blah blah

[A Black Falcon]

Trolling is posting just to get a negative reaction, which is not what I did. I couldn't help saying that in memory of our past debates over the topic...

As for Blizz's artwork, you said that it was good, I guess, but you talked ten times more about how bad it was technically. That sends a strong message: Even if you acknowledge that it's artistically good, you care a lot more about the lacking technical details.

[OB1]

It was a debate about technical merit. You are dumb.

[A Black Falcon]

Ah, I remember now... you were debating technical merit and I was responding by saying 'but the artistic side matters more'. Which is true. :)

[OB1]

Yeah, you were being a moron.

[A Black Falcon]

Everyone who argues with you for more than a minuite appears to be that way in your eyes. Eventually, after dealing with you in some arguement for too long, it might even become true in that case... bad behavior can rub off, after all.

[OB1]

The thing is, though, that you are a moron. Seriously, guy, it's true.

[A Black Falcon]

To you it seems that way because you are determined to interpret everything I say in such a manner. That's the only reason.

[OB1]

That doesn't even make any sense. Thanks for ruining the thread, btw. Now I have to most our posts.

[A Black Falcon]

In every arguement we get in to you eventually prove that point of mine right.

[OB1]

*sigh*

You are so dumb and so boring it's no longer amusing for me.

[A Black Falcon]

You haven't been fun to be around for months now...

[OB1]

That really hurts me, coming from you.

[A Black Falcon]

I'm not alone. It's just that no one else wants to talk to you when you get like this, and for good reason... or they left TC at least in part to get away from you.

[OB1]

Ah yes, like Stealth. Truly a man of your calibur.

[A Black Falcon]

Stealth is okay once in a while but most of the time he is just as bad as you are...

[OB1]

Man, you really do bring me back to elementary school.

OB1: You need some help, ABF.

ABF: No YOU need some help.


OB1: You're just like Stealth, ABF.

ABF: No YOU'RE just like Stealth.


The master of wit, I'll tell ya!

[A Black Falcon]

I can't help it if you see your flaws in others and not in yourself. :)

[OB1]

You're projecting again.

[A Black Falcon]

Now you're the one repeating what I said...

[OB1]

You are so boring.

[A Black Falcon]

Oh well...

.. isn't is cool that you can have the characters auto-fight battles in Tales of Symphonia? Makes it easy to get gold, just go back to the TV every few minuites to attack that stupid dragon again and you get another 20,000...

[OB1]

That is kinda neat. But it shows the pointlessness of that kind of rpg, don't you think? That you can literally keep it on "auto"? What's left to play, then? Pressing the button to go through text?

[deanna]

have you two ever met before in person or anything??

[OB1]

Yeah, ABF is actually a four-foot-tall Dutchman by the name of Flaardengasser.

[A Black Falcon]

That is kinda neat. But it shows the pointlessness of that kind of rpg, don't you think? That you can literally keep it on "auto"? What's left to play, then? Pressing the button to go through text?

There's a lot of text. :) And running around on the world map, of course... that can't be automated... but yes, if you automate the battles it would get a bit boring. Which is why I just did it when I was in the other room and coming back every couple minuites to build up a large amount of gold so I could restore that city. :Needed 400,000. No way am I going to play through all that myself...

This isn't the first console RPG with auto-battle, either... they have auto-battle stuff in all of the Lunar games. I don't use it much, though, because the computers are a bit too free with their spell usage...

[OB1]

Barely-games is what I like to call 'em. Not that I mind, really. Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and enjoy some lame videogame dialogue. :D

[A Black Falcon]

... ToS has a pretty fun combat system and a very well told story, though... if it's got a flaw it's that perhaps it's a bit overdramatic with too many plot twists. I mean, seriously, how many does one game need? :) But it is well-told and realistic. And anyway, in a console-style RPG, the option to automate battles is welcome (that goes for Lunar as well). They always want you to do more fights than are actually fun... but only a few games actually let you get around that with auto-battle. In Lunar you did have to choose 'auto' once the battle started to autofight it, but in ToS you just set all players to Automatic in the menu system and presto, all battles will auto-fight... well, you still need to do the unison attacks (whenever player 1 is near an enemy and the bar is full), but that's all.

On that 'well told and realistic plot' thing.. in console RPGs, it's so funny... they often get these really good, well told stories, good characters, etc, etc... but then they've got these RPG conventions that are so unrealistic and, to me, somewhat hurt the illusion... I mean stuff like how the overworld is an entire planet -- you wrap around the edges. But it's tiny. Far smaller than any planet. At least PC RPGs usually have the decency to just make it one small PART of a much larger world... and going along with that the overworld aspect of the game is horribly unrealistic... scale, number of towns, everything... so this planet has about eight to ten towns, two or three of which will be destroyed before the game ends? Uhh... I know the plot it tells, and the writing, are great, but then there's stuff like that... at least Skies of Arcadia didn't take itsself as seriously. But it definitely has those same issues.

[OB1]

I've never played an rpg that had a realistic plot.

[A Black Falcon]

It depends on what you call 'realistic'... do you mean like real-world realism or realistic within the rules of the world it creates? Because some definitely have the latter.

[OB1]

The former.

[A Black Falcon]

Well that's silly then... I'd much rather base it on the latter. RPGs based purely on real-world stuff don't seem like they'd be as interesting...

[OB1]

I never said it would be.

Well, actually it could be cool, but I still didn't say that. I just said that I'd never seen a realistic RPG.

[A Black Falcon]

But in most ways I'd consider a game (or a book, or film!) which creates a world and makes it fully realistic -- realistic events, characterizations, etc -- is 'realistic'. Not quite in the same way, but it's pretty close... and I'd say that given the fact almost no RPGs are real-world-realistic, it makes a lot more sense to assume that that is the kind of 'realism' meant, I think.

[OB1]

...

You need a life.

[A Black Falcon]

I like my life just fine. :)

[OB1]

I bet.

[Smoke]

I just want to say one thing. Good art can make up for bad technology in a game. Good technology cannot make up for bad art.

Art > Tech

[OB1]

Yes. Hell, I probably feel more strongly about that than anyone else here. But that's not what ABF and I were talking about. He would certainly like to think so, though.

[A Black Falcon]

As I've said before, I was talking about that, you were talking about something else...

And I seem to remember something about you not liking Blizz's artwork nearly as much as I (or most Blizz fans and gaming websites) do.

[Great Rumbler]

WoW had low-end technical graphics, but a very good art style. Case closed.

[A Black Falcon]

WoW is what we were arguing about, GR... and that was essentially my case. OB1, if I remember, was citing EverQuest II...

Remember, I kept posting screenshots of WoW, OB1 would insult them in some way, etc, etc?

[Great Rumbler]

Everquest II had great technical graphics, but a poor art style. OB1 complained about WoW, because with a great art style AND great technical graphics it would have looked even better. He was complaining because he thought that Blizzard could have made a better graphics engine than the one they had, by pointing out that Everquest II, a game that came out at roughly the same time period I think, had a very high-end graphics engine, which OB1 thought WoW should have had as well. There.

[A Black Falcon]

Mostly correct, but I remember him being definitely more negative than that about WCIII/WoW's artistic quality... where are the threads in question, it'd be better to actually look at them. :)

[OB1]

You're delusional, Brian.

[Smoke]

WoW would of course look a lot better with more polys and special effects. I imagine though that just like the original EQ it will get future graphical upgrades. The EverQuest of today looks nothing like it did when it first came out.

Oh and have any of you seen the Asian localization of EQII? It looks like a completly different game. Much, much better character models.

[A Black Falcon]

WoW wouldn't look better with better graphics if it then wouldn't run on computers like mine... :) (see: EQII)