was worse.l


-- 
Walter Mitty
-
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagiarism
http://www.tinyurl.com

bombelly wrote:
> 
> Have to add COH. Only MMORPG I've ever bought and canceled
> before my ' free ' 30 days was up. Pissed my money away buying
> that game.

I think there's a difference between "fumbled opportunity" and "not to
one's taste."

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

sandtiger wrote:
> 
> Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> > .or the more recent case of CSRs
> > teleporting characters from Naboo into deep space after banning several
> > players for cheating because one player used an exploit to dupe money
> > and used the tip feature to pass it around.
> 
> Oh, wow. They aren't even pretending not to hate their customers
> anymore, are they?

I thought that pretense had gone away long ago.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

chainbreaker wrote:
> 
> I like NWN much better than Morrowind, but don't feel strongly enough about
> either to stump much.

Most of the posters here (in csipgrpg) who bother to post about it
apparently feel that NWN is a blight on the oversoul of gaming. Not all,
of course.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
> 
> The reason I say it failed is basically precisely because people tend to
> hate it so much that they don't talk about it here ... whereas if the game
> had actually been good it would have been popular and all the modules would
> have been shouted out from the rooftops [grin].

Here isn't really a good barometer, though. Since anything positive
about the game is met with disbelief or hostility (not far different
from Dungeon Siege, although less deserved), people tend to talk more
about it in venues dedicated to Neverwinter Nights. The Bioware forums
are still active these days, for example.

It's the same with Morrowind - people tend not to post about the good
mods unless specifically asked.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

sandtiger wrote:
> 
> The absolute only problem I had with NWN was that the camera wasn't
> entirely free.

Incidentally, that's been changed. The camera can be much more free now.

> My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
> non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options that made
> absolutely no sense to me.

That's strange. Topics tend to come up when they appear in someone's
response.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Bateau wrote:
> It's a space colony building game right? I can think of 2 other such
> games off the top of my head.

None before Outpost, though, I don't think, at least not with the scope it 
was *supposed* to have.

And it's a damn wonder that the genre wasn't killed off completely after 
that mess--and mess is giving it the benefit of the doubt.

You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as hyped as 
Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if not more so.
-- 
chainbreaker 

chainbreaker wrote:
> 
> sandtiger wrote:
> > My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
> > non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options that
> > made absolutely no sense to me.
> 
> I think my biggest problem with Morrowind is simply that the characters look
> like shit.

There are lots of improved head models now.

They still don't move like human beings, but I tend not to play in
3rd-person to avoid seeing it.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Walter Mitty wrote:
>
> Total inability to trade/research the markets while in long boring
> star jump sequences - unbelievable. Only Privateer 2 was worse.l

You just have to wonder why no one ever recaptured the magic that was 
Privateer--and no one's really recaptured Diablo 2's magic either.

-- 
chainbreaker 

Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> chainbreaker wrote:
> 
>>sandtiger wrote:
>>
>>>My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
>>>non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options that
>>>made absolutely no sense to me.
>>
>>I think my biggest problem with Morrowind is simply that the characters look
>>like shit.

Wait - you can play a stone/stone tanker in Morrowind? Hot damn!

> 
> 
> There are lots of improved head models now.
> 
> They still don't move like human beings, but I tend not to play in
> 3rd-person to avoid seeing it.

Yeah - I have to play this in 1st person for that reason. Bad animations 
make me cringe.

Vincenzo Beretta wrote:
> 
> Knights of the Old Republic. Yes, I do know that many consider it a cool
> game, but the simplified combat system to allow for "consolization" ruined
> my day. They had the opportunity to let you fight in the Star Wars universe
> using the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale system, and discarded it.

The Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale system was less involved than KOTOR's.

> Neverwinter Nights didn't worked. I'm a pen and paper DM since 1984, and I
> was really excited at the opportunity to DMastering online modules - I tried
> it with my players (five computers linked up in the same room - one master
> and four players) and it never really worked as a fun game. I returned to
> pen and paper.

NWN works for several different applications. I wouldn't necessarily
suggest running a game at a lan party like that as one of them. Even so,
people do successfully GM and play in GM'd games.
 
Anyway, can very successful games reliably be said to have missed
opportunities? Or can games that you don't cotton to be said to be
missed opportunities when it's just that you didn't enjoy them?

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Clawhound <none@nowhere.com> writes:

> I just went through JtL beta and they have a similar problem. The
> engine is great. The balance is odd. The storytelling is poor. But,
> they recognize that they do have problems, which is good.

No, it's not because history shows they don't fix problems. They have
acknowledged big problems for smuggler profession and the entire
combat system. "Revamps" for both have been promised for ages. Will
they fix them now that they have finished JtL? No, they just have more
bugs to fix.

bombelly@wahs.ac (bombelly) writes:

> I did the same stupid thing and bought Alien Invasion, never for a minute
> thinking an ' expansion pack ' would be a totally different game.

I avoided Alien Invasion because I did my homework beforehand. :)

I knew that with no high-level characters and no interest in
organizations, there was nothing in it for me. I bought Shadowlands
without too much research though, but it turned out to have a killer
feature (perks) which were not dependent on going to the Shadowlands.

joe_fatties_boo@hotmail.com (Steve T) writes:

> His point was that American McGee's efforts in creating such a
> cleverly twisted version of Wonderland were wasted on a very 
> generic shooter/platform game.

It could be because American McGee (unless I am mistaken) is a level
designer mainly; to make Alice something more than a shooter would
have meant a "total conversion" game (like Deus Ex), and presumably
they didn't consider that worth the effort.

inferno2000@my-deja.com (inferno2000) writes:

<re: Evil Genius>
> From what I've seen so far, it is part of the design to force the
> players to micro-manage the tag settings so that you have spent time
> preventing the agents from doing nasty things to your base.

This is the only sort of game of this variety I've really ever played,
except for a DungeonKeeper demo, so I can't really compare it to
anything.  But I'm addicted.  Part of the appeal is that the Evil
Genius is the only person with any brains on the entire island and
that all the minions are too idiotic to ever notice the enemy agent
sneaking through the door behind them.  Somehow characters tagged for
weakening still manage to get past several security doors and end up
in my control room without any minions attempting to ask for ID.

Auto-tagging the agents wouldn't be quite right if it was always
available.  But if you got it late in the game as an advanced camera
type it could work, or if only henchman could do auto tagging.

-- 
Darin Johnson
    My shoes are too tight, and I have forgotten how to dance -- Babylon 5

joe_fatties_boo@hotmail.com (Steve T) writes:

> His point was that American McGee's efforts in creating such a
> cleverly twisted version of Wonderland were wasted on a very 
> generic shooter/platform game.

A good looking game too, but ultimately shallow in comparison to
the promise.  It doesn't tell a story, it doesn't even follow the
story from Alice in Wonderland.  The manual has the doctor's
journal about Alice in the mental ward, but the game itself never
goes into that, and there's no feeling of horror or losing one's
mind or anything like that.  There could have been books to read,
conversations with characters, twisted reenactments of the original
Wonderland scenes, etc.

It's just a shooter after all, which isn't a bad thing since I don't
own many of those and so Alice was a lot of fun to play.  Compare to
Half-Life though, which was "just a shooter" but still did a great job
in telling a story and providing atmosphere rather than just have a
succession of things to kill and a few puzzles.

-- 
Darin Johnson
    "You used to be big."
    "I am big.  It's the pictures that got small."

"bunboy" <bunboy@cox.net> writes:

> This is a very interesting topic because I tend to agree with almost 
> everybody which is pretty weird for a newsgroup like this.  Everytime I 
> think of my list someone else mentions other great fumbles.  I guess it is 
> kinda sad there are so many!

Look at it this way - ALL computer games have fumbled somewhere or for
someone.  There is no game that was everything it could have been.

-- 
Darin Johnson
    Caution! Under no circumstances confuse the mesh with the
    interleave operator, except under confusing circumstances!

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 08:16:40 -0400, Nick Vargish
<nav+posts@bandersnatch.org> wrote:

>Though there are games I've played more,
>none have had the sheer brilliance that was Myth.

I agree - although I played Myth much more than any other.

The only pain I felt because of Myth was trying to explain to my
friends how it could be fun when they were hermitting on Starcraft.
"But you don't build anything - I don't get it!"


-- 
Alex
atheist #2007

Darin Johnson wrote:

> "bunboy" <bunboy@cox.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>This is a very interesting topic because I tend to agree with almost 
>>everybody which is pretty weird for a newsgroup like this.  Everytime I 
>>think of my list someone else mentions other great fumbles.  I guess it is 
>>kinda sad there are so many!
> 
> 
> Look at it this way - ALL computer games have fumbled somewhere or for
> someone.  There is no game that was everything it could have been.
> 

There were two games that I couldn't fault : Descent & Alpha Centauri.

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name Alex <a@b.c>:

>On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 08:16:40 -0400, Nick Vargish
><nav+posts@bandersnatch.org> wrote:
>
>>Though there are games I've played more,
>>none have had the sheer brilliance that was Myth.
>
>I agree - although I played Myth much more than any other.
>
>The only pain I felt because of Myth was trying to explain to my
>friends how it could be fun when they were hermitting on Starcraft.
>"But you don't build anything - I don't get it!"

I played Myth more than any game before it, including Civ and other
classics. Myth was also the first game I played any significant time
online. No BC Trow though!

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 02:32:03 GMT, bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly)
wrote:

>Couldn't disagree more. UO remains for me the seminal, most
>amazing gaming experience, period.
>
>Sept 97, spawning in Yew, and being totally blown away by the
>most interactive online game ever, even until today. Nothing has
>approached the impact UO had on online gaming and it's development,
>and my eagerness to experience it.

I'm not in any way arguing that UO was bad (though its certainly bad
now, though, from a never-ending series of third-rate designers, each
of whom has thrown in their own ill-planned changes...) - I've spent
the past 4 years of my life as the lead developer of a private UO
shard, and am currently working on creating a new one.  I'm just
arguing that Koster failed to catch (and repair) the subtle things
that would have made it from a good game to a great one.  

In his original design, he seemed to completely and utterly miss the
existance of the griefer, a phenomenon well-known in MUDding circles.
He also didn't seem to have the slightest concept of balance,
designing an insane combat system featuring one-hit-kill weapons.
I'll forgive him the 'houses, houses everywhere' problem, because that
wasn't entirely his fault, but he does get credit for the failed
ecosystem spawning system that led to the immediate extinction of
everything on the planet (and was quickly abandoned.)

When he started patching the problems, the solution was often worse
than the problem.  The statloss red thing was virtually a joke, and
despite combat going through revision after revision, he never managed
to fix the core problems.  By the end, he pretty much gave up on the
'UO as a virtual world' idea and all-but-scrapped the principles that
the game was built on, and those who followed him did even worse on
that score.

UO was a revolutionary game, but it was never a _good_ game, and I
think it could have been has it been headed by someone with a better
head for details.  He managed to create a GREAT overall vision for the
game, but he was never able to create workable subsystems that held to
that vision.

On 25 Oct 2004 10:31:44 +0200, Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
<tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:

>drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
>
>No, the first Populous was great.

I'd have to disagree with you.  It was revolutionary, but it was far
too repetative.  There was only like 10 minutes of actual gameplay,
then you'd declare judgement day and go to the next level and start
the whole thing over again.  

Raise land, lower land, raise land, lower land, tell your followers to
build more to the east, raise land, lower land, build some huts to the
south now, raise land, lower land, build some more huts over that
hill, raise land, lower land - ARMAGEDDON!  Repeat through like 500
levels.  

"Julie d'Aubigny" <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:417D4914.9C718ED1@comcast.net...
> chainbreaker wrote:
> >
> > sandtiger wrote:
> > > My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
> > > non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options
that
> > > made absolutely no sense to me.
> >
> > I think my biggest problem with Morrowind is simply that the
characters look
> > like shit.
>
> There are lots of improved head models now.
>
> They still don't move like human beings, but I tend not to play in
> 3rd-person to avoid seeing it.

And who the hell cares what they look like?

I have a few problems with Morrowind:

(1) Simply *moving* is too damn slow at the beginning of the game. Even
when running.

(2) Once you level up beyond about 15, you're too powerful for
everything else.

(3) There are certain skills that, even if you take them as a major
skill, they're pretty much impossible to *in gameplay* get them up to a
decently high level. Now, your basic sword-swinger has to hit a monster
several times in combat, and can repeat this over and over again for
monster after monster until his weapon breaks? If you major in a weapon,
then that weapon is not difficult to get to high levels - 70, 80, 90,
even 100.
     But with spells, you run out of mana far too soon - the only way to
improve a spellcasting skill up to 100 is to make a spell costing 1 mana
point and then cast it over and over again, at nothing, with no effect
other than depleting your mana points (because it's a total waste of
time to cast it at a foe or use it in gameplay in any other way because
it doesn't have a sufficient effect to be worth using.)
     This is a direct result of two factors: (1) too few mana points for
all except perhaps one or two types of character, those with a specific
race and/or birthsign, and (2) IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW POWERFUL THE SPELL
IS - casting a Big Powerful Spell gives you the *SAME* skill increase as
casting a Small Weak Spell, so it is actually less efficient to use Big
Powerful Spells - one would think it would increase your skill more, not
less. Casting a spell costing 10 mana should be, if not 10 times as good
for increasing skills, at least 5 times as good...
     It's even worse for the "Enchant" skill, because there you are not
only limited by the number of times you can use an item that you cannot
enchant with a sufficiently powerful magick to actually achieve anything
useful in-game, you are also limited by the number of available
soul-gems for recharging it - and this is limited in turn by the number
of souls. (Yes, there's a merchant with infinite quantity of the things
over in Tel Branora.  Yes, you can summon an infinite number of monsters
to fill them with. And yes, that is ABUSE, and I don't like abuse.) And
even with Enchant at level 100, you can't make items equal to even the
mid-level items that appear in game, because your basic materials can't
hold the requisite amount of enchantment (no matter that they must have
done, at one stage.)
     Even the armour- and shield-improving skills aren't good because
they rely on the creature actually hitting you. In short, your armour
skill improves when your armour *fails* to block a blow, so you take
damage... at least your Block skill works properly. But advances too
damn slowly.
     (4) Personality and Speechcraft are broken once you get over about
50. Worse still, Mercantile is broken the moment you get the ability to
haggle somebody's selling price down to lower than you haggled their
buying price up to. Also, their starting price - which they will buy
stuff from you at - goes DOWN, not up, as your Mercantile skill gets
higher. Early in the game, with a low Mercantile skill, you can get
about 400 gold for a Skooma: late on, you're lucky to get 80.
     (5) Merchants' pockets are too small. Here's this Daedric weapon at
48000, and what's the best merchant in the game got? 10k, and he's an
in-joke (the Drunken Mudcrab). There's one with a max of 9k, and he's
way out in the wilderness with a tribe of outcasts that aren't supposed
to value wealth for its own sake (and he's not even their official
Trader either.) As for the merchants in the rich towns? 4k, maximum.
     (6) God knows how many role-playing cliches.
 - Right up to and including "If, at any point in the game, you
encounter a Tribe, Religion, Cult, Race or People that is waiting for a
Hero, Saviour, Demigod-Incarnate or anything else of that type, then a
Major Main Plot Point will eventually be made of the fact that you will
have to either *be* that Hero or *kill* that hero - or more usually
both, in terms of killing off rival pretenders to the heroism."
 - And "If there is a Prophecy anywhere, the chances are a hundred to
one it will turn out to be about you, either to fulfil it or avert it.
In fact there IS always a prophecy about you, you're never allowed to be
a nobody from nowhere who just does things for the cash or because he
feels like it"
 - Even down to "If there is an Incurable Disease anywhere in the game,
a Major Plot Point will be made out of you curing it, and there is at
least a 75% chance that an Equally Major Plot Point will be made of you
*catching* the disease in the first place..."
 - And "If there is a group of Persecuted Outcast Dissidents anywhere -
either dissident against the established rulers, or the established
religions, or both - then they will at some point in the game turn out
to have been right, and the established rulers or religions will turn
out to be either (a) completely unaware of what is really going on, (b)
knowing what is going on but trying, with good but ineffective
intentions, to cover it up so as not to panic the locals, or (c)
actively complicit in whatever evil the Dissidents are against, or (d)
all three of the above..."
 - And "At some point in the game, you're going to have to visit either
a hermit or an entire tribe of hermits, and do exactly what they say."
 - Not to mention "There are always giant robots. ALWAYS."
 - And "if there's ever a "lost race", then YOU will be the one to find
out why they disappeared, and how. If there was a last survivor, you
will meet him. The chances are, he will turn out to be instrumental in
solving some problem that nobody else can, like working out how an
ancient artifact can work or curing an incurable disease."
 - Even such low-level cliches as "The Ice Barbarians of the North -
they're always from the north and they're always ice barbarians - wear
nothing but fur loincloths when they're at home, and walk about barefoot
on ice and snow."
 - Or "You will always end up ceremonially joining a close-knit tribe
that hasn't let in any strangers even of the same species, let alone of
a different species, for several centuries."
(mumblemumbleEwoksmumblemumble)
 - And of course... "You always have to kill the Final Boss TWICE. The
first time is a conventional, if difficult, beatdown with conventional
weapons. The second time he will be something like ten or twenty times
more powerful and you will have to do something unlikely to beat him,
such as smash SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY and ignore him while he's beating
on you."

Yeah - I think even Morrowind, good as it is, fumbled in so many ways
you could write an entire book on their fumbles...

Jonathan.

Quoth The Raven "Bateau <Gamera@work.stomping.aza>" in
4k2qn0137nkatmem0mikrumdkok4bl6i0u@4ax.com
> sandtiger <sandtiger01@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Kaos wrote:
>>> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:23:31 GMT, Julie d'Aubigny
>>> <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> sandtiger wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Star Wars: Galaxies. God, that could have been magical, but instead
>>>>> it turned out to be uninspired drek put forth by "designers" with
>>>>> the souls of accountants.
>>>>
>>>> I am extremely disappointed that my pre-live criticisms turned out
>>>> to be true...and turned out to not be the game's biggest flaws.
>>>
>>>
>>> A lot of the promises appealed to me, but in the end I succumbed to my
>>> distaste for highly canonized worlds and stayed away.  Seems I was
>>> saved by an irrational moment ;)
>>
>> Here's the scary part:
>>
>> Had they *stayed* with the canon, SWG would have been nearly infinitely
>> better. That's how bad their "original" ideas were implimented.
>> Honestly, if the game had just been WMV files of all of Jar-Jar Binks'
>> scenes in Episode I, that would have been better. At least then it
>> would have been a game - "How long can I watch this before I poke my
>> eyes out with a spork?"
>
> Haha I just saw the Ninja episode of South Park. Even my dad laughed
> when Butters got shuruikened.

was a good ep, I'm never into Asian styled cartoons but the send up was 
great.

-- 
Take out the _CURSEING to reply to me

Feeling lucky? Install that software upgrade... 

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com>...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
> 
> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
> 
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
> 
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
> 
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
> 
> Pity.
> 
> Any other ideas?




Elite

It's been 20 years since it first appeared on the C-64 and they still
have an active newsgroup waiting for the sequel.

Jonathan Ellis wrote:
> Yeah - I think even Morrowind, good as it is, fumbled in so many ways
> you could write an entire book on their fumbles...
>
> Jonathan.

*Good* as it is?

Gack!

After reading all that I feel like I need to have hazard response pick up my 
Morrowind disks and disinfect my hard drive.

How critical are you about stuff you *don't* think is good?

-- 
chainbreaker 

"chainbreaker" wrote
> Jonathan Ellis wrote:
> > Yeah - I think even Morrowind, good as it is, fumbled in so
> > many ways you could write an entire book on their fumbles...
>
> *Good* as it is? Gack! After reading all that I feel like I need
> to have hazard response pick up my  Morrowind disks and
> disinfect my hard drive.   How critical are you about stuff
> you *don't* think is good?

LOL!

It reminds of that famous line in an early Cheers episode:

Sam: Don't be bitter, Woody.
Woody:  I'm not bitter, Sam.  I'm just consumed by a gnawing hate that's
eating away at my gut until I can taste the bile in my mouth.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 13:01:32 +0100, "Jonathan Ellis"
<jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

>
>"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
>news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
>> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
>> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
>> made something great out of it.
>>
>> This post is not about those games.
>>
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>>
>> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
>> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>>
>> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
>> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
>> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
>> game, if you will.
>>
>> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
>> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
>> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
>> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
>> it.
>
>Nah - Dungeon Keeper was better than you say it was, at least DK1 was.
>
>There were things that could be done in first-person view action that
>weren't possible in the main overview. At least in DK1 - you could
>actually run an imp over lava and make him dig on the other side even
>while he was getting hurt, then go back to the overview and pick up the
>gold by hand from ground you didn't own (ideal if you didn't have the
>ability to build a bridge). Unfortunately the ability to force creatures
>to do that was removed in DK2.

Lava was intended to be a barrier that prevents normal creatures from
crossing (the exceptions being flies and lava-immune units).  Since the
implementation was abused in DK1, the developers made a change to make this
impossible.  The same applies to the other unbalancing tactics in DK1 that
got used (such as using Lightning Bolt constantly in enemy territory).

Also, the first person view wasn't as great as it could be either - for
example, you couldn't reinforce walls when possessing an imp (or you
couldn't tell offhand).  

>     Worst of all was the massively slow, massively long graphic at the
>end of each DK2 level showing Horny slowly arising out of the ground,
>then padding his way towards the fallen Lord of the Land and taking the
>gem.

However, it's a good thing DK2 brought this problem to light.  While not
the first time it appeared, it was certainly a important since it was the
first unskippable cutscene slowed down because of the rendering power of
the average computer at the time.  

It also shows which developers haven't learned from previous mistakes - for
example, C&C: Generals has both unskippable FMVs and cutscenes.  

>In DK2, although monsters could technically get up to level 10, *you
>could not train them above level FOUR of your own volition until the
>15th level of the 20*. That is FAR too long for your minions to be stuck
>at LESS THAN HALF of their potential power. While it's okay to stop you
>getting to the absolute top levels until the last few levels of the
>original campaign, being stuck at less than half power for more than
>three quarters of the game is simply bad.

There still a way to train creatures - it involves taking prisoners. When
you collect enough prisoners, heal them and place some of them in an area
where they will enter combat (e.g. near one of your lairs).  Naturally, I
expect that there's probably a counter to this form of munchkining... 

Not many players would do this form of training - the usual procedure is to
either collect skeletons or convert the prisoners.  

>Unfortunately, since
>no new "official" levels were released, either for single player or
>multiplayer, and those that did exist were not altered in any way to
>allow the new content of creatures and traps, the only place you could
>USE your new creatures and traps was in the severely-crippled "My Pet
>Dungeon" testing levels where you had access to everything right from
>the start, and could trigger monsters to come and attack whenever you
>wanted and never when you didn't want.

IIRC, there were a few additional levels added with some of the patches.
Not that it matters, since there were only one or two new levels worth
noting...

>Apart from the fact that sometimes DK1 would simply overload the
>graphics card and crash back to desktop. 

The DOS version doesn't suffer from this problem. :)

It might have another weak link (such as the copy-protection system
crashing the game as it did for me), but it won't be the video card.  

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:04:37 -0600, "Hank the Rapper"
<fakeemail@coldmail.com> wrote:

>sandtiger wrote:
>
>> Here's why I like Black & White:
>
>During the first chapter I chained my pet around a bunch of musicians. I 
>went to do some other things, when I came back five minutes later I saw my 
>cow gracefully dancing for everyone. All the people were cheering and 
>shouting. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen in a game. Unfortuately 
>for me half way through chapter 2 is when the game lost it's appeal for me. 

The problem with Black & White was that it was not designed to scale up.
While it's good for micromanaging, it's much harder to play when the
population (or another important thing) multiplies by a power of 10.  

There's other problems with the game design, such as various flaws with how
the belief system works.  I'm sure you know that it's almost impossible to
capture an opponent's village that has over 2000 belief, unless you remove
every villager that you can get your hands on - all but one doesn't count
since the belief rating isn't affected by the number of people in the
village.

>If Molyneux had done away with the animal fighting and story and had more of 
>a sandbox-type game I think it would have been better. 

Animal combat is technically an important aspect of the game.  There really
wouldn't be much use for the animal if it can only go around helping the
villagers carry food around and heal them - you could easily do that
yourself with minimal effort. 

On 25 Oct 2004 14:09:19 GMT, Neil Cerutti <neil.cerutti@tds.net> wrote:

>In article <6r6on05ibs0qg48aupcr7bq01v1knc2m0q@4ax.com>, Andrew wrote:
>> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:06:04 GMT, "Aquila" <Aquila@Aquila.net>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>>Black & White?
>>>P.S., Dungeon Keeper was good!
>> 
>> Agreed to both of those, I don't know why the OP doesn't like
>> DK.
>
>It was all atmosphere and interface with no gameplay.
>
>Battle == drop all your minions in the same room as fast as you
>can == idiotic.

It's been a while since I played DK1, but dropping your entire army in a
small area generally causes your forces to be packed closely --  A prime
target for the lightning bolt spell (which can be refired infinitly on maps
containing gems.)  Alternativly, you can just throw a boulder into the
fray.  

While this may apply in DK2, that tactic was made less powerful because
units have a 1-2 second additional recovery time after being dropped.  

Besides, placing all your units in one area is the all-time classic tactic
known as Blitzkrieg.  I haven't yet seen a game within the same style as DK
(or C&C, Starcraft, etc.) where Blitzkrieg is generally an unadvisable
tactic. 

On 25 Oct 2004 14:09:20 GMT, Neil Cerutti <neil.cerutti@tds.net> wrote:

>In article <a9390719.0410242242.1cd48ead@posting.google.com>, inferno2000 wrote:
>> 
>> Syndicate had pretty good followings in 1994 though. However,
>> the Magic Carpet series in 1995 was so uncontrollable I gave
>> up.
>
>Syndicate was a fun game.  You could do lots of cool things, but
>unfortunately you didn't need to do most of them to win. 

That's true - but most of the fun things were things that the developers
did not expect.  For example, loading up with 5 energy shields and running
around the map to get all the enemy syndicate agents to completely
eliminate each other.  


>The
>worst example is the tactical teaming possibilities that were
>completely unrealized.  I never found a reason to split up my
>four-headed hydra of death.

That would be the original Syndicate, correct?  It's probably an issue with
weapon balance and map design that the 4-man squad can level whatever comes
your way.  The only reason I can think of would be "I Shot the Sherrif".  

If you can, you should try to find the expansion pack, American Revolution.
While it still powerful, there are situations where the 4-man squad isn't
the best tactic.   Either that, or the missions are too difficult (mainly
because most modern monitors blank the screen for 1-2 seconds after the
resolution changes).

Jonathan Ellis wrote:
> 
> "Julie d'Aubigny" <kali.magdalene@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:417D4914.9C718ED1@comcast.net...
> > chainbreaker wrote:
> > >
> > > sandtiger wrote:
> > > > My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
> > > > non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options
> that
> > > > made absolutely no sense to me.
> > >
> > > I think my biggest problem with Morrowind is simply that the
> characters look
> > > like shit.
> >
> > There are lots of improved head models now.
> >
> > They still don't move like human beings, but I tend not to play in
> > 3rd-person to avoid seeing it.
> 
> And who the hell cares what they look like?

Honestly, I do. That's why I mentioned it. What kind of silly question
is that, anyway?

> I have a few problems with Morrowind:
> 
> (1) Simply *moving* is too damn slow at the beginning of the game. Even
> when running.

You can download or simply make plugins that change this.
 
> (2) Once you level up beyond about 15, you're too powerful for
> everything else.

You can download plugins that change this. You can make some too, but
since the work has already been done (and it's a lot of work), there's
no reason not to take advantage of it. 
 
> (3) There are certain skills that, even if you take them as a major
> skill, they're pretty much impossible to *in gameplay* get them up to a
> decently high level. Now, your basic sword-swinger has to hit a monster
> several times in combat, and can repeat this over and over again for
> monster after monster until his weapon breaks? If you major in a weapon,
> then that weapon is not difficult to get to high levels - 70, 80, 90,
> even 100.
>      But with spells, you run out of mana far too soon - the only way to
> improve a spellcasting skill up to 100 is to make a spell costing 1 mana
> point and then cast it over and over again, at nothing, with no effect
> other than depleting your mana points (because it's a total waste of
> time to cast it at a foe or use it in gameplay in any other way because
> it doesn't have a sufficient effect to be worth using.)

See, there's a solution to this that's fast and easy and doesn't even
require a plugin - make "Restore Mana" potions. I carried as many of
these as I could - and my spellcasting skills were into the 60s to 70s
when I finished both of my full playthroughs.

If that's problematic, you can always download or make a mana
regeneration mod.

>      This is a direct result of two factors: (1) too few mana points for
> all except perhaps one or two types of character, those with a specific
> race and/or birthsign, and (2) IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW POWERFUL THE SPELL
> IS - casting a Big Powerful Spell gives you the *SAME* skill increase as
> casting a Small Weak Spell, so it is actually less efficient to use Big
> Powerful Spells - one would think it would increase your skill more, not
> less. Casting a spell costing 10 mana should be, if not 10 times as good
> for increasing skills, at least 5 times as good...

Starting mana issues can be corrected by downloading or making a plugin.

>      It's even worse for the "Enchant" skill, because there you are not
> only limited by the number of times you can use an item that you cannot
> enchant with a sufficiently powerful magick to actually achieve anything
> useful in-game, you are also limited by the number of available
> soul-gems for recharging it - and this is limited in turn by the number
> of souls. (Yes, there's a merchant with infinite quantity of the things
> over in Tel Branora.  Yes, you can summon an infinite number of monsters
> to fill them with. And yes, that is ABUSE, and I don't like abuse.) And
> even with Enchant at level 100, you can't make items equal to even the
> mid-level items that appear in game, because your basic materials can't
> hold the requisite amount of enchantment (no matter that they must have
> done, at one stage.)

Wow. I constantly used soulgems to recharge enchanted items, and raised
my enchant skill fairly high without too much difficulty, and mostly
used soulgems I found in containers.

>      Even the armour- and shield-improving skills aren't good because
> they rely on the creature actually hitting you. In short, your armour
> skill improves when your armour *fails* to block a blow, so you take
> damage... at least your Block skill works properly. But advances too
> damn slowly.
>      (4) Personality and Speechcraft are broken once you get over about
> 50. Worse still, Mercantile is broken the moment you get the ability to
> haggle somebody's selling price down to lower than you haggled their
> buying price up to. Also, their starting price - which they will buy
> stuff from you at - goes DOWN, not up, as your Mercantile skill gets
> higher. Early in the game, with a low Mercantile skill, you can get
> about 400 gold for a Skooma: late on, you're lucky to get 80.

This is admittedly not simple to fix.

>      (5) Merchants' pockets are too small. Here's this Daedric weapon at
> 48000, and what's the best merchant in the game got? 10k, and he's an
> in-joke (the Drunken Mudcrab). There's one with a max of 9k, and he's
> way out in the wilderness with a tribe of outcasts that aren't supposed
> to value wealth for its own sake (and he's not even their official
> Trader either.) As for the merchants in the rich towns? 4k, maximum.

This can be corrected by making or downloading a plugin.

>      (6) God knows how many role-playing cliches.
>  - Right up to and including "If, at any point in the game, you
> encounter a Tribe, Religion, Cult, Race or People that is waiting for a
> Hero, Saviour, Demigod-Incarnate or anything else of that type, then a
> Major Main Plot Point will eventually be made of the fact that you will
> have to either *be* that Hero or *kill* that hero - or more usually
> both, in terms of killing off rival pretenders to the heroism."

Eh. Cliches are cliches because they work.

> Yeah - I think even Morrowind, good as it is, fumbled in so many ways
> you could write an entire book on their fumbles...

Matters of taste for the most part, that can be dealt with in the game.
Some of them are matters that require you to make mods to get the game
to work as you might prefer, but, er, so what?

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:34:10 GMT, drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 02:32:03 GMT, bombelly@hotmail.com (bombelly)
>wrote:
>
>>Couldn't disagree more. UO remains for me the seminal, most
>>amazing gaming experience, period.
>>
>>Sept 97, spawning in Yew, and being totally blown away by the
>>most interactive online game ever, even until today. Nothing has
>>approached the impact UO had on online gaming and it's development,
>>and my eagerness to experience it.
>
>I'm not in any way arguing that UO was bad (though its certainly bad
>now, though, from a never-ending series of third-rate designers, each
>of whom has thrown in their own ill-planned changes...) - I've spent
>the past 4 years of my life as the lead developer of a private UO
>shard, and am currently working on creating a new one.  I'm just
>arguing that Koster failed to catch (and repair) the subtle things
>that would have made it from a good game to a great one.  
>
>In his original design, he seemed to completely and utterly miss the
>existance of the griefer, a phenomenon well-known in MUDding circles.

Actually, no.  He thought of them as a necessary component of world
and community building, and  had planned to implement some form of
'player justice' system to both keep them in check and catalyze the
community-building aspect.  His mistake was in not actually
implementing that part of his plan effectively.

>He also didn't seem to have the slightest concept of balance,
>designing an insane combat system featuring one-hit-kill weapons.

I'm not certain if that was specifically Koster.  It's easy to blame
him, as he was the Big Name on the game (along with Garriot, IIRC,)
but this seems more an error of the implementation team than one of
the lead designers.

On 25 Oct 2004 17:00:20 -0700, lein wrote:

> Elite
> 
> It's been 20 years since it first appeared on the C-64 and they still
> have an active newsgroup waiting for the sequel.

True, but its been so long I cannot remember what platform I played it on!,
I do remember that bit of plastic though *grrrrrrrrr*.

Strange that thinking about this thread, of the three games that I really
enjoyed above all others 2 were before the PC, OIDS and underwurlde, the PC
game was ultima underworld.  None were really revolutionary but for some
reason they kept dragging you back for more. 

I guess somewhere along the line I stopped being amazed and just mearly
enjoyed games.

Steve

"Mother Farquhar" <fake@ddress.com> wrote:

>Funny, a lot of people liked it and its sequel.

So what - people are still defending B&W as well... DK and BW weren't
that different. DK just didn't have the bugs that rubbed it into
everones face how bad it was...


Znegva

-- 
http://www.kewlrule.de

> > Knights of the Old Republic. Yes, I do know that many consider it a cool
> > game, but the simplified combat system to allow for "consolization"
ruined
> > my day. They had the opportunity to let you fight in the Star Wars
universe
> > using the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale system, and discarded it.
>
> The Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale system was less involved than KOTOR's.

Actually no. In BG/IWD you fully planned on a 2D battlefield, with
encirclements, thieves sneaking behind the enemy, "combined arms" maneuvers
(if you consider different classes different "arms") et all IWD actually
made you feel like a "party coach": you had to develop battle drills, and to
adapt party tactics to newly acquired powers and different
enemies/battlefields. Dumbing down the system to a "two facing lines" is not
better, no matter how many more powers and weapons they put in it.

> NWN works for several different applications. I wouldn't necessarily
> suggest running a game at a lan party like that as one of them. Even so,
> people do successfully GM and play in GM'd games.

I tried playing a chapter of my ongoing campaign using NWN. The results
were:

1) A week spent to build a scenario which was burned in two hours. I a week
I can plan two or three full evenings of play.
2) Disjointed party actions, based on what I had implemented and not much
more. While DMstering a pen and paper RpG I both have more control and can
give more freedom to the players by improvising places and characters on the
fly.
3) A "why do not play BG instead"? legitimate question, when everybody
realized that, out there, there already are very good games to play
cooperative (i.e. the whole BG series) if you really want it, while
reserving the much better "traditional mode (pen, paper and immagination)
for your own campaign.

Out there you can find excellent scenarios done by fan with the editor,
true, but in this respect games like "The Operational Art of War" are so
much above NWN in the "fan-made scenarios" field that NWN needs a telescope
to see their shoes.

> Anyway, can very successful games reliably be said to have missed
> opportunities?

Yeah, sure. A "non consolized" KotOR would have been better with, maybe,
only two different changes to the overall design.

> Or can games that you don't cotton to be said to be
> missed opportunities when it's just that you didn't enjoy them?

I compare a game with previous ones. If a succesful feature is discarded for
reason which have nothing to do with undestandable technical problems or
*inherent* new design choices, then they missed an opportunity (and Ray
Muzika of Bioware openly admitted that KotOR combat system was toned down so
to allow portability to consoles).

hammerstein wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:58:17 +0100, "Jamie_Manic" <mmmm...pork rind>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Evil Genius
>>
>
> I think this is one of them games that you play for an hour and then
> sit back and go...."why am I playing this?"...it's not bad, it just
> more concept than game, and executed with the same drab mechanics as
> Republic.

Gosh, sometimes I wish you weren't such a whinner, hammerstein.

Khabs,
Mark 

"Kaos" <kaos@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message
news:qjqrn0l750ui70oi5uppf0imhc068vm536@4ax.com...
> Actually, no.  He thought of them as a necessary component of world
> and community building, and  had planned to implement some form of
> 'player justice' system to both keep them in check and catalyze the
> community-building aspect.  His mistake was in not actually
> implementing that part of his plan effectively.

I disagree, because I think it's fundamently impossible to
get enough people (percentage-wise) to police their own
world.  Who the hell wants to pay for a game, AND have
to keep griefers and morons in check, let alone deal with
them?  Only the same type of people who like to gank
it up to begin with.  People who like confrontation and
domination struggles.

I know many people love pvp and ganking it up, but there
are at least as many people who hate it. But hating it doesn't
mean they will team up to stop it. It means they don't like
it AT ALL, and don't want to do it.  Raph totally misses the
point there.. There is no amount of community building that is
going to make those people want to go out and fight the other
players.   Great rewards will draw in some.. But many people
are just not confrontational, and don't want that out of the
game.  They want to team up with friends and explore and
clear dungeons and stuff.

My experience in the WoW beta has shown me that there
is virtually no way to please both crowds.  The PVP server
is not hardcore enough for the hardcore fans, who want
to loot each other and have no honor system at all, etc. And
the non-PVP server is hated by the most extreme roleplaying
types because there is still some PVP allowed and some
loopholes through which people cna grief and stuff.

It seems to me it's going to be necessary to always have some
kind of division, because both sides are diametrically opposed.
There should be room enough for both mindsets, so I think that
MMORPG's would be served by having seperated servers for
people of both mentalities.  You just will never get a ruleset
that put's the two together, but is ACCEPTABLE to both sides.

boomer_the_cat@my-deja.com (lein) writes:

> It's been 20 years since it first appeared on the C-64 and they still
> have an active newsgroup waiting for the sequel.

There *were* two sequels ("Elite II: Frontier" and "Frontier: First
Encounters"), but they were somewhat vilified for bugs and excessive
complexity compared to the original game. Could perhaps be called
"fumbled opportunity" in that sense.

http://www.frontier.co.uk/

Also, other games were released in the save vein, like the Privateer
series and the "X" games.

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 03:23:35 -0500, "The Mighty MF"
<sether01@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>Gosh, sometimes I wish you weren't such a whinner, hammerstein.
>
>Khabs,
>Mark 
>

What makes you say that, I don't post enough to appear on the radar
normally....are you sure you have the right guy.

Did you enjoy Evil Genius then?

j.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 23:51:01 -0400, Raymond Martineau (bk039
@freenet.carleton.ca) said:
> On 25 Oct 2004 14:09:20 GMT, Neil Cerutti <neil.cerutti@tds.net> wrote:

> >Syndicate was a fun game.  You could do lots of cool things, but
> >unfortunately you didn't need to do most of them to win. 
> 
> That's true - but most of the fun things were things that the developers
> did not expect.  For example, loading up with 5 energy shields and running
> around the map to get all the enemy syndicate agents to completely
> eliminate each other.  

Or four v3 chest upgrades and a load of medipacks. Explode! Revive! 
Explode! Revive! Repeat until level is a blackened ruin.
-- 
Matthew

On 25 Oct 2004 09:04:05 -0700, dfidge@gmail.com (David Fidge) wrote:

>Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote in message news:<uu0sjdwr3.fsf@broadpark.no>...
>> drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> writes:
>> 
>> > I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
>> 
>> No, the first Populous was great.
>
>I thought the second Populous was fantastic too, as was Syndicate

I liked the second Populous better than the first. There was also a very
good hovercar racing game, which I forget the title of...

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:24:28 GMT, "Jim Vieira"
<WhiplashrAT@wiDOT.rrDOT.com> wrote:

>"Kaos" <kaos@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message
>news:qjqrn0l750ui70oi5uppf0imhc068vm536@4ax.com...
>> Actually, no.  He thought of them as a necessary component of world
>> and community building, and  had planned to implement some form of
>> 'player justice' system to both keep them in check and catalyze the
>> community-building aspect.  His mistake was in not actually
>> implementing that part of his plan effectively.
>
>I disagree, because I think it's fundamently impossible to
>get enough people (percentage-wise) to police their own
>world.  Who the hell wants to pay for a game, AND have
>to keep griefers and morons in check, let alone deal with
>them?  

It's been ages since I played, but I can still name three who thought
that even the limited options they had was one of the best parts of
the game.  

>Only the same type of people who like to gank
>it up to begin with.  

Not quite.  Yes, many of these folks *did* like the confrontation and
domination struggles; but they also had... something which gave them a
preference for the hero side of the equation.  Others simply chose not
to distinguish between "Evil NPCs" and "Evil PCs."

Most of them I respected, but there were a few I saw as being only
marginally better than the griefers.

>There is no amount of community building that is
>going to make those people want to go out and fight the other
>players.   Great rewards will draw in some.. But many people
>are just not confrontational, and don't want that out of the
>game.  They want to team up with friends and explore and
>clear dungeons and stuff.

Aye.  I think it *could* have worked, if it had been implemented a
little better and promoted as such.  Seige Perilous came the closest
to making it work - in part, I think, because it had the 'one
character per account' shard to boost character accountability, but
also because it attracted the folks who most wanted player-justice to
work.  It wasn't the most popular shard, because the
non-confrontational and true griefers both avoided it like the plague,
as well as a number of folks who chose their shard according to
ping-time instead of environment, but it did come close to fulfilling
Raph's vision.

Ben Sisson scrawled the following into the Great Almanac of
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg:

> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it?

Ultima 9. No contest whatsoever. After the disappointment of U8 -- which
would be a fitting nominee for this category, too -- they'd promised us
a return to the roots of what made Ultima special. When I read their
original plans, I was ecstatic, and I've honestly never looked forward
to any other game this much before or since.

Then they announced they'd scrapped the old engine and were going fully
3D with a Tomb Raider perspective.

Call me a pessimist, but the moment I read that, I *knew* (and bitterly
predicted it on the Ultima NGs) that the first feature they'd scrap
would be gender choice, and the second would be party members. Gee,
guess what happened? :( Not to mention that the plot makes a mockery of
everything that was meaningful in the previous games. Back to the roots,
my ass. Ascension could and should have been the worthy end of a unique
series, but it's not an Ultima. Far from it.


Black & White was a disappointment for me too, though not at first.
Sure, it was often too much work to manage both the pet and the stupid,
lazy, greedy worshippers. But the hammer only fell when I reached the
third island, the one on which you have to free your pet. Before long I
was low on room to expand, food and of course wood. My influence wasn't
spreading any further so I couldn't take over the next village, and the
enemy god kept hammering my outermost settlement with all kinds of nasty
spells. Screw that, it just was no fun anymore. Not to mention that the
AI cheats and kept stealing trees from my precariously managed forests
even if they were far outside its influence.

And yes, I didn't like NWN either -- in my book, it was a step backwards
from BG2 no matter from what angle I looked at it. There are some good
mods, but fan content doesn't make a game worth buying for me, except
maybe from the bargain bin.


-- 
Sarah Jaernecke
Nightfire --==(UDIC)==--
"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle
their pockets for new vocabulary."
- James D. Nicoll

Jeremy Reaban scrawled the following into the Great Almanac of
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg:

> NWN might not do anything great, but it does more than just about any
> other PC RPG.

See, that is exactly what I dislike about the game -- one of the things
I dislike about it, anyway. ;) Give me a game that does only one thing
but does it *well* rather than a game that tries to dance on too many
parties at once.


-- 
Sarah Jaernecke
Nightfire --==(UDIC)==--
"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle
their pockets for new vocabulary."
- James D. Nicoll

chainbreaker wrote:
> Bateau wrote:
> 
>>It's a space colony building game right? I can think of 2 other such
>>games off the top of my head.
> 
> 
> None before Outpost, though, I don't think, at least not with the scope it 
> was *supposed* to have.

Exactly. If done as advertised, it would have been something never done
before as well as a long-living classic, I'm sure.

> And it's a damn wonder that the genre wasn't killed off completely after 
> that mess--and mess is giving it the benefit of the doubt.

As far as I'm concerned, it has killed the genre. Those games that exist
are all strictly second-rate. I may be mistaken though, I haven't looked
for that kind of game for some years.

> You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as hyped as 
> Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if not more so.

Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
first"-experience.

Werner

Julie d'Aubigny wrote:

[Re: Morrowind]
[repeated instances of:]
> 
> This can be corrected by making or downloading a plugin.
> 
Yes, it can. But there are so many issues like this that the
game, out of the box, was a frustrating experience. If I, a
reasonably experienced player but no developer, can spot the
problems after playing for half an hour (for the magic-related
problems) or two hours (for the other skill-related problems),
or for some problems, by simply reading the manual, I can only
conclude that the playtesters, or the developers, didn't do
their jobs right. I hold that against the game.

If Morrowind hadn't been so mod-friendly, it would have been
almost unplayable. As it was, the only thing that put me off
the game after some time was the feeling of meaninglessness
of it all.

> Eh. Cliches are cliches because they work.
> 
Obviously, if I complain about something because it is a
clich�, it doesn't work for me. Something that has been
done too often before becomes simply boring. Anway, MW
isn't the worst offender in that area.

As for "fumbled opportunity": thanks to the mods that solve
most of the gameplay issues, I don't think so. MW was, for
the most part, designed for what it is - a CRPG with much
freedom in a really big world and a token main plot - a game
for players who like exploration and collecting things and
skills for its own sake. If you look mainly for storytelling,
non-technical character development, meaningful NPC
communication and deeper simulation, MW isn't for you and
wasn't designed for you.

Werner

"BuckFush" <notmyre@laddress.com> writes:

> It reminds of that famous line in an early Cheers episode:

If Woody's in it, it's not early Cheers. Early Cheers had Coach. :^)

Nick

-- 
#  sigmask  ||  0.2  ||  20030107  ||  public domain  ||  feed this to a python
print reduce(lambda x,y:x+chr(ord(y)-1),' Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAcboefstobudi/psh?')

Alex <a@b.c> writes:

> The only pain I felt because of Myth was trying to explain to my
> friends how it could be fun when they were hermitting on Starcraft.
> "But you don't build anything - I don't get it!"

My friends didn't really get it either. I think they felt I had an
unfair advantage, since I got into the beta, but I also think they
didn't "get" it. The priciples were so simple -- elevation advantage,
mixed forces, concentration of force, situational awarenes -- and yet
each skirmish came together in so many complex, exciting, and
unpredictible ways. 

The first game I played, which was online since that was the beta
phase I got into, was a revelation. Watching a dorf [dwarf] throw
molotov cocktails into my group of thralls, and my dorf blowing him up
in turn, and all the parts and blood flying with perfect physics... I
laughed so hard. It was almost like falling in love.

I think when I'm an old and doddering codger, when I'm drooling and
babbling about the games I used to play, it will be Myth I will invoke
to berate the youth.

Nick

-- 
#  sigmask  ||  0.2  ||  20030107  ||  public domain  ||  feed this to a python
print reduce(lambda x,y:x+chr(ord(y)-1),' Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAcboefstobudi/psh?')

In article <cliq5402v1e@news3.newsguy.com>, "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com> wrote:
>sandtiger wrote:
>> My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
>> non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options that
>> made absolutely no sense to me.
>
>I think my biggest problem with Morrowind is simply that the characters look 
>like shit.
>

My biggest problem with Morrowind is that huge city enclosed in the large 
building, Vivec I think it's called.   I hate trying to navigate it, find 
anyone or anything in it.  A perfect mod for me would reduce it down a lot.

Eric

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 11:59:30 GMT, ewhardingisnot@comcast.net (Eric
Harding) wrote:

>My biggest problem with Morrowind is that huge city enclosed in the large 
>building, Vivec I think it's called.   I hate trying to navigate it, find 
>anyone or anything in it.  A perfect mod for me would reduce it down a lot.

Yup, it looks great from the outside, but is a PITA to wander around.
-- 
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:00:46 +0200, Walter Mitty <mitticus@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

>Darin Johnson wrote:
>
>> "bunboy" <bunboy@cox.net> writes:
>> 
>> 
>>>This is a very interesting topic because I tend to agree with almost 
>>>everybody which is pretty weird for a newsgroup like this.  Everytime I 
>>>think of my list someone else mentions other great fumbles.  I guess it is 
>>>kinda sad there are so many!
>> 
>> 
>> Look at it this way - ALL computer games have fumbled somewhere or for
>> someone.  There is no game that was everything it could have been.
>> 
>
>There were two games that I couldn't fault : Descent & Alpha Centauri.

Of course, that's not what Darin was talking about. What Darin was talking
about was that for any game, there will be someone, somewhere who finds
fault with them. Eg I got hopelessly confused with Descent's 3D controls,
kept flying into walls, and eventually ditched it. Therefore it's a fumble
for me.


-- 
Hong Ooi                              | "I like snowballs."
hong@zipworld.com.au                  |    -- CA
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/ |
Sydney, Australia                     |

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

Tron 2.0 didn't exactly fall by the wayside, but it did manage to
disappoint me somewhat.  I would've liked to play in that world some more,
with more exploration, NPC's, side-quests, etc.  They were already on the
way to a sort of action-RPG with the "build points" system, so why not go
ahead and make an action RPG?

Overall, I enjoyed it enough to play through it twice, but I couldn't have
been the only one who wanted more to do in Internet City.

Steve Tilson

-- 
"We're not going to kill you.  The moral thing is to let you die a natural
death.  Alone.  In a pile of your own filth."
                                      - Frylock

Werner Arend wrote:
> As far as I'm concerned, it has killed the genre. Those games that
> exist are all strictly second-rate. I may be mistaken though, I haven't
> looked for that kind of game for some years.

You know, I never thought of it before, but my Outpost experience may very 
well be the reason that I almost completely ignore the RTS genre.

Port Royale and Rome: Total War are the only ones I've bought in years, and 
the only reason I bought both of them is that they deal with subject matter 
I've always really enjoyed.
-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

Werner Arend wrote:
>> You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as
>> hyped as Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if
>> not more so.
>
> Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
> defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
> first"-experience.
>
> Werner

One more thing, on a positive note--Outpost *did* have some really nice 
cutscenes, especially for the time.  :D

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

Hong Ooi wrote:
> Of course, that's not what Darin was talking about. What Darin was
> talking about was that for any game, there will be someone, somewhere
> who finds fault with them. Eg I got hopelessly confused with
> Descent's 3D controls, kept flying into walls, and eventually ditched
> it. Therefore it's a fumble for me.

Did you have a flight sim HOTAS setup?  I'm thinking I even used rudder 
controls with that one, too.  (And helicopter sims were *great* training. 
:-))

IMO Descent would have been almost hopeless without one--something I 
wouldn't have fooled with without one, at least.  As it happens, though, 
it's one of my all-time favorites.

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

In article <dvvqn0dlp9kghd939flojqffdo53997l2u@4ax.com>, drocket wrote:
> On 25 Oct 2004 10:31:44 +0200, Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
><tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:
> 
>>drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by
>>> Molyneux'.
>>
>>No, the first Populous was great.
> 
> I'd have to disagree with you.  It was revolutionary, but it
> was far too repetative.  There was only like 10 minutes of
> actual gameplay, then you'd declare judgement day and go to the
> next level and start the whole thing over again.  
> 
> Raise land, lower land, raise land, lower land, tell your
> followers to build more to the east, raise land, lower land,
> build some huts to the south now, raise land, lower land, build
> some more huts over that hill, raise land, lower land -
> ARMAGEDDON!  Repeat through like 500 levels.  

I agree with that.  The gameplay was 80% flattening land, 10%
waiting for your people to multiply, and 10% actually defeating
the enemy.

Ultimately, it got dull.  But it's one of the first god-games,
and many elements from its appearance and interface became
staples of RTSs.

-- 
Neil Cerutti
The world is more like it is now than it ever has been before.
--Dwight Eisenhower

In article <417DDA8D.98E0C1AB@comcast.net>, Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> Jonathan Ellis wrote:
>> I have a few problems with Morrowind:
>> 
>> (1) Simply *moving* is too damn slow at the beginning of the game. Even
>> when running.
> 
> You can download or simply make plugins that change this.
>  
>> (2) Once you level up beyond about 15, you're too powerful for
>> everything else.
> 
> You can download plugins that change this. You can make some
> too, but since the work has already been done (and it's a lot
> of work), there's no reason not to take advantage of it. 
>  
>> (3) There are certain skills that, even if you take them as a major
>> skill, they're pretty much impossible to *in gameplay* get them up to a
>> decently high level.
>
> See, there's a solution to this that's fast and easy and
> doesn't even require a plugin - make "Restore Mana" potions. I
> carried as many of these as I could - and my spellcasting
> skills were into the 60s to 70s when I finished both of my full
> playthroughs.
> 
> If that's problematic, you can always download or make a mana
> regeneration mod.
> 
>> This is a direct result of two factors: (1) too few mana points for
>> all except perhaps one or two types of character, those with a specific
>> race and/or birthsign, and (2) IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW POWERFUL THE SPELL
>> IS 
>
> Starting mana issues can be corrected by downloading or making
> a plugin.
> 
>> It's even worse for the "Enchant" skill, because there you are
>> not only limited by the number of times you can use an item
>> that you cannot enchant with a sufficiently powerful magick to
>> actually achieve anything useful in-game, you are also limited
>> by the number of available soul-gems for recharging it - and
>> this is limited in turn by the number of souls. > 
>
> Wow. I constantly used soulgems to recharge enchanted items,
> and raised my enchant skill fairly high without too much
> difficulty, and mostly used soulgems I found in containers.
> 
>> (4) Personality and Speechcraft are broken once you get over about
>> 50. Worse still, Mercantile is broken the moment you get the ability to
>> haggle somebody's selling price down to lower than you haggled their
>> buying price up to.> 
>
> This is admittedly not simple to fix.
> 
>> (5) Merchants' pockets are too small.> 
>
> This can be corrected by making or downloading a plugin.
> 
>> (6) God knows how many role-playing cliches. - Right up to and
>> including "If, at any point in the game, you encounter a
>> Tribe, Religion, Cult, Race or People that is waiting for a
>> Hero, Saviour, Demigod-Incarnate or anything else of that
>> type, then a Major Main Plot Point will eventually be made of
>> the fact that you will have to either *be* that Hero or *kill*
>> that hero - or more usually both, in terms of killing off
>> rival pretenders to the heroism."
> 
> Eh. Cliches are cliches because they work.

They are merely substitutes for ideas. Sometimes they work,
sometimes they don't, but they are unoriginal and inherently
boring.

>> Yeah - I think even Morrowind, good as it is, fumbled in so
>> many ways you could write an entire book on their fumbles...
> 
> Matters of taste for the most part, that can be dealt with in
> the game. Some of them are matters that require you to make
> mods to get the game to work as you might prefer, but, er, so
> what?

It's a needless hassle. The game should be fun out of the box.
Mods are great, but they should be mods, not critical
improvements.

-- 
Neil Cerutti

In article <clk80t01pt@news2.newsguy.com>, chainbreaker wrote:
> Jonathan Ellis wrote:
>> Yeah - I think even Morrowind, good as it is, fumbled in so many ways
>> you could write an entire book on their fumbles...
>>
>> Jonathan.
> 
> *Good* as it is?
> 
> Gack!
> 
> After reading all that I feel like I need to have hazard
> response pick up my Morrowind disks and disinfect my hard
> drive.
> 
> How critical are you about stuff you *don't* think is good?

Morrowind bored me enough to delete it in 2 hours of doing
nothing but walking around a house and stealing a guy's
knicknacks, and then having the worst conversations imaginable
with totally boring idiots in the street that apparently have
nothing better to do that answer my stupid question for as long I
want to stand there and read there book-length answers.

I did stick around long enough to solve one quest and get killed
by at least one monster.  That wasn't fun either.

-- 
Neil Cerutti

In article <808rn0h7lllqd07ca53olrl9celfqrrbkh@4ax.com>, Raymond Martineau wrote:
> On 25 Oct 2004 14:09:19 GMT, Neil Cerutti <neil.cerutti@tds.net> wrote:
> 
>>In article <6r6on05ibs0qg48aupcr7bq01v1knc2m0q@4ax.com>, Andrew wrote:
>>> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:06:04 GMT, "Aquila" <Aquila@Aquila.net>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>>Black & White?
>>>>P.S., Dungeon Keeper was good!
>>> 
>>> Agreed to both of those, I don't know why the OP doesn't like
>>> DK.
>>
>>It was all atmosphere and interface with no gameplay.
>>
>>Battle == drop all your minions in the same room as fast as you
>>can == idiotic.
> 
> It's been a while since I played DK1, but dropping your entire
> army in a small area generally causes your forces to be packed
> closely --  A prime target for the lightning bolt spell (which
> can be refired infinitly on maps containing gems.)
> Alternativly, you can just throw a boulder into the fray.  
> 
> While this may apply in DK2, that tactic was made less powerful
> because units have a 1-2 second additional recovery time after
> being dropped.  
> 
> Besides, placing all your units in one area is the all-time
> classic tactic known as Blitzkrieg.  I haven't yet seen a game
> within the same style as DK (or C&C, Starcraft, etc.) where
> Blitzkrieg is generally an unadvisable tactic. 

I don't mind that the tactic exists, but you shouldn't be able to
implement it by just dropping units on an ad-hoc basis wherever
you need them.  It should be the result of strategic planning,
not a pick-up game of grab-ass.

-- 
Neil Cerutti

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>

Dungeon Keeper was great !  I still dust it off and talk it
into just about running on windows XP. The problem
was with Dungeon Keeper II (spit).

Saying that the guy who created DK1 made a complete
mess of Black & White. Maybe he was rushed into release
too early..... but I was expecting great things and ended up
stroking a Monkey for months :-)  And no that isn't slang
for anything perverted :-)

-- 
Edward Cowling    -  London -   UK

In article <10nob97jco6h173@news.supernews.com>,
"Bob Perez" <myfirstname@thecomdomaincalledSHADOWPIKE> wrote:
>
>"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
>news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it?
>
>Warlords, if you count the evolution of the franchise as part of the 
>flubbing.

If you're going to do that, you may want to include HOMM4.  I'll
admit I had fun with the game, but it was really despite itself...

Chris Schack

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 10:16:04 +0200, Werner Arend wrote:

>Couldn't agree more. The idea was so convincing, it could have spawned a
>whole subgenre if it had been done right. And then - no discernible
>intelligence in the AI, unimplemented features, bugs. The worst part
>was that you could see that a little bit of competent programming and
>some more time could have salvaged it. Instead, incompetence and bad
>management wrecked it. Easily the worst disappointment ever.

They tried to solve the problem with low sales by ramming the game
down unsuspecting gamers' throats with a mallet. For about three
years, all stacks in the universe were saturated with Outpost boxes,
and after that it started to come in the mail. Didn't Jimmy Swaggart
tell an arena full of believers that the Lord will take him if they
don't all buy a copy of Outpost?

Regards, Hartmut "empty threats" Schmider

Hartmut Schmider wrote:
> They tried to solve the problem with low sales by ramming the game
> down unsuspecting gamers' throats with a mallet. For about three
> years, all stacks in the universe were saturated with Outpost boxes,
> and after that it started to come in the mail. Didn't Jimmy Swaggart
> tell an arena full of believers that the Lord will take him if they
> don't all buy a copy of Outpost?
>
> Regards, Hartmut "empty threats" Schmider

There was a later, supposedly "fixed" version, but I don't remember how it 
did.  Probably not very well, since there were still a lot of burned fingers 
around operating under the "once bitten, twice shy" principle.  :-)

At any rate, between the two I'd guess that there were a LOT of copies of 
one or the other gracing the bargain bins for quite a while.
-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 22:28:04 +0000 (UTC), "Schrodinger"
<youllhavetoask@meforit.com> wrote:

>"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
>news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>> problems that it fell by the wayside?

>Giants: Citizen Kabuto (sp?)
>
>Great concept.  The one thing that ruined it for me was the lack of save 
>anywhere.  Some missions could last ages and ages and have obscure ways of 
>completing them.  I am sure the lacklustre consumer response was fuelled by 
>this.

Hitman.  1 *and* 2.  Same reason.

Neil Cerutti wrote:
> 
> It's a needless hassle. The game should be fun out of the box.
> Mods are great, but they should be mods, not critical
> improvements.

They're not critical. It is fun. Not everyone agrees on that, but so
what?

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

Greg Johnson <greg.gsj@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 25 Oct 2004 09:04:05 -0700, dfidge@gmail.com (David Fidge) wrote:
>
>>Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote in message news:<uu0sjdwr3.fsf@broadpark.no>...
>>> drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> writes:
>>> 
>>> > I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
>>> 
>>> No, the first Populous was great.
>>
>>I thought the second Populous was fantastic too, as was Syndicate
>
>I liked the second Populous better than the first. There was also a very
>good hovercar racing game, which I forget the title of...

Hi-Octane.

In article <417E816E.649BFC9A@comcast.net>, Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> Neil Cerutti wrote:
>> It's a needless hassle. The game should be fun out of the box.
>> Mods are great, but they should be mods, not critical
>> improvements.
> 
> They're not critical. 

Some of those problems, correctable by modding, sure seem like
game-breakers to me.

> It is fun. Not everyone agrees on that, but so what?

True enough.

-- 
Neil Cerutti
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to
real money. --Everett Dirksen

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:
>boomer_the_cat@my-deja.com (lein) writes:
>
>> It's been 20 years since it first appeared on the C-64 and they still
>> have an active newsgroup waiting for the sequel.
>
>There *were* two sequels ("Elite II: Frontier" and "Frontier: First
>Encounters"), but they were somewhat vilified for bugs and excessive
>complexity compared to the original game. Could perhaps be called
>"fumbled opportunity" in that sense.
>
>http://www.frontier.co.uk/
>
>Also, other games were released in the save vein, like the Privateer
>series and the "X" games.

Elite is so fucking boring.

In article <ulldu7gja.fsf@broadpark.no>, 
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:

>I avoided Alien Invasion because I did my homework beforehand. :)

You're wise Tor, I hope I learned my lesson.

>I knew that with no high-level characters and no interest in
>organizations, there was nothing in it for me. I bought Shadowlands
>without too much research though, but it turned out to have a killer
>feature (perks) which were not dependent on going to the Shadowlands.

Ya I bought Shadowlands too, just seemed like the thing to do :-)

I've been back playing AO casually for a couple months, keep trying 
to play a Shade or Keeper in the Shadowlands but invariably delete 'em
and return to my low level MA in Tir running missions or the TOTW. :-)

Jim

Bateau wrote:
>> Also, other games were released in the save vein, like the Privateer
>> series and the "X" games.
>
> Elite is so fucking boring.

Every space game I remember playing that used "Newtonian" physics was not 
only boring, but also aggravating as hell.
-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

Neil Cerutti wrote:
> 
> In article <417E816E.649BFC9A@comcast.net>, Julie d'Aubigny wrote:
> > Neil Cerutti wrote:
> >> It's a needless hassle. The game should be fun out of the box.
> >> Mods are great, but they should be mods, not critical
> >> improvements.
> >
> > They're not critical.
> 
> Some of those problems, correctable by modding, sure seem like
> game-breakers to me.

Many of them aren't that big of a problem. Like mana - if you're a
magic-using class, you can make mana recharge potions and completely
offset that problem. By 5th level, I had a supply that I didn't use up
for three or four levels, by which time I needed better potions.  

The same with soul gems and recharging enchanted items (the only real
use for enchant, unfortunately, which was a big flaw).

> > It is fun. Not everyone agrees on that, but so what?
> 
> True enough.

I'll admit that the game's user-mutability really sells me still.

-- 
Elizabeth D. Brooks | kali.magdalene@comcast.net | US2002021724
Listowner: Aberrants_Worldwide, Fading_Suns_Games, TrinityRPG
AeonAdventure | "Dobby likes us!" -- Smeagol
 -- http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/6856

In article <88vqn053l8em1hp4v7pakgrp81i928jb57
@4ax.com>, drocket <drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:

< good stuff snipped >

>UO was a revolutionary game, but it was never a _good_ game, and I
>think it could have been has it been headed by someone with a better
>head for details.  He managed to create a GREAT overall vision for the
>game, but he was never able to create workable subsystems that held to
>that vision.


I agree with most of what you say. I'm not sure what you mean by _good_
though.

Raph's handicap imo was his intransigence with respect to his own 
philosophy as what a MMORPG should be. While it's admirable in 
most instances to be consistent, sooner or later some attention has
to be paid to ' whether that philosophy translates into it actually 
working '.

One area which really drove me nuts, is he wanted the players to police 
themselves. Great concept, I love it. But, you have to give the players the
tools to do that--he wouldn't for fear the tyranny of the majority would 
create a system where the game wouldn't be fair to the lowest of the low
griefers and cheats. Huh ? Didn't make any sense to me.

Jim

chainbreaker wrote:

> Bateau wrote:
> 
>>>Also, other games were released in the save vein, like the Privateer
>>>series and the "X" games.
>>
>>Elite is so fucking boring.
> 
> 
> Every space game I remember playing that used "Newtonian" physics was not 
> only boring, but also aggravating as hell.

Didn't IWar 1 & 2 have full newtonian flight models? Far from boring : 
frustrating sometimes.

In article <C_qfd.308652$MQ5.3127@attbi_s52>, 
ewhardingisnot@comcast.net (Eric Harding) wrote:
>In article <cliq5402v1e@news3.newsguy.com>, "
chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>
> wrote:
>>sandtiger wrote:
>>> My problem with Morrowind was that I tend to play games in a very
>>> non-linear fashion, and so I wound up getting dialogue options that
>>> made absolutely no sense to me.
>>
>>I think my biggest problem with Morrowind is simply that the characters look 
>>like shit.
>>
>
>My biggest problem with Morrowind is that huge city enclosed in the large 
>building, Vivec I think it's called.   I hate trying to navigate it, find 
>anyone or anything in it.  A perfect mod for me would reduce it down a lot.
>Eric

My problem with Morrowind was I thought it was going to be Daggerfall taken
to the next step. It wasn't. :-(

Jim

Walter Mitty wrote:
> chainbreaker wrote:
>
>> Bateau wrote:
>>
>>>> Also, other games were released in the save vein, like the
>>>> Privateer series and the "X" games.
>>>
>>> Elite is so fucking boring.
>>
>>
>> Every space game I remember playing that used "Newtonian" physics
>> was not only boring, but also aggravating as hell.
>
> Didn't IWar 1 & 2 have full newtonian flight models? Far from boring :
> frustrating sometimes.


Yep--and I made a valiant attempt to deal with it, even buying the second 
one after quitting the first one in frustration, *knowing* it was going to 
have the same basic physics model, lol.

But frustration leads to the same place as boredom, and I've come to the 
conclusion that despite how many space sim fans claim otherwise, there 
exists only 17 *real* fans of "true world" physics for the genre, everyone 
else being afraid that admitting otherwise will make them sound uncool.  :D

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com>...
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?


I got one appropriate enough for the title of this thread:

Front Page Sports Football, 3rd edition.
     A bug ridden piece of crap.  These guys had an awesome idea
     and were light years ahead of Madden, and to this day,
     they still are light years ahead in many respects for
     football fan 'purists/coaches'.  And, I claim from that
     point of view, they will always be light years ahead.
     Even from a webpage point of view, they blow madden away.

     I'm not sure if there's been a 'dumbing' down of video
     gamers, but I would say that this game is my prime
     example in support of that theory.  You can tell the game
     was going down hill when in version 2, they started to
     implement more Madden like features.  It was a case
     where this company was not in tune with it's customers.



How about an entire genre?  What about interactive DVD
industry.  Almost completely dead, save for games like
Dragon's Lair, and Space Ace!, this concept was good on
paper, just never panned out.

Ben Sisson wrote:

> 
> Ah now there you are on to something. If I were to have a second
> choice, it would be Ultima 8. That was the game that betrayed the
> whole Ultima series.
> 
>  
You might laugh at me, but I thought that Ultima 8 was an excellent 
game, but I never played it without the jumping patch.
I think the game would have had become a classic if the name Ultima 8 
was not patched onto it. Ultima another world or something like it would 
have been better.

In article <dvvqn0dlp9kghd939flojqffdo53997l2u@4ax.com>, 
drocket@hotmail.com says...
> On 25 Oct 2004 10:31:44 +0200, Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
> <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote:

> >No, the first Populous was great.
> 
> I'd have to disagree with you.  It was revolutionary, but it was far
> too repetative.  There was only like 10 minutes of actual gameplay,
> then you'd declare judgement day and go to the next level and start
> the whole thing over again.  
> 
> Raise land, lower land, raise land, lower land, tell your followers to
> build more to the east, raise land, lower land, build some huts to the
> south now, raise land, lower land, build some more huts over that
> hill, raise land, lower land - ARMAGEDDON!  Repeat through like 500
> levels.  

I must say I lost interest in Populous I about half way through.  But 
Populous 2 had far greater variety and I finished it.  Populous 2 was 
far better in my opinion.

- Gerry Quinn

On 26 Oct 2004 12:10:44 -0700, DaLoveRhino@hotmail.com (Love Rhino)
wrote:

>Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com>...
>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
>
I'm sure that there are many..

Outpost by Sierra pops in my head, just so many things wrong with that
mostly bugs to make it even playable..

Battlecruiser 3000AD - Derek Smart promised a lot and unfortunately
couldn't deliver

Doom II - Yeah probably doesn't deserve to be here but for me it
does.. a new weapon and a couple of new enemies just isn't enough. In
fact even after buying 'Doom II' i prefered and still do prefer to
play 'Doom' over 'Doom II' You could also probably add 'Doom 3' to the
list too.. but i'm having a blast with 'Doom 3' at the moment.

Halo - had a blast playing it but it could've have been so much more
and then some but it wasn't.. a wasted opportunity.

well that a few suggestions..

ubertoadie

In article <t9con0l9ogc6r3h9jc1j0lt3681s78j843@4ax.com>, drocket
<drocket@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I would expand that answer to be 'absolutely EVERYTHING by Molyneux'.
> Black & White (already mentioned several times), Dungeon Keeper, Theme
> Park, Theme Hospital, and pretty much every other game he's designed.
> The man is an absolute genius at coming up with interesting game
> design ideas, but he utterly lacks the talent needed to make a game
> fun for more than an hour or two.

The thing that drives me nuts about Black & White is how close it came. 
It had the concept, the basic gameplay mechanics, and an amazing amount
of polish...and then it went and wasted it all.  Just a little bit more
feedback on how your actions affect your creature, some more work on
the mechanics of converting villages, and the removal of all the
ridiculous sheep- and rock-hunting tasks, and they could have had a
really good game.

                   - Damien

hammerstein wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 03:23:35 -0500, "The Mighty MF"
> <sether01@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Gosh, sometimes I wish you weren't such a whinner, hammerstein.
>>
>> Khabs,
>> Mark
>>
>
> What makes you say that, I don't post enough to appear on the radar
> normally....are you sure you have the right guy.
>
> Did you enjoy Evil Genius then?
>
> j.

I'm gonna blame it on the Guinness =)  (I haven't played EG yet, gonna wait 
for it to drop in price. I have quite a lot of games to keep me busy right 
now)

Khabs,
Mark 

In article <25wfd.30841$%k.4969@pd7tw2no>, bombelly <bombelly@wahs.ac>
wrote:
> One area which really drove me nuts, is he wanted the players to police 
> themselves. Great concept, I love it. But, you have to give the players the
> tools to do that--he wouldn't for fear the tyranny of the majority would 
> create a system where the game wouldn't be fair to the lowest of the low
> griefers and cheats. Huh ? Didn't make any sense to me.

This is the paradox of player justice.

You can't create the conditions for a player-run justice system without
simultaneously creating the conditions for griefing through abuse of
that system.  A game designer either has to hand the keys to the
kingdom over to the players and live with the consequences for good or
ill, or he has to abandon the idea of player-run justice.  The middle
ground is the worst of both worlds.

                      - Damien

In article <clm5v602l2c@news2.newsguy.com>, chainbreaker
<noone@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Walter Mitty wrote:
> > Didn't IWar 1 & 2 have full newtonian flight models? Far from boring :
> > frustrating sometimes.
> 
> Yep--and I made a valiant attempt to deal with it, even buying the second 
> one after quitting the first one in frustration, *knowing* it was going to 
> have the same basic physics model, lol.
> 
> But frustration leads to the same place as boredom, and I've come to the 
> conclusion that despite how many space sim fans claim otherwise, there 
> exists only 17 *real* fans of "true world" physics for the genre, everyone 
> else being afraid that admitting otherwise will make them sound uncool.  :D

I'm one of the 17, then.  I-War's physics were perfect for me--the
computer assist (which would use thrusters to adjust your flight path
to match the orientation of the ship) and velocity-limiter worked
perfectly to take the uncontrollable edge off of a Newtonian flight
model.  And, of course, you could turn those off when you needed to.

The HUD was brilliant, as well--both the indicators for your path of
travel (replacing the ridiculous field of garbage that other space sims
resort to) and the path-of-flight markings for other ships were great.

                    - Damien

Dungeon Keeper was a bust?   Several sites gave it pretty hi marks.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/dungeonkeeper/index.html
http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=153480
http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=313490
http://www.game-revolution.com/games/pc/strategy/dungeon_keeper_2.htm
http://www.gamezilla.com/review.aspx?review=7074


ps  I liked DK too.  :)

"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> Theres a ton of PC games who saw an opportunity, seized it, and ran it
> in for a touchdown. Games like Civilization, Doom, Baldur's Gate,
> Starflight, Diablo, Half-life, Warcraft... they saw something and they
> made something great out of it.
>
> This post is not about those games.
>
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> There's quite a few answers that come to mind but the one that I think
> sticks out: Dungeon Keeper.
>
> Dungeon Keeper should have been great. The idea of taking the role of
> the bad guy and building a dungeon full of hideous monsters and traps
> for the hapless adventurers to run into is solid gold. A SimDungeon
> game, if you will.
>
> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. The detail wasn't there, the options weren't there, the
> gameplay wasn't there. A huge opportunity lost, despite two tries at
> it.
>
> Pity.
>
> Any other ideas?
>
>
> -- 
>
> "We're not going to have any casualties."
>
> - G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

chainbreaker wrote:
> Werner Arend wrote:
> 
>>>You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as
>>>hyped as Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if
>>>not more so.
>>
>>Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
>>defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
>>first"-experience.
>>
>>Werner
> 
> 
> One more thing, on a positive note--Outpost *did* have some really nice 
> cutscenes, especially for the time.  :D
> 
Yes, the overall presentation was nice. Which lead me to think that
*somewhere* there must be something actually playable in the game.
A big waste of time...

Werner

"chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com> looked up from reading the entrails
of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>Walter Mitty wrote:
>>
>> Total inability to trade/research the markets while in long boring
>> star jump sequences - unbelievable. Only Privateer 2 was worse.l
>
>You just have to wonder why no one ever recaptured the magic that was 
>Privateer

For the most part no one has really tried to as near as I can tell.

Privateer 2, different bunch of devs, different ideas and priorities.

X:BtF, not even meant to be the same kind of trader/mercenary explore
game with a story.

Freelancer, firmly into the "nice graphics, here's the story you're
going to be a part of" mold.  Probably the most restrictive ever since
exploring got you NOTHING, unless you found a wreck with stuff to sell.
Everything was level limited, and you could only level by alternating
mindless trade runs with storyline missions.

X2, more of X:BtF, mostly a trading sim with the focus on building a
manufacturing empire rather than exploring and fighting.

Freespace1+2, all about a space war.

Privateer gave you choices, even the choice to not do the packaged
storyline.  Everything since has had better graphics and few (if any)
choices, as you are forced into a role in the storyline.

Yet another example where improving graphics and the trend to lots of
cutscenes telling a high-resolution story have removed the choices that
made the first game so fun - it's just too costly and time consuming to
do all those cutscenes for all the possible options.

The problem is that for every one of us that wants choices, there's 10
or 100 that want awesome graphics and a defined role in a story that
doesn't require any thought.

Freelancer is probably the worst offender so far, since even when you
find things, you can't use them - all the best gear you can find or buy
is limited to levels you'll only reach _after_ the story is done.


You can't even fail missions in most of the newer games - failing means
you do it over and over till you succeed, not move on an alternate path
caused by the failure.

What a difference from the first Wing Commander, with it's multiple
paths through and the possibility of coming to the end having completely
failed.

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr

ubertoadie@sbcglobal.net wrote:
> Doom II - Yeah probably doesn't deserve to be here but for me it
> does.. a new weapon and a couple of new enemies just isn't enough. In
> fact even after buying 'Doom II' i prefered and still do prefer to
> play 'Doom' over 'Doom II' 

I counted about five new enemies in Doom II (not counting the Hell 
Knight) and they were all great additions.  Plus, I liked not having to 
start over with just a pistol every nine levels or so.

The first game tended to have better level design though, I'll give it that.


stePH
-- 
"A lion will exert himself to the utmost, even when entering the tiger's 
den to throw baby rabbits off a cliff!" -- Moroboshi Ataru

In article <OrlfBdlNSmfV092yn@trends.net>, Chris Schack wrote:
> In article <10nob97jco6h173@news.supernews.com>,
> "Bob Perez" <myfirstname@thecomdomaincalledSHADOWPIKE> wrote:
>>
>>"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message 
>>news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
>>
>>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>>> category but FLUBBED it?
>>
>>Warlords, if you count the evolution of the franchise as part of the 
>>flubbing.
> 
> If you're going to do that, you may want to include HOMM4.
> I'll admit I had fun with the game, but it was really despite
> itself...

There was no point in a version 3 and 4 of HOMM. HOMM2 was about
perfect. When the next iterations came out, I just cut-n-pasted a
new number of the 2 on my HOMM2 box. It was cheaper, and just as
fun.

-- 
Neil Cerutti

"Chris Schack" <tmpmizer@trends.net> wrote in message
news:OrlfBdlNSmfV092yn@trends.net...
> In article <10nob97jco6h173@news.supernews.com>,
> "Bob Perez" <myfirstname@thecomdomaincalledSHADOWPIKE> wrote:
> >
> >"Ben Sisson" <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
> >news:134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com...
> >
> >> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> >> category but FLUBBED it?
> >
> >Warlords, if you count the evolution of the franchise as part of the
> >flubbing.
>
> If you're going to do that, you may want to include HOMM4.  I'll
> admit I had fun with the game, but it was really despite itself...

Also, Civilization 3 wasn't a big enough improvement over Civ 2 to
justify the hype.

Jonathan.

In article <2u9qjnF28bqjgU1@uni-berlin.de>, neil.cerutti@tds.net says...
> In article <OrlfBdlNSmfV092yn@trends.net>, Chris Schack wrote:
> > In article <10nob97jco6h173@news.supernews.com>,

> > If you're going to do that, you may want to include HOMM4.
> > I'll admit I had fun with the game, but it was really despite
> > itself...
> 
> There was no point in a version 3 and 4 of HOMM. HOMM2 was about
> perfect. When the next iterations came out, I just cut-n-pasted a
> new number of the 2 on my HOMM2 box. It was cheaper, and just as
> fun.

I got the Platinum Edition, and tried out HOMM2.  It seemed pretty 
primitive compared to HOMM3, and the graphics were vastly inferior.

- Gerry Quinn

In article <MPG.1be9e2e534dd4e38989a70@news.indigo.ie>, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> In article <2u9qjnF28bqjgU1@uni-berlin.de>, neil.cerutti@tds.net says...
>> In article <OrlfBdlNSmfV092yn@trends.net>, Chris Schack wrote:
>> > In article <10nob97jco6h173@news.supernews.com>,
> 
>> > If you're going to do that, you may want to include HOMM4.
>> > I'll admit I had fun with the game, but it was really despite
>> > itself...
>> 
>> There was no point in a version 3 and 4 of HOMM. HOMM2 was about
>> perfect. When the next iterations came out, I just cut-n-pasted a
>> new number of the 2 on my HOMM2 box. It was cheaper, and just as
>> fun.
> 
> I got the Platinum Edition, and tried out HOMM2.  It seemed
> pretty primitive compared to HOMM3, and the graphics were
> vastly inferior.

I agree with you on both counts. But the core gameplay was the
same.

But then, I also like to play the mother of them all, _King's
Bounty_ on Vic64.

-- 
Neil Cerutti

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen wrote:

> Clawhound <none@nowhere.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>I just went through JtL beta and they have a similar problem. The
>>engine is great. The balance is odd. The storytelling is poor. But,
>>they recognize that they do have problems, which is good.
> 
> 
> No, it's not because history shows they don't fix problems. They have
> acknowledged big problems for smuggler profession and the entire
> combat system. "Revamps" for both have been promised for ages. Will
> they fix them now that they have finished JtL? No, they just have more
> bugs to fix.

Recognizing problems = good. That's better than denial. Doing something 
about it is better. These folks actually footed the money to fly the 
community correspondents out to Austin to show them the combat revamp 
plans and get their response.

In my opinion, the main problem is that the SWG team in understaffed. 
They just never have enough time/manpower to do everything that is 
needed. This has to do with investory nervousness, the MMORP market in 
2002, and fears of sustainability. So they do the best with what they 
have, meaning that they can take on some project, but many projects just 
get left undone.

CH

>>> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>>> category but FLUBBED it?


Since I haven't seen anyone mention it: The Sims Online

I couldn't believe how much I anticipated this game coming out. 
I thought it was really going to be a ' next step ' game, one big
seamless persistent world, build your house, walk up the street 
meet your neighbors, go into town etc--and got nothing but a 
series of isolated chat rooms.

Jim

In article <134on09kibqc8r0inc4helhjta2ua9n62g@4ax.com>,
Ben Sisson  <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

Lucasart's _Afterlife_, a world building simulation in which you build
paradises and punishments in Heaven and Hell. Fantastic idea, great
production value, cool simulation concepts. Ruined by crappy gameplay
involving huge amounts of useless busy work.

_Black & White_. Great idea, great product, some amazing gameplay
elements. Ruined by too much extremely repetitive micromanagement,
poor game balancing and more busy work. I still look back fondly on
many aspects of the game.

> But Bullfrog wasn't up to it. They diluted and then hamstrung the
> design with things that didn't belong including pointless first person
> action. 

I thought the first-person action was a nice distraction (although not
a pivotal component of gameplay). The monsters were much more powerful
when played FP, you could lead raids into enemy territory, etc.

Rick R.

Rick Russell wrote:

> Lucasart's _Afterlife_, a world building simulation in which you build
> paradises and punishments in Heaven and Hell. Fantastic idea, great
> production value, cool simulation concepts. Ruined by crappy gameplay
> involving huge amounts of useless busy work.

Oh, hell yeah - I completely forgot this one! For me, this was the first 
LA game I played, and I think it's pretty much set the tone: all their 
games sound wonderful but get screwed in execution.

To me, Afterlife felt like it was supposed to play in a tone similar to 
the book "Waiting For The Galactic Bus" - light hearted but fairly hefty 
concepts. Alas, it wound up feeling like I was playing with an 
icon-based spreadsheet.

"Neil Cerutti" <neil.cerutti@tds.net> wrote in message 
news:2ua2gaF28maciU1@uni-berlin.de...

> I agree with you on both counts. But the core gameplay was the
> same.

I enjoyed HOMM 1-3 immensely.  HOMM3 was definitely the best out of the 
three for me.  I've got four, but the crappy UI and the changes they made to 
heroes (allowing them to fight) just killed it for me. 

> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?


What comes to mind for me is not so much one game, but an entire
catalogue of games. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the following
two words yet (or maybe I missed them, it's a long long thread):

Avalon Hill.

What a beautiful opportunity. Avalon Hill was one of the best-known
game companies in the U.S. when personal computers came along, and the
single best-known company for complex games. Games with dense
small-font rulebooks, detailed maps, charts, tables, long set up
times, all things that cried out for computer adaptations. Not to
mention how hard it could be to find an opponent. How great it would
be to have willing opponents for your favorite AH games available
anytime.

It was not to be. They came out with completely incompetent games,
mostly for the Apple II. Eventually, they did make some decent games,
but they always seemed a bit behind the times and old-fashioned by
then. If they could've done the job correctly back in the 80s and
early 90s, not only would they still be in business (bigger than ever)
but the entire industry would be different, and we'd have all those
games, plus new ones... with opponents willing to play anytime.

Worse, they never got around to making my favorites-- Titan, Up Front,
and Kremlin. I know the first two are available online, but I can't
get Colossus to run for some reason. Anyway, I should make sure I'm
clear that I'm not denegrating the great fan-made adaptations or the
Avalon Hill computer games that turned out well, though. It's just not
the same as if the company had dominated the early computer games
market as they rightfully should have and was still around today.

As far as I'm concerned this was the single biggest missed opportunity
in the history of the computer games industry bar none, and that
industry and the gaming hobby as a whole is incalculably poorer for
it.

Gerry Quinn  <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>I got the Platinum Edition, and tried out HOMM2.  It seemed pretty 
>primitive compared to HOMM3, and the graphics were vastly inferior.

The artwork wasn't as pretty but it's much the same engine.  Having played
the series starting a HOMM1, HOMM3 was kind of ridiculous to me with the
maps crowded with all sorts of junk to pick up.  But the three games,
HOMM1, HOMM2, and HOMM3 all pretty much the same game, same system,
same AI, just some minor tinkering between releases.

						Ross Ridge

-- 
 l/  //	  Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/  http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/rridge/ 
 db  //	  

"Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> Also, Civilization 3 wasn't a big enough improvement over Civ 2 to
> justify the hype.

Actually, the "cultural zone" aspect was very good, but it should have
been a patch to CivII instead of being the selling-point of an
otherwise pointless sequel.

Then again, the real sequel to Civ II is SMAC.

"Tor Iver Wilhelmsen" <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote in message 
news:u8y9rffhj.fsf@broadpark.no...
> "Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Also, Civilization 3 wasn't a big enough improvement over Civ 2 to
>> justify the hype.
>
> Actually, the "cultural zone" aspect was very good, but it should have
> been a patch to CivII instead of being the selling-point of an
> otherwise pointless sequel.

Also the addition of resources was a touch of class.

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen wrote:
> "Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
> 
> 
>>Also, Civilization 3 wasn't a big enough improvement over Civ 2 to
>>justify the hype.
> 
> 
> Actually, the "cultural zone" aspect was very good, but it should have
> been a patch to CivII instead of being the selling-point of an
> otherwise pointless sequel.
> 
> Then again, the real sequel to Civ II is SMAC.

In spite of it being only mildly evolutionary vs. revolutionary, I don't 
really think Civ 3 was a "big" failed opportunity. The absolute only 
thing I hate about #3 that I would say was a real fumble was the 
multi-player: it could have ben so, so good. Even if they'd just used 
the same turn-based mode civ 2 used.

rob wrote:
> "Tor Iver Wilhelmsen" <tor.iver.wilhelmsen@broadpark.no> wrote in message 
> news:u8y9rffhj.fsf@broadpark.no...
> 
>>"Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>>
>>
>>>Also, Civilization 3 wasn't a big enough improvement over Civ 2 to
>>>justify the hype.
>>
>>Actually, the "cultural zone" aspect was very good, but it should have
>>been a patch to CivII instead of being the selling-point of an
>>otherwise pointless sequel.
> 
> 
> Also the addition of resources was a touch of class.
> 
> 

And the creation of the new trade route system - I always wondered about 
those caravans in 1 and 2.

In article <G48fd.23449$1q2.18208@tornado.fastwebnet.it>,
Vincenzo Beretta <reckall@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Oni: Tomb Raider + Tekken + Ghost in the Shell = a sure hit? Nope

Oni was out of date the moment it was released, probably due to the
ridiculously long development cycle. If the combat physics had been
more sophisticated, and the graphics better, I think it would have
been a big hit. Instead, it was an average HTH fighter game with
below-average graphics for the time.

But I wouldn't call it a "fumble", just an underachievement.

Rick R.

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen wrote:

> "Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
> 
> 
>>Also, Civilization 3 wasn't a big enough improvement over Civ 2 to
>>justify the hype.
> 
> 
> Actually, the "cultural zone" aspect was very good, but it should have
> been a patch to CivII instead of being the selling-point of an
> otherwise pointless sequel.
> 
> Then again, the real sequel to Civ II is SMAC.

hear,hear.

SMAC just had *everything* just right.

Walter Mitty wrote:
> Tor Iver Wilhelmsen wrote:
> 
>> "Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@franz-liszt.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>>
>>
>>> Also, Civilization 3 wasn't a big enough improvement over Civ 2 to
>>> justify the hype.
>>
>>
>>
>> Actually, the "cultural zone" aspect was very good, but it should have
>> been a patch to CivII instead of being the selling-point of an
>> otherwise pointless sequel.
>>
>> Then again, the real sequel to Civ II is SMAC.
> 
> 
> hear,hear.
> 
> SMAC just had *everything* just right.

Except for the AI. For some reason, the opponents just kept on throwing 
about more and more and more and more and more aircraft. Why'd they need 
to move them all, every. single. turn?

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:04:35 -0400, "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>
wrote:

>Hong Ooi wrote:
>> Of course, that's not what Darin was talking about. What Darin was
>> talking about was that for any game, there will be someone, somewhere
>> who finds fault with them. Eg I got hopelessly confused with
>> Descent's 3D controls, kept flying into walls, and eventually ditched
>> it. Therefore it's a fumble for me.
>
>Did you have a flight sim HOTAS setup?  I'm thinking I even used rudder 
>controls with that one, too.  (And helicopter sims were *great* training. 
>:-))

Nope, wasn't even using a mouse at the time, IIRC. I was all at sea with
just the keyboard. Mind you, I'm not sure a flight sim setup would have
helped -- I was absolutely useless at the things. Absolutely no spatial
awareness.


-- 
Hong Ooi                              | "I like snowballs."
hong@zipworld.com.au                  |    -- CA
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/ |
Sydney, Australia                     |

In article <cllavr$es6$1@news1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de>,
Werner Arend <nefar@arcor.de> wrote:
>chainbreaker wrote:

<snip>

>> You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as hyped as 
>> Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if not more so.
>
>Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
>defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
>first"-experience.

I distinctly remember you were able to send it back to Sierra for a
refund...

Chris Schack

Ben Sisson wrote:

> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

Dunno if these'd be the biggest, but they're the two examples that come 
to my mind: Trespasser and Deus Ex: Invisible War. Trespasser had great 
potential, but a terrible game engine: I'd love to see someone use the 
Farcry engine to remake it or, at least, do a decent _Jurassic 
Park_-like game.

DX:IW flubbed it for lots of reasons. The game itself was actually 
pretty good, and I liked playing it. But the physics engine wasn't 
implemented in any profound way. The maps had to be scaled down for the 
Xbox, which meant that much of the fun of the original's large areas and 
multiple paths was lost.

But the real problem, for me, was that while DX:IW continued the 
tradition of multiple paths, and player decisions affecting later 
events, it just wasn't implemented _enough_. If you did X instead of Y, 
the only change was in some dialogue later on. Even the multiple endings 
were done in a way that rendered every previous decision moot. You could 
work for one faction throughout the game... but once you hit that _one 
central decision point_, none of that mattered. You could suddenly 
change your allegiance. (Now, if they'd worked it so your decisions 
throughout the game shaped which ending you got, it'd make replaying the 
game a bigger treat.)

DX:IW was a good game despite all of this. But it really could have been 
much more.

Bateau wrote:

> Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIESPAM@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> 
> If no one else is going to say it then I will: Half Life.

Some one had to say it.






















(Not that it makes sense, or that there's a good reason for it. but 
_someone_ had to say it, eventually, even out of sheer perverseness.)

Ben Sisson wrote:

> This post is not about those games.
> 
> What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> problems that it fell by the wayside?

I just read through the thread, and I can't believe that no one's 
mentioned the SINGLE GREATEST FLUBBED OPPORTUNITY of the entire industry 
yet.

_Daikatana_. It's hard to beat that for a flubbed opportunity.

Look what went into the game. One of the industry's best-known level 
designers, given tens of millions of dollars to hire the best of the 
best, with pre-launch hype that any developer would have envied. They 
could have looked at what games were doing, and gone a step further in 
any direction-- better physics, open-ended storytelling, complex 
deathmatching, better AI, maybe even serious emotional content, whatever.

But look at what happened. Look at the millions wasted on high-tech 
bullshit, while the hirees played games for days on end. Look at the end 
result: uninspired Quake-like levels, poor AI, and a 
not-terribly-complex storyline that could have been done with the Source 
engine used in _Shadow Warrior_. Look at the games that came out around 
the same time, and how they expanded the possibilities of games while 
Daikatana wallowed in minor tweaks to standard habits.

Say what you will about most of these other games, or other developers. 
  Heck, I don't care much for Peter Molyneux's games, but he is trying 
to do something different, so that counts for something. But the single 
greatest _botch_ of the industry, in terms of wasted resources, talents, 
potentials and expectations, has to be _Daikatana_.

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name Hong Ooi <hong@zipworld.com.au>:

>On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:04:35 -0400, "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Hong Ooi wrote:
>>> Of course, that's not what Darin was talking about. What Darin was
>>> talking about was that for any game, there will be someone, somewhere
>>> who finds fault with them. Eg I got hopelessly confused with
>>> Descent's 3D controls, kept flying into walls, and eventually ditched
>>> it. Therefore it's a fumble for me.
>>
>>Did you have a flight sim HOTAS setup?  I'm thinking I even used rudder 
>>controls with that one, too.  (And helicopter sims were *great* training. 
>>:-))
>
>Nope, wasn't even using a mouse at the time, IIRC. I was all at sea with
>just the keyboard. Mind you, I'm not sure a flight sim setup would have
>helped -- I was absolutely useless at the things. Absolutely no spatial
>awareness.

I'm not so sure playing it with a flightsim setup would have done
anything at all. It was one of the first fps to have fully 3d freedom
of movement at all times. You were flying a spaceship but it didn't
*feel* like a spaceship since you were strafing and such (nor was
there inertia).

Seems to me a normal mouse setup worked fine. 
 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:09:50 -0400, Brian Siano
<siano@mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote:

>_Daikatana_. It's hard to beat that for a flubbed opportunity.

That wasn't a flubbed opportunity, it was just a shit game with no
redeeming qualities at all.
-- 
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

Andrew wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:09:50 -0400, Brian Siano
> <siano@mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
>>_Daikatana_. It's hard to beat that for a flubbed opportunity.
> 
> 
> That wasn't a flubbed opportunity, it was just a shit game with no
> redeeming qualities at all.

Duke Nukem Forever - the game that could have, but never was, and likely 
never will be.

Hong Ooi wrote:
> Nope, wasn't even using a mouse at the time, IIRC. I was all at sea
> with just the keyboard. Mind you, I'm not sure a flight sim setup
> would have helped -- I was absolutely useless at the things.
> Absolutely no spatial awareness.

Ack, it's no wonder you gave it up.  Descent should have had the warning 
"Flight Sim HOTAS Setup STRONGLY Recommended" in prominent lettering on the 
front of the box.

Some flight sims I've had didn't even need such controls to the extent 
Descent did.  :-)

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

Ben Sisson wrote:
> I'm not so sure playing it with a flightsim setup would have done
> anything at all. It was one of the first fps to have fully 3d freedom
> of movement at all times. You were flying a spaceship but it didn't
> *feel* like a spaceship since you were strafing and such (nor was
> there inertia).
>
> Seems to me a normal mouse setup worked fine.

Could be, but since I felt right at home playing it with HOTAS + rudders I 
never had the need or desire to try a mouse.

Speaking of controls--I seem to remember getting one of those ORB thingies 
with my copy of Descent as a freebie.  Did you ever see or try one of those? 
Man, what a crock *that* thing was, lol.  It's no wonder they were giving 
them away, hehe.

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:24:28 GMT, "Jim Vieira"
<WhiplashrAT@wiDOT.rrDOT.com> wrote:

>My experience in the WoW beta has shown me that there
>is virtually no way to please both crowds.  

  DAoC isn't a bad attempt, realm vs realm (vs realm) PvP, but
consensual.  So if you feel like PvP one night, you go into the shared
realm areas and fight as much as you'd like, if you don't feel like it
you don't.  That way you don't need two sets of friends, two sets of
characters and two sets of servers. :)

-- 
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability 
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:59:40 +0200, Werner Arend <nefar@arcor.de>
wrote:

>> You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as hyped as 
>> Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if not more so.
>
>Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
>defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
>first"-experience.

  I guess you don't remember PC Gamer's review of Outpost, 96% and an
Editor's Choice award. :)

-- 
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability 
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft

Johnny Bravo wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:59:40 +0200, Werner Arend <nefar@arcor.de>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as hyped as 
>>>Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if not more so.
>>
>>Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
>>defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
>>first"-experience.
> 
> 
>   I guess you don't remember PC Gamer's review of Outpost, 96% and an
> Editor's Choice award. :)
> 

Hey, I'm down to the "$20" experience. I don't care if a game is good or 
bad if it's $20 or below. Around '96, I got tired of paying a premium 
for bad games and just gave them up.

A good game is a good game, no matter how old or outdated the graphics are.

$10 for Master of Magic. Wow. That was three months well worth $10.

CH

On 27 Oct 2004 21:37:52 -0700, smartwick@yahoo.com (D. W. Hartwick)
wrote:

>As far as I'm concerned this was the single biggest missed opportunity
>in the history of the computer games industry bar none, and that
>industry and the gaming hobby as a whole is incalculably poorer for
>it.

  Amusingly enough, Advanced Civilization by AH (based on the
boardgame, not the computer series) finally runs at a decent speed.
When released the AI took a damn long time to do it's job (especially
later in the game), but they didn't sacrifice the AI for turn speed,
something that would be nearly unheard of today.

  Another interesting thing, it runs fine under windows XP, despite
having been released in 1996.
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=22


-- 
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability 
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg.]
On 2004-10-28, Clawhound <none@nowhere.com> wrote:

> A good game is a good game, no matter how old or outdated the graphics are.

Wrong. Try running a 640x480x16 game on a 22" flat screen
monitor. Looks so bad my head starts pounding.

Quoth The Raven "sandtiger <sandtiger01@comcast.net>" in
X8idnaV9dOEqjBzcRVn-vg@comcast.com
> Andrew wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:09:50 -0400, Brian Siano
>> <siano@mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> _Daikatana_. It's hard to beat that for a flubbed opportunity.
>>
>>
>> That wasn't a flubbed opportunity, it was just a shit game with no
>> redeeming qualities at all.
>
> Duke Nukem Forever - the game that could have, but never was, and likely
> never will be.

amen

-- 
Take out the _CURSEING to reply to me

All I ask for is the opportunity to prove that money doesn't buy
happiness. 

chainbreaker wrote:
> Hong Ooi wrote:
> 
>>Nope, wasn't even using a mouse at the time, IIRC. I was all at sea
>>with just the keyboard. Mind you, I'm not sure a flight sim setup
>>would have helped -- I was absolutely useless at the things.
>>Absolutely no spatial awareness.
> 
> 
> Ack, it's no wonder you gave it up.  Descent should have had the warning 
> "Flight Sim HOTAS Setup STRONGLY Recommended" in prominent lettering on the 
> front of the box.
> 
> Some flight sims I've had didn't even need such controls to the extent 
> Descent did.  :-)
> 

What a game. And, without a word of a lie, I used to kick *serious* ass 
using the keyboard only. OK, I did develop webbed fingers and arthritis 
but it was worth it to stick a mega on some lamers ass down a spiral 
corridoor :))

-- 
Walter Mitty
-
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagiarism
http://www.tinyurl.com

shadows wrote:
> ["Followup-To:" header set to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg.]
> On 2004-10-28, Clawhound <none@nowhere.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>A good game is a good game, no matter how old or outdated the graphics are.
> 
> 
> Wrong. Try running a 640x480x16 game on a 22" flat screen
> monitor. Looks so bad my head starts pounding.
> 

Rubbish. Tetris or chess would be just fine.

-- 
Walter Mitty
-
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagiarism
http://www.tinyurl.com

Thank you Brian.  After several postings, I was thinking, "no one has
mentioned that awful game by Romano?".   In fact, I couldn't even remember
the name of the game and was doing a web search while reading these postings
:)

IMHO:  Enter the Matrix & Daikatana are the two biggest flubs.   Flubs
because both of these had mega-anticipation from the public.  Matrix because
of it's license.   Daikatana because of its creator Mr Romano.



"Brian Siano" <siano@mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote in message
news:clr23u$18b2$1@netnews.upenn.edu...
> Ben Sisson wrote:
>
> > This post is not about those games.
> >
> > What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
> > category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
> > game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
> > behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
> > problems that it fell by the wayside?
>
> I just read through the thread, and I can't believe that no one's
> mentioned the SINGLE GREATEST FLUBBED OPPORTUNITY of the entire industry
> yet.
>
> _Daikatana_. It's hard to beat that for a flubbed opportunity.
>
> Look what went into the game. One of the industry's best-known level
> designers, given tens of millions of dollars to hire the best of the
> best, with pre-launch hype that any developer would have envied. They
> could have looked at what games were doing, and gone a step further in
> any direction-- better physics, open-ended storytelling, complex
> deathmatching, better AI, maybe even serious emotional content, whatever.
>
> But look at what happened. Look at the millions wasted on high-tech
> bullshit, while the hirees played games for days on end. Look at the end
> result: uninspired Quake-like levels, poor AI, and a
> not-terribly-complex storyline that could have been done with the Source
> engine used in _Shadow Warrior_. Look at the games that came out around
> the same time, and how they expanded the possibilities of games while
> Daikatana wallowed in minor tweaks to standard habits.
>
> Say what you will about most of these other games, or other developers.
>   Heck, I don't care much for Peter Molyneux's games, but he is trying
> to do something different, so that counts for something. But the single
> greatest _botch_ of the industry, in terms of wasted resources, talents,
> potentials and expectations, has to be _Daikatana_.

Bee wrote:
> Thank you Brian.  After several postings, I was thinking, "no one has
> mentioned that awful game by Romano?".   In fact, I couldn't even remember
> the name of the game and was doing a web search while reading these postings
> :)
> 
> IMHO:  Enter the Matrix & Daikatana are the two biggest flubs.   Flubs
> because both of these had mega-anticipation from the public.  Matrix because
> of it's license.   Daikatana because of its creator Mr Romano.
> 
> 
> 
> "Brian Siano" <siano@mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote in message
> news:clr23u$18b2$1@netnews.upenn.edu...
> 
>>Ben Sisson wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This post is not about those games.
>>>
>>>What game would you say was the biggest opportunity to be in that
>>>category but FLUBBED it? A game with an idea that was a sure hit, a
>>>game that could have set a standard and created a whole subgenre
>>>behind it, only to implement it so badly or have so many other
>>>problems that it fell by the wayside?
>>
>>I just read through the thread, and I can't believe that no one's
>>mentioned the SINGLE GREATEST FLUBBED OPPORTUNITY of the entire industry
>>yet.
>>
>>_Daikatana_. It's hard to beat that for a flubbed opportunity.
>>
>>Look what went into the game. One of the industry's best-known level
>>designers, given tens of millions of dollars to hire the best of the
>>best, with pre-launch hype that any developer would have envied. They
>>could have looked at what games were doing, and gone a step further in
>>any direction-- better physics, open-ended storytelling, complex
>>deathmatching, better AI, maybe even serious emotional content, whatever.
>>
>>But look at what happened. Look at the millions wasted on high-tech
>>bullshit, while the hirees played games for days on end. Look at the end
>>result: uninspired Quake-like levels, poor AI, and a
>>not-terribly-complex storyline that could have been done with the Source
>>engine used in _Shadow Warrior_. Look at the games that came out around
>>the same time, and how they expanded the possibilities of games while
>>Daikatana wallowed in minor tweaks to standard habits.
>>
>>Say what you will about most of these other games, or other developers.
>>  Heck, I don't care much for Peter Molyneux's games, but he is trying
>>to do something different, so that counts for something. But the single
>>greatest _botch_ of the industry, in terms of wasted resources, talents,
>>potentials and expectations, has to be _Daikatana_.
> 
> 
> 

I still say Duke Nukem Forever. Or Duke Nukem Whenever, I think they're 
calling it now.

Brian Siano <siano@mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote:
>But look at what happened. Look at the millions wasted on high-tech 
>bullshit, while the hirees played games for days on end. Look at the end 
>result: uninspired Quake-like levels, poor AI, and a 
>not-terribly-complex storyline that could have been done with the Source 
>engine used in _Shadow Warrior_.

Build engine.

Bee wrote:
> Thank you Brian.  After several postings, I was thinking, "no one has
> mentioned that awful game by Romano?".   In fact, I couldn't even
> remember the name of the game and was doing a web search while
> reading these postings :)
>
> IMHO:  Enter the Matrix & Daikatana are the two biggest flubs.   Flubs
> because both of these had mega-anticipation from the public.  Matrix
> because of it's license.   Daikatana because of its creator Mr Romano.

The nice thing about Daikatana was that John Romaro got his come-uppitance. 
Now he's stuck making and porting games for PDAs and the N-Gage. <snicker>

"Jim Vieira" <WhiplashrAT@wiDOT.rrDOT.com> wrote:
>My experience in the WoW beta has shown me that there
>is virtually no way to please both crowds.  

Johnny Bravo  <baawa-knight@yahoo.com> wrote:
>  DAoC isn't a bad attempt, realm vs realm (vs realm) PvP, but
>consensual. 

World of Warcraft's non-PvP servers are actually consensual PvP servers,
which apparently don't please the non-PvP players.

							Ross Ridge

-- 
 l/  //	  Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/  http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/rridge/ 
 db  //	  

chainbreaker <noone@nowhere.com> wrote:
>Ack, it's no wonder you gave it up.  Descent should have had the warning 
>"Flight Sim HOTAS Setup STRONGLY Recommended" in prominent lettering on the 
>front of the box.

I dunno, the best Descent players I've known use the keyboard.
It's amazing what they can do.

							Ross Ridge


-- 
 l/  //	  Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/  http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/rridge/ 
 db  //	  

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Ross Ridge):

>"Jim Vieira" <WhiplashrAT@wiDOT.rrDOT.com> wrote:
>>My experience in the WoW beta has shown me that there
>>is virtually no way to please both crowds.  
>
>Johnny Bravo  <baawa-knight@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>  DAoC isn't a bad attempt, realm vs realm (vs realm) PvP, but
>>consensual. 
>
>World of Warcraft's non-PvP servers are actually consensual PvP servers,
>which apparently don't please the non-PvP players.

The upcoming open beta probably won't show this well but in general I
think PvE preferring players should take a long hard look at giving
WoW the skip. A lot of the midgame content is in places you are under
threat of being PvPed in, and most the endgame seems to revolve around
it. The early game won't represent this at all and will lead to a
false sense of security.

WoW should be godlike for raw PvP players though.

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>:

>Hong Ooi wrote:
>> Nope, wasn't even using a mouse at the time, IIRC. I was all at sea
>> with just the keyboard. Mind you, I'm not sure a flight sim setup
>> would have helped -- I was absolutely useless at the things.
>> Absolutely no spatial awareness.
>
>Ack, it's no wonder you gave it up.  Descent should have had the warning 
>"Flight Sim HOTAS Setup STRONGLY Recommended" in prominent lettering on the 
>front of the box.
>
>Some flight sims I've had didn't even need such controls to the extent 
>Descent did.  :-)

I'm not seeing this at all. I myself used 4 button joystick plus
keyboard (I think I may have used the mouse at one point but changed).
I never even used the hat. Left hand on the left part of the keyboard
(a w d x to strafe, f and v for forward and back, I used ring finger
to do the up and down strafes), right on the joystick. The exact same
controls I use in Unreal Tournament 2k4, except mouse instead of
joystick now (for more finetune control, something not really needed
in Descent).

For all intents and purposes Descent was no more or no less difficult
to control than any ole fps.

 
-- 

"We're not going to have any casualties."

- G. Dubya Bush before the invasion of Iraq

Johnny Bravo wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:59:40 +0200, Werner Arend <nefar@arcor.de>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>You don't hear much about Outpost nowadays, but it was every bit as hyped as 
>>>Daikatana, Ultima 9, etc., and every bit as screwed up--if not more so.
>>
>>Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
>>defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
>>first"-experience.
> 
> 
>   I guess you don't remember PC Gamer's review of Outpost, 96% and an
> Editor's Choice award. :)
> 
All right. I should have said: waiting for a review by someone I trust.

BTW, There's no PC Gamer here in Germany, and the two biggest mags
have been quite reliable and informative for some time. Their ratings
are still often too high, but even so, a game rarely reaches the 90%.

Werner

Johnny Bravo <baawa-knight@yahoo.com> writes:

>   Another interesting thing, it runs fine under windows XP, despite
> having been released in 1996.

I never got it to run there, so I use Dosbox. However, it still takes
ages to decide whether to build ships.

Strangely enough, the AI thinks more about that on "easy" than onm the
"harder" AI settings...

> http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=22

Bah, I have the box: It's unthinkable to play that game without having
the civilization advance cards to flip through... :)

"Brian Siano" <siano@mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote in message 
news:clr23u$18b2$1@netnews.upenn.edu...

> I just read through the thread, and I can't believe that no one's 
> mentioned the SINGLE GREATEST FLUBBED OPPORTUNITY of the entire industry 
> yet.
>
> _Daikatana_. It's hard to beat that for a flubbed opportunity.

I considered Daikatana, but then rejected it because I felt like it pretty 
much lived up to what I was expecting out of it. Romero was a level 
designer, wot? He wasn't/isn't a "big picture" kind of guy. I never felt 
Daikatana had the potential to be anything more than a "DOOM +" kind of game 
and I don't think I was far wrong in my estimation of it (some would call it 
"DOOM -").

However, if you mean that here was a guy sitting on top of the world, with 
mountains of money and 360 degrees of freedom, who fucked up his one Really 
Big Chance...I'm with you, bro. As a person, Romero screwed the pooch big 
time.

Ben Sisson wrote:
> A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
> name "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>:
> 
> 
>>Hong Ooi wrote:
>>
>>>Nope, wasn't even using a mouse at the time, IIRC. I was all at sea
>>>with just the keyboard. Mind you, I'm not sure a flight sim setup
>>>would have helped -- I was absolutely useless at the things.
>>>Absolutely no spatial awareness.
>>
>>Ack, it's no wonder you gave it up.  Descent should have had the warning 
>>"Flight Sim HOTAS Setup STRONGLY Recommended" in prominent lettering on the 
>>front of the box.
>>
>>Some flight sims I've had didn't even need such controls to the extent 
>>Descent did.  :-)
> 
> 
> I'm not seeing this at all. I myself used 4 button joystick plus
> keyboard (I think I may have used the mouse at one point but changed).
> I never even used the hat. Left hand on the left part of the keyboard
> (a w d x to strafe, f and v for forward and back, I used ring finger
> to do the up and down strafes), right on the joystick. The exact same
> controls I use in Unreal Tournament 2k4, except mouse instead of
> joystick now (for more finetune control, something not really needed
> in Descent).
> 
> For all intents and purposes Descent was no more or no less difficult
> to control than any ole fps.

No way. In Descent you had full 3d with inertia. SLightly more difficult :)

-- 
Walter Mitty
-
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagiarism
http://www.tinyurl.com

Johnny Bravo wrote:
>> Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
>> defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
>> first"-experience.
>
>  I guess you don't remember PC Gamer's review of Outpost, 96% and an
> Editor's Choice award. :)

Heh, I forgot about that one--took them a lonnng time to get all the egg 
wiped off too, as I recall.  :-)

I believe they ended up claiming that they'd noticed everything that was 
broken and awarded the rating because of a "promise" that everything would 
be fixed before the game's release, or somesuch.  It would have been a lot 
funnier if I hadn't actually bought the POS.  :-)

There was another space-based RTS that got some pretty good reviews that was 
also broken--only thing was, with this one you basically *couldn't lose*. 
Anybody remember it's name?  It had a really nice technology tree, for one 
thing.

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

Walter Mitty wrote:
>> Ack, it's no wonder you gave it up.  Descent should have had the
>> warning "Flight Sim HOTAS Setup STRONGLY Recommended" in prominent
>> lettering on the front of the box.
>>
>> Some flight sims I've had didn't even need such controls to the
>> extent Descent did.  :-)
>>
>
> What a game. And, without a word of a lie, I used to kick *serious*
> ass using the keyboard only. OK, I did develop webbed fingers and
> arthritis but it was worth it to stick a mega on some lamers ass down a 
> spiral
> corridoor :))

Well, you were that one of a hundred then.  :-)

If I'd only had a kb I'd probably have uninstalled the game immediately on 
getting a look at the first screen.  :-)
-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

Cutter Slade wrote:
> I considered Daikatana, but then rejected it because I felt like it
> pretty much lived up to what I was expecting out of it. Romero was a
> level designer, wot? He wasn't/isn't a "big picture" kind of guy. I
> never felt Daikatana had the potential to be anything more than a
> "DOOM +" kind of game and I don't think I was far wrong in my
> estimation of it (some would call it "DOOM -").

I don't think Daikatana necessarily fits either.  It was basically just 
supposed to the be biggest baddest shooter on the block, wasn't it--the best 
with the most of a type that was already out there?  Not anything 
particularly revolutionary, as I recall.  Maybe something along the lines of 
a "Super Half-life" at best.

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

"neil" == Neil Cerutti

(Dungeon Keeper)
    neil> I don't mind that the tactic exists, but you shouldn't be able to
    neil> implement it by just dropping units on an ad-hoc basis wherever
    neil> you need them.  It should be the result of strategic planning,
    neil> not a pick-up game of grab-ass.

That hits the nail on the head. In fact it was the one thing that was wrong
with DK. The idea was great, it was a lot of fun to play, but the
underlying strategic concept suffered from this fatal flaw. If you can drop
your "troops" anywhere you want, the geography that you work so hard to
create does ultimately not matter. There is still some considerations such
as space, timing etc. but at the end it all boils down to who shovels the
most and strongest units into the action area the fastest. Too bad.

Regards, Hartmut "cannon fodder" Schmider

-- 
Hartmut Schmider, Queen's University

We are capable of sacrificing ourselves for sentiment.
Sentimentality exacts the sacrifice of others.
					Yoritomo-Tashi

"neil" == Neil Cerutti 

    neil> There was no point in a version 3 and 4 of HOMM. HOMM2 was about
    neil> perfect. When the next iterations came out, I just cut-n-pasted a
    neil> new number of the 2 on my HOMM2 box. It was cheaper, and just as
    neil> fun.

Ouch that hurts. I have reprogrammed my CMOS to boot my home machine
directly into HOMM3. The thing's been on my disk since I bought the
machine, and before that it was on my previous one. I admit that version 3
was derivative of 2, but they did some "tuning" which altered the character
of the game quite a bit: larger tactical maps, more specific and disting
unit development. Downside was it wasn't as cute anymore. But in my biased
opinion HOMM3 was the optimum.

Regards, Hartmut "and they sure milked it" Schmider

-- 
Hartmut Schmider, Queen's University

We are capable of sacrificing ourselves for sentiment.
Sentimentality exacts the sacrifice of others.
					Yoritomo-Tashi

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:38:50 -0400, "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>
wrote:

>There was another space-based RTS that got some pretty good reviews that was 
>also broken--only thing was, with this one you basically *couldn't lose*. 
>Anybody remember it's name?  It had a really nice technology tree, for one 
>thing.

I'd guess you're thinking of Ascendancy - the tech tree is very nice,
and the AI is passive enough that it's usually not going to rush you. I
have lost a couple of games, though, but that was always due to bad luck
as much as the opponents.

Greg Johnson wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:38:50 -0400, "chainbreaker" <noone@nowhere.com>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>There was another space-based RTS that got some pretty good reviews that was 
>>also broken--only thing was, with this one you basically *couldn't lose*. 
>>Anybody remember it's name?  It had a really nice technology tree, for one 
>>thing.
> 
> 
> I'd guess you're thinking of Ascendancy - the tech tree is very nice,
> and the AI is passive enough that it's usually not going to rush you. I
> have lost a couple of games, though, but that was always due to bad luck
> as much as the opponents.

Oy vey, Ascendancy, yeah. The first game I played was on the easiest 
level. I won it without problem. The second game I played was after the 
"aggressor" patch that supposedly made the AI more aggressive, on the 
highest difficulty. I won it without problem. The third (and last) game 
was on the hardest level as well, and I was trying to lose, and I just 
couldn't seem to figure out how to do that.

In article <uihgd.16217$EI6.5604@fe2.texas.rr.com>, Bee wrote:
> IMHO:  Enter the Matrix & Daikatana are the two biggest flubs.
> Flubs because both of these had mega-anticipation from the
> public.  Matrix because of it's license.   Daikatana because of
> its creator Mr Romano.

Ehn.  I can't imagine why anyone was eagerly anticipating another
FPS at all, so Daikatana doesn't qualify for me.  Some good ones
have come out since Doom2, but they've been complete surprises.


-- 
Neil Cerutti
We don't necessarily discriminate.  We simply exclude certain
types of people. --Colonel Gerald Wellman

Greg Johnson wrote:
> I'd guess you're thinking of Ascendancy - the tech tree is very nice,
> and the AI is passive enough that it's usually not going to rush you.
> I have lost a couple of games, though, but that was always due to bad
> luck
> as much as the opponents.

Ascendancy--yep that's it.

And you *lost*?  Heh, I thought that was nearly impossible, even after the 
patch.  :-)

Now there's a thought--a game where the object is LOSE, if you can!  :-)
-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

On 29 Oct 2004 13:16:57 GMT, Neil Cerutti <neil.cerutti@tds.net> wrote:

>In article <uihgd.16217$EI6.5604@fe2.texas.rr.com>, Bee wrote:
>> IMHO:  Enter the Matrix & Daikatana are the two biggest flubs.
>> Flubs because both of these had mega-anticipation from the
>> public.  Matrix because of it's license.   Daikatana because of
>> its creator Mr Romano.
>
>Ehn.  I can't imagine why anyone was eagerly anticipating another
>FPS at all, so Daikatana doesn't qualify for me.  Some good ones
>have come out since Doom2, but they've been complete surprises.

I rather liked Return to Castle Wolfenstein although I do miss hearing
"Halt,  Schweinhund!" from the old C=64 days.

-- 
Michael Cecil
http://home.comcast.net/~macecil/

Chris Schack wrote:
>> Don't remind me. I paid full price for it because of the hype. My
>> defining "from now on I'm always going to wait for reviews
>> first"-experience.
>
> I distinctly remember you were able to send it back to Sierra for a
> refund...
>
> Chris Schack

That's true, but most, like me, probably kept it beyond the 30 day return 
period because it was so slickly presented you just *knew* there *had* to ba 
a great game in there somewhere.

So I kept searching . . . and searching . . .

I actually did avail myself of their return policy once--Phantasmagoria--and 
the less said about that pile, the better.  Blah--I get reflux just thinking 
about it.

-- 
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it. 

"sandtiger" <sandtiger01@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:ha-dnSOWkpVxPBzcRVn-jg@comcast.com...
> Bee wrote:
> >snip> >
> >
>
> I still say Duke Nukem Forever. Or Duke Nukem Whenever, I think they're
> calling it now.

We can call it a flub,
when it's finally released,
and it stinks.

Michael Cecil wrote:
> On 29 Oct 2004 13:16:57 GMT, Neil Cerutti <neil.cerutti@tds.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>In article <uihgd.16217$EI6.5604@fe2.texas.rr.com>, Bee wrote:
>>
>>>IMHO:  Enter the Matrix & Daikatana are the two biggest flubs.
>>>Flubs because both of these had mega-anticipation from the
>>>public.  Matrix because of it's license.   Daikatana because of
>>>its creator Mr Romano.
>>
>>Ehn.  I can't imagine why anyone was eagerly anticipating another
>>FPS at all, so Daikatana doesn't qualify for me.  Some good ones
>>have come out since Doom2, but they've been complete surprises.
> 
> 
> I rather liked Return to Castle Wolfenstein although I do miss hearing
> "Halt,  Schweinhund!" from the old C=64 days.
> 

Had Wolfenstein on the Apple II. Some friends and I were up very, very 
late playing it, and boy was asleep in his chair. When the "Halt!" 
scream happened, he leapt up, bashed his head into a lamp, and also peed 
his pants. I can't blame him - that was really startling, the way it 
would be completely silent and then *wham*.

To this day, I can't think of that game without thinking of that 
incident and breaking into fits of laughter.