8th December 2004, 3:52 PM
OB1, only someone as stupidly certain that everything anyone says is an attack would think such a thing.
But that whole post of yours is just full of things that are completely wrong by any standard. For one, you say that I did not have an opinion of my own. Actually, the whole POINT of my posting that thread was to say that I now had a MUCH BETTER UNDERSTANDING of the genre due to my now PLAYING a game squarely in it, idiot! The fact I was talking about things I had played was also why I did not talk about Morrowind even once there. You didn't understand my point then and you still don't now, which is incredibly pitiful and sad given how well I have explained it over and over again.
Really acting like I made that thread because of the Gamespy article just about equals any of your previous low points in "arguments". It couldn't be more wrong. I'd read that article like a year before and thought of it when you asked for anything that supported what I was saying... I could as well have linked a half dozen reviews of the game, they'd suit the purposes of citation there just about as well. But I found something so of course to make up for the fact that I actually had something you bashed it. But as it is very clear if you actually read the thread, I made the thread because I'd played Arena. That is why. Now, it was somewhat in response to your comments in the BG thread, that is true, but when you said 'I like open-ended games more than focused ones for rpgs' it made me think 'why?' and the best way is to play some of those kinds of games... I'd done some of that with Fallout, but playing Arena helped even more, along with Daggerfall. No amount of your moronic attacks can change the fact that the point I was, and still am, trying to make has nothing to do with Morrowind being "bad" or some idiotic thing like that that you've gotten stuck into your head that I said. How many times do I have to say that I am sure it's a very good game until you listen? I AM NOT QUESTIONING THE QUALITY OF MORROWIND! Nor Daggerfall, nor Arena! They are good games! That is NOT THE ISSUE HERE! Attacking Arena because I was annoyed at you bashing Baldur's Gate? What in the world are you thinking? Why should I get that annoyed at the latest moronic thing you've said to act like that... it'd be stupid and I wouldn't do it. Your opinions do not deserve that level of credit 95% of the time. If you actually thought that, it's your ego which needs deflating...
Now, was I annoyed? Yeah, somewhat, especially with your typical lack of explanation. But playing Arena helped me understand that genre better (because Fallout really is a cross of the two types), which is why I created a thread to talk about that take on RPGs and how it contrasts to normal ones...
Now, do I prefer normal PC RPGs? Yes, I do. But do I hate open-ended ones? No, I do not. They are good too and the better of them are certainly better than most "normal" PC RPGs. I just really like D&D and the D&D way of doing things and think that the best RPGs are the ones that do the best jobs of turning a D&D tabletop game or book or something into a computer game... which means Baldur's Gate et al.
(On that note, is Morrowind better than Baldur's Gate I? I can't judge because I haven't played Morrowind of course but based on reviews and the like and how Arena/Daggerfall compare to BG I'd say 'very possibly, if I played it to see'...). I mean, BG is and was a great game, but it's not perfect and compared to more advanced RPGs like Baldur's Gate II really doesn't compare. And Morrowind is definitely also a very good RPG.
Really, when you get down to it, my main complaint about the more open-ended subgenre of RPGs is that they don't have the same level of storytelling and focus. Also, while they let you do more things, what you are doing often feels like it is making less of an impact on the world because of the sheer scale and how with such a huge world game designers simply cannot spend anywhere near as much time on each area as they can in a small-scale game... the 'open-ended' tag also obviously applies to MMORPGs, by the way. They are very open ended. And given my play of the WoW beta, they are fun games... I'd get WoW if it didn't have a monthly fee. The tedium is broken with enough fun to be worth the time and the gameplay has just enough to keep you going... now, I don't think that genre is perfect either as I was saying in the WoW thread (go there if you want my critique of that genre, centered around how you do not feel like you are actually making any kind of impact on the world), but it's an intresting kind of game that proves that you can tell a good story in a open-ended game if you try. WoW is vast and open-ended but has a solid storyline with well-written quests. Morrowind, by all accounts, does not compare. This does not make it a bad game... Blizz is the best, after all... it just means that one of Bethesda's flaws is that their storytellers and writers aren't Blizzard or Bioware/Obsidian(Black Isle)/Troika quality. That's nothing to be very ashamed of, though, given how very high those four companies are in the ladder of companies that tell good stories. (well, Bioware should probably be a bit lower than Obsidian/Black Isle and Troika on the ladder, but not WAY behind.) And the TES games have enough content and decent enough writing and interaction to keep you going...
Gah, you're going to take this as another attack I know it, but it's impossible to avoid when you have had the idea stuck in your head for so long. I just wish that someone who can use their reason was having this discussion with me, like Smoke or DJ...
But that whole post of yours is just full of things that are completely wrong by any standard. For one, you say that I did not have an opinion of my own. Actually, the whole POINT of my posting that thread was to say that I now had a MUCH BETTER UNDERSTANDING of the genre due to my now PLAYING a game squarely in it, idiot! The fact I was talking about things I had played was also why I did not talk about Morrowind even once there. You didn't understand my point then and you still don't now, which is incredibly pitiful and sad given how well I have explained it over and over again.
Really acting like I made that thread because of the Gamespy article just about equals any of your previous low points in "arguments". It couldn't be more wrong. I'd read that article like a year before and thought of it when you asked for anything that supported what I was saying... I could as well have linked a half dozen reviews of the game, they'd suit the purposes of citation there just about as well. But I found something so of course to make up for the fact that I actually had something you bashed it. But as it is very clear if you actually read the thread, I made the thread because I'd played Arena. That is why. Now, it was somewhat in response to your comments in the BG thread, that is true, but when you said 'I like open-ended games more than focused ones for rpgs' it made me think 'why?' and the best way is to play some of those kinds of games... I'd done some of that with Fallout, but playing Arena helped even more, along with Daggerfall. No amount of your moronic attacks can change the fact that the point I was, and still am, trying to make has nothing to do with Morrowind being "bad" or some idiotic thing like that that you've gotten stuck into your head that I said. How many times do I have to say that I am sure it's a very good game until you listen? I AM NOT QUESTIONING THE QUALITY OF MORROWIND! Nor Daggerfall, nor Arena! They are good games! That is NOT THE ISSUE HERE! Attacking Arena because I was annoyed at you bashing Baldur's Gate? What in the world are you thinking? Why should I get that annoyed at the latest moronic thing you've said to act like that... it'd be stupid and I wouldn't do it. Your opinions do not deserve that level of credit 95% of the time. If you actually thought that, it's your ego which needs deflating...
Now, was I annoyed? Yeah, somewhat, especially with your typical lack of explanation. But playing Arena helped me understand that genre better (because Fallout really is a cross of the two types), which is why I created a thread to talk about that take on RPGs and how it contrasts to normal ones...
Now, do I prefer normal PC RPGs? Yes, I do. But do I hate open-ended ones? No, I do not. They are good too and the better of them are certainly better than most "normal" PC RPGs. I just really like D&D and the D&D way of doing things and think that the best RPGs are the ones that do the best jobs of turning a D&D tabletop game or book or something into a computer game... which means Baldur's Gate et al.
(On that note, is Morrowind better than Baldur's Gate I? I can't judge because I haven't played Morrowind of course but based on reviews and the like and how Arena/Daggerfall compare to BG I'd say 'very possibly, if I played it to see'...). I mean, BG is and was a great game, but it's not perfect and compared to more advanced RPGs like Baldur's Gate II really doesn't compare. And Morrowind is definitely also a very good RPG.
Really, when you get down to it, my main complaint about the more open-ended subgenre of RPGs is that they don't have the same level of storytelling and focus. Also, while they let you do more things, what you are doing often feels like it is making less of an impact on the world because of the sheer scale and how with such a huge world game designers simply cannot spend anywhere near as much time on each area as they can in a small-scale game... the 'open-ended' tag also obviously applies to MMORPGs, by the way. They are very open ended. And given my play of the WoW beta, they are fun games... I'd get WoW if it didn't have a monthly fee. The tedium is broken with enough fun to be worth the time and the gameplay has just enough to keep you going... now, I don't think that genre is perfect either as I was saying in the WoW thread (go there if you want my critique of that genre, centered around how you do not feel like you are actually making any kind of impact on the world), but it's an intresting kind of game that proves that you can tell a good story in a open-ended game if you try. WoW is vast and open-ended but has a solid storyline with well-written quests. Morrowind, by all accounts, does not compare. This does not make it a bad game... Blizz is the best, after all... it just means that one of Bethesda's flaws is that their storytellers and writers aren't Blizzard or Bioware/Obsidian(Black Isle)/Troika quality. That's nothing to be very ashamed of, though, given how very high those four companies are in the ladder of companies that tell good stories. (well, Bioware should probably be a bit lower than Obsidian/Black Isle and Troika on the ladder, but not WAY behind.) And the TES games have enough content and decent enough writing and interaction to keep you going...
Gah, you're going to take this as another attack I know it, but it's impossible to avoid when you have had the idea stuck in your head for so long. I just wish that someone who can use their reason was having this discussion with me, like Smoke or DJ...