JE Sawyer on Turn Based

Saint_Proverbius · Post by **Saint_Proverbius** » Fri May 31, 2002 2:12 am

[ -> N/A]

Yet another <a href="http://feedback.blackisle.com/forums/sh ... 456">nifty thread</a> post coming from JE Sawyer in the <a href="http://feedback.blackisle.com/forums/fo ... >Lionheart Forum</a>, this time on the subject of turn based combat: <blockquote>Turn-based is fun as long as it is fun. While that may seem like a "WELL, DURRRRRRR! OF COURSE!" statement, I think the obviousness of it often gets overlooked. When is real-time not fun (ALL THE TIEM LOLLOLOLLO!)? Primarily, it's not fun when there are a zillion people directly involved in the action. You have many characters to control, they all have important things to do, and they are all tangling with a big horde of important enemies. It's difficult to keep track of what's going on, difficult to path, and difficult to smoothly execute plans. When is turn-based not fun? When strategy is not required or when its application is simply boring. Most battles in Fallout are a lot of fun and keep you very interested in what's going on. But, due to its non-linear nature, when my SuperBuffo 13th level character stumbles across a nest of ordinary rats, I don't need to painstakingly plan what I'm doing. I don't feel like Rommel because I expertly outmaneuvered a 6 HP enemy the size of my character's armored foot. On top of it, this exercise in total crushing defeat is carried out one move at a time. I think the reason why games like Final Fantasy and (more appropriately) Final Fantasy Tactics succeed with turn-based combat is because there are always few participants, those participants are always directly involved in the battle, they are almost always interesting to fight (due to their linear nature), and they are always in close proximity to the character. It's not like the Den, where you fire off one shot and every scumbag in town takes their turn running their APs off. However, those are the exceptions, rather than the rules. For the most part, turn-based combat is a lot of fun.</blockquote> You can read the full thread <a href="http://feedback.blackisle.com/forums/sh ... 6">here</a> and even join in the fun. After all, it wouldn't hurt for <A href="http://www.blackisle.com">BIS</a> to hear that turn based is fun from people every now and then.

Slider · Post by **Slider** » Fri May 31, 2002 2:54 am

Its funny how the BIS guys use the ants in Broken Hills/scorpions in Raider caves arguement for TB being boring when they made the game. :roll:

Saint_Proverbius · Post by **Saint_Proverbius** » Fri May 31, 2002 7:11 am

Yeah, if you check the thread link, I pointed that out.

Also, one of their reasons for wanting to go 3D is because those huge bitmap landscapes in the Infinity Engine games take up so much disk space - even though 2D tiles don't.

Go figure.

Post by **DarkUnderlord** » Fri May 31, 2002 9:54 am

I thought J.E. Sawyer worked for BIS? Or did he get fired?

Slider · Post by **Slider** » Fri May 31, 2002 10:01 am

He still works for BIS unless they fired him today which I'm pretty sure didn't happen.

S4ur0n27 · Post by **S4ur0n27** » Sat Jun 01, 2002 10:44 am

I got no objection with what Mr. Sawyer said, but it make me think of Lionheart.

When is RT fun? When you dont need to plan each of your move... which is when the game become hack n slash style.

endocore · Post by **endocore** » Sat Jun 01, 2002 12:02 pm

I admittedly didn't go over to the BIS Board to read the relevant thread there before adding my two-cents worth here (I have better things to do with my time than wade through all the nonsense that goes on over there), but from the excerpt provided by Saint Proverbius it would seem that Mr. Sawyer is rather confused. His argument seems to be:

1) Real-time combat isn't fun for resolving complex combats

Presumably then, he might think that resolving complex combats is best accomplished in turn-based play.

2) Turn-based combat isn't fun for resolving simple combats

Presumably then, he might think that resolving simple combats is more "fun" in real-time

3) The most enjoyable turn-based games are those that feature simple combats (Final Fantasy Tactics, etc), while real-time is the preferred method for resolving complex combats (such as wiping out everyone in the Den).

I wish someone would pay me to sit around all day and come up with nonsense like that.

As for his objection to "nuisance combats" with weak opponents, I agree with the point brought up by Slider. In a well-designed game, such "nuisance combats" should only be a very small portion of all the potential combat situations the game will present. Since, then, not much time will be spent on these "nuisance combats" compared to the total amount of time spent playing the game, I don't really see how this minor issue can be thought of as requiring the elimination of turn-based play altogether. That's assuming, of course, that a particular game is in fact well-designed, which seems to be something "professional" game designers are quite incapable of producing with any regularity in my opinion.

As a long-time fan of turn-based games, and as a person who in fact prefers to play nothing other than turn-based games, I find the prospect that my idea of "fun" has been labeled as irrelevant and even perhaps deviant by every major gaming company, and that I may have to spend the rest of my life not being able to enjoy my gaming hobby except in games that I myself may make (unless I want to play Panzer General for the ten-thousandth time), to be quite disturbing. I don't mean to beat a dead horse here since the TB/RT "debate" has been explored in excruciating detail countless times before in many places and I doubt I could add anything new to such a debate. Nonetheless, I just don't understand how a mindless rush of mouse-clicking and key-stroking (for example, the "final battle" in the game Baldur's Gate) can be presented by the BIS folks as utterly superior in every way to the strategy required from the player in a large turn-based battle (for example, the assault on the Oil Rig in Fallout 2). However, I would not deny the pleasure of rapid mouse-clicking and key-stroking to those who do enjoy such things, in the way that gaming companies seem bent on denying the methodical thoughtfulness of turn-based games to folks like myself who enjoy TB.

In any case, I'll just be quiet now and go back to the mapping forum.

Endocore

OnTheBounce · Post by **OnTheBounce** » Sat Jun 01, 2002 11:05 pm

I'm not a hard-coded fan of either TB or RT gaming. I do, however think that either mode has advantages as well as drawbacks.

Turn-Based Advantages:

Allows the player to methodically plan and then execute that plan.
Doesn't lead to a flurry of hectic mouse-clicking.
Allows the player to better savor the action. The delay can - within reason - actually heighten the drama of the action unfolding.

Turn-Based Disadvantages:

Large combats can rapidly become tedious, especially if even non-combatants have to resolve their actions each and every turn (e.g. every Jet-usin' prostitute in New Reno, and every 21 AP havin' junky in The Den).
Allows a player to overly micromanage the events in combat.
Does not currently allow an actor to "control terrain with fire". Even FoT's Overwatch system falls short here since the first enemy to blunder into an actor's sights triggers the Overwatch. This allows several opponents to easily overrun someone that is, for instance, covering a door with a burst weapon.

Real Time Advantages:

Allows a player to "control terrain by fire". If three Raiders dash into the street in full view of your sneaking Big Gunner, they can conceivably all be cut down with the first burst. (*hehe* It's neat to watch, too. :twisted: )
Does not allow for the over micromanagement that TB play allows, making the player much less efficient, and - to a certain extent - forcing better tactics, at least before the action begins.
Quickly and painlessly resolves even the largest combats. This should be taken with the caveat "within reason" since too much work for the CPU leads to game-killing slow-down.

Real-Time Disadvantages:

There is usually far too much for a player to handle. This goes whether the player has absolute control over NPCs or not. Even simply issuing orders in RT is more than a player can handle well.
Leads to a flurry of mind-numbingly quick mouse clicks, which - to a certain extent - kill the tactical approach.
The action often unfolds to quickly to be savored. Hey, if I have a sniper that is sitting on top of a building shooting SMs in the groin, I want to see the resulting combat taunts. :twisted:

As I see it, FO3 should look to improve on the short-comings of whatever mode the designers choose. I do, however, agree w/Endocore that the gaming industry seems to be shying away from TB more out of prejudice than any real short-comings in the style. The final arbiter of the gaming mode should be enjoyment, not an unfounded perception.

OTB

endocore · Post by **endocore** » Sun Jun 02, 2002 11:56 am

Good analysis, OTB.

The gaming industry is probably correct that there's a lot more money to be made in action games, but even if this is true there's still a fair bit of irrationality in a decision-making process that would lead virtually all game companies to pretty much utterly abandon an entire market segment, namely folks who don't really really care for action games and prefer turn-based games with a more substantial relationship to pen-and-paper gaming.

Perhaps I'm just a "stick-in-the-mud," but I really deplore the sort of "hit-driven" mentality that has swept across all aspects of the entertainment industry in the last decade or so (I know this has always went on to some degree, but I think it has been much more pronounced recently). While such thinking may be good for boosting short-term profits, in the end it only alienates many consumers. I, for one, often find myself in the rather frustrating position of having nothing desirable to spend my entertainment dollars on. Things that I want can't be bought at any price because they're simply not made, and things that are available don't appeal to me regardless of how affordable they may be. For example, I'm also a big movie/film buff. Yet with each passing year, I see fewer and fewer things that I'm willing to spend my money on when I visit the local video store. I'm a big fan, for example, of the old "exploitation" genre from the seventies, but those films disappear into unavailability daily, nothing like them is really made anymore, and instead I'm left with a choice of mindless celebrity-laden junk (like the recent remake of "Oceans 11"--sure it has "star-power", but the movie sucks in my opinion, even if one doesn't compare it to the very clever original) and disguised kiddie fare like "Harry Potter." In this situation, my choice is to go home empty-handed and leave my money to sit in the bank collecting interest since there's nothing acceptable to spend it on (well, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I want entertainment too). I just find it unfathomable that in all aspects of the entertainment industry (of which the gaming industry is a part of course), no one really ever steps up to the plate to cash in on the under-satisfied market represented by folks like myself.

Endocore

Section8 · Post by **Section8** » Sun Jun 02, 2002 1:33 pm

Endo: So very true. The more I hear "Everyone is developing for consoles so we're going to try and tap into the console market" I think "You fucking morons! How can you expect to compete against companies Microsoft is throwing millions of dollars towards, or the innumerable Nintendo games that already have legions of fans?"

Following market trends is a bad thing. If you are leading the market trends then you are going to be rolling in cash, but if you are mindlessly following and hoping to cash in on the profits of the leaders, then you are sorely mistaken. It's false logic, like "Microsoft makes millions upon millions of dollars for it's windows operating system, so we should make our own operating system since that's such a big part of the market." Wrong. You'd be much better off trying to fill a gap in the market, than trying to sequester your own piece of someone else's monopoly.

It should be made abundantly clear by the way Microsoft are trying to corner their share of the console market with the xbox, which is selling moderately well, at a substantial loss. They are throwing billions of dollars toward it, and still not coming up trumps. Surely that should be a sign to the "me too" developers and publishers that they are always going to stuggle against established titles and franchises.

Action gamers are always going to have action games to buy, and more than likely, they aren't going to buy an RPG just because it has action-based combat. Diablo is insanely popular because it provides action, statistical character development and a degree of exploration and discovery with it's magical item generator. If it had in depth Role-Playing elements, I'd imagine a considerable amount of it's fans would say "Yeah, it's okay, but it's too wordy" or "There's not enough action" not to mention there is a considerable portion of the market who will buy a Blizzard game just because it it a Blizzard game.

Hypothetical time. If I make a clone of a game that sold 1 million copies, then all I can really hope for is a small share of that market. Even if _my_ game is better than the one it derives all it's ideas from, I've got an uphill battle against fans who are loyal to a commercial property, loyal to a developer, awaiting the sequel/spin-off, or just plain unaware that my game exists. At best, ie if my game absolutely blows away it's competition, receives effective marketing, good press and all the rest, the very best I could hope for would be 50% of that market, and that's being generous.

Take a look at EQ vs DAoC. Both very similar games, and DAoC, being the more recent release, learned from many of EQs mistakes, and is technically a much better game. But the bottom line is - Everquest players want to play Everquest. It's familiar, they don't have learn anything new, buy something new, sign up for a different pay service or most importantly, start a new virtual life from scratch. The inconvenience far outweighs the desire to play a slightly different, slightly improved game. The EQ fans who will play DAoC to any real extent are the ones who have grievances with one or another of EQs game systems. Unless you are pissed off at something or other in EQ, there's no reason to make the switch.

And that's no different for any other game. If I like Diablo II and don't particularly care that I can't control an entire party, then why should I go for Dungeon Siege? If I like Dungeon Siege, and don't particularly care that it doesn't have much of a story, why would I play Baldur's Gate?

It seems to me that the whole computer games industy is just trying to remake the best-selling game from last year. And more than likely, the fans of that game are more interested in the inevitable sequel to that game rather than "company X's derivative offering."

To sum up, gaps in the market should be a more enticing prospect to a publisher than potential share of somebody else's market.

endocore · Post by **endocore** » Mon Jun 03, 2002 4:44 am

Your analysis is right on target, Section 8. I think the example you raised about Microsoft is particularly enlightening. In this case we have one of the world's most successful companies, a company sitting on unheard of loads of cash with which to plausibly destroy any competitors in any arena it chooses to deploy itself, a company that has never really failed in any significant way. Yet Microsoft has and in my opinion will continue to have a very difficult time making inroads against Sony and its legions of loyal Playstation 2 fans. If we then hypothesize from current trends that Microsoft will never effectively overtake Sony in market share, or even worse may never gain enough market share to even make the xbox profitable, the question should be asked: Was it a wise decision for Microsoft to enter the console market in the first place, and what opportunities in other markets may have been lost by a decision to focus resources on the game console market?

I can certainly understand a certain conservative approach to business that says, "Product Y was a success for our competitors. Let's make something similar, and even though we may not gain the market share attained by Product Y, we'll still turn a handsome profit. Moreover, we'll avoid the potential waste of resources involved in thinking up something new ourselves." In the realm of tangible products (candy bars, washing machines, widgets, etc) this can often be a quite effective strategy for success. Nonetheless, I think the entertainment industry is a bit different in this regard, since it's product is the slippery intangible concept of "fun." The results of "fun" production can't really be measured in the same terms, for example, that one might say "Our automobiles are superior to the competition because they have a lower rate of fuel consumption and have been rated 'Safest car in the history of the universe' by the Council of Insurance Gods." All of the points raised by Section 8 illuminate why what is normally a standard formula for success in other industries is often inapplicable to the entertainment industry.

I wonder, though, if anyone in the entertainment business ever really considers what I mentioned about the alienation of potential consumers, since this is a rather unmeasurable yet quite serious drawback in my view to the "hit-driven" mentality that currently pervades this entire industry. If folks like myself just "drop out" so to speak and, out of both a frustration with a lack of what I consider to be "fun" products and an aversion developed from feeling "ripped off" too many times by taking a chance on products that turned out not to provide the "fun" they claimed, just cease to spend our potential entertainment dollars on entertainment products, would anyone ever even notice?

For example, I purchased and played both the Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 games from Interplay. In the sense that Interplay succeeded in getting my money for these two titles, perhaps the two games could be considered a "success" from their point of view. Nonetheless, I was disappointed with the games, particularly the second one which I failed to find "fun" at all. As a result, I will never purchase any of the other Infinity engine games in that series (Icewind Dale, Planescape), nor will I purchase the upcoming "Lionheart" title due to its reported similarity to those games because I now feel that Interplay no longer develops titles which are "fun" to the market segment of which I am a part. Nonetheless, it seems that Interplay doesn't seem to mind losing the market share of folks like myself, nor do any other companies seem interested in obtaining my business either (for example, the makers of the post-apocalyptic "Static" game have also apparently decided to go the RTS route). I will also be reluctant to spend my money on any future Interplay products that claim to provide what I do in fact want because I have felt "ripped off" in the past. For example, I can recall purchasing a game from Activision and Reflexive called "Star Trek Away Team" because the packaging proclaimed repeatedly that it was a "strategy" game. To me, "strategy" means "turn-based action," and I even grilled the guy at the software store for information about the game before I bought it. I installed the game and played it for about twenty minutes only to find that it was "Baldur's Gate" set to a "Star Trek" theme. I uninstalled the game, threw the CD in the trash, and rather angrily made a note to myself never to buy another game from Reflexive (another reason I won't be purchasing "Lionheart") because they don't seem to have any scruples about putting misleading descriptions on their packaging materials. OK, they got my money for the game, but if we hypothesize that other consumers had an experience with the game similar to my own, could the game really be considered a "success" in any way, particularly if one does nothing other than looks at its gross sales figures?

As a thoughtful person within the gaming industry, Section 8, I'm a little interested in hearing your opinion about the phenomenon I've described, although of course I would understand if you can't really comment due to corporate policies etc. It just seems to me that by continually ignoring segments of its market such as I represent, the gaming industry is doomed to find itself constantly fighting over unprofitable scraps from an ever-decreasing pool of disposable income that consumers will be willing to spend on games in general. On the other hand, perhaps I just don't represent an economically viable market segment, and game companies are correct to ignore me. I don't watch television either (I cancelled my cable TV subscription about five years ago and haven't ever felt worse off for it), yet TV has continued even further with the trends that led me to "drop out" in the first place which might lead me to conclude that not many other folks share my level of dissatisfaction with that particular product, either, and that therefore there's no money to be made in trying to appeal to the market segment of which I am a part. Am I just a cranky person who can't be satisfied, or do I actually represent a large untapped market which doesn't register on the radar screens of the entertainment industry?

Endocore

Section8 · Post by **Section8** » Mon Jun 03, 2002 11:53 am

As a thoughtful person within the gaming industry, Section 8, I'm a little interested in hearing your opinion about the phenomenon I've described, although of course I would understand if you can't really comment due to corporate policies etc.

Thoughtful, maybe. Opinionated, yes.

Seriously though, I try to be down to earth with you guys, because in all reality, we developers aren't godlike beings who bring faultless entertainment, we're just the lucky gamers. The ones who somehow managed to work our way into a paying job. It doesn't mean we're the best at it, it means that we were in the right place at the right time, and were good enough. I don't like "fanboyism." I can understand it to some degree, I still feel like a giddy schoolgirl when I talk to my heroes in the games industry, but try to restrain myself.

As far as corporate policy, there are things that I just won't comment on, but I'm not going to act PC or act like a Microforte drone. I love working here, and don't plan on branching out anytime soon, but it doesn't mean I agree with everything that gets stated as official company line.

It just seems to me that by continually ignoring segments of its market such as I represent, the gaming industry is doomed to find itself constantly fighting over unprofitable scraps from an ever-decreasing pool of disposable income that consumers will be willing to spend on games in general.

That's a lot of it. Large portions of the games industry are dropping like flies or being assimilated by the big guys. These days, if a publisher is impressed with a game they are just as likely to buy out the company as sign them as independent contractors. Just about every week Gamasutra has an article "Corporate Giant X has acquired Developer Y." There's a lot of money changing hands these days.

However it's not so much that the pool of people willing to spend money is decreasing, it's just ushering in a new demographic. Casual Gamers. These days there's no longer a negative stigma attached to the Gamer tag. Back in my early days of gaming, my parents couldn't stand the idea that I was happy to sit in front of a screen all day instead of spending my time in the great outdoors. It's sociopathic to an extent, but even that stigma has been shaken, because games are very much tied in with the biggest communication revloution the world has ever seen, in the form of the internet. It's very social, just not in a physical face-to-face sense.

Back to Casual Gamers. These days everyone has a computer. Even my grandparents have them. And so everyone can play games, it's not just the nerds, geeks and freaks. And casual gamers are wresting a lot more of the market share because everything is new to them. "A new FPS!?!?! Let me at it!" whereas games like myself have been there and seen it all before, so I'm not buying. Of my library of literally hundreds of games, only about 5 of them were released last year. So from that perspective I can fully understand publishers pitching outside of my demographic. I'm not buying as many games as Joe Casual.

Another major contributor to this whole thing is software piracy. Hardcore gamers have usually been playing games without enough cash to buy all the games they need to satisfy their gaming urges. So what do you do? Buy the big ones, from the developers or publishers you are loyal to, and wish to support, and the little guys outside of that? Well, you go to your favourite FTP and leech it. For one, a hardcore gamer is likely to have a big download plan with their ISP so they can play all the multiplayer they can handle, and they've been exposed to computers and the net for long enough to know their way around pirate sites, which send any inexperienced surfer in an endless loop of pop-ups.

I could also make the sweeping generalisation that hardcore gamers tend to be more intellectual, but that's a little subjective.

So to a large degree, we gamers have been shooting ourselves in the foot. We still play and enjoy the games we love, but it doesn't mean we're paying for them. Joe Casual doesn't know any better (although file-swapping progs are changing that) and so he buys ALL of his games. Personally I can't really blame the publishers for taking the safe road of mass appeal. If I had to put a couple of million down on the table, I'd be making sure I do everything in my power to get it back. 36 Red? No thanks, I'll stick to Odds and Evens.

So where does that leave all of us, who still love Turn-Based games, and games that aren't entirely derivative of the last big seller? Well, until we prove that we are a financial viable market, no-one is going to make games for us. It's that simple. (in theory) In practise, its exceedly difficult. If we don't want to cough up good money for the latest shitty "RPG" then publishers are going to take that at face value and say "RPGs don't sell" without considering that maybe what is defined as an RPG doesn't actually appeal to RPGers. For the most part, to get your idea published requires a great deal of creative bullshitting on the behalf of the developer. To sell an RPG idea to a publisher who is skeptical about any RPG release requires you to skim over the important bits, and tell them how unbelievably good the visuals are, or how much similarity it bears to Game X which sold 800,000 copies last year, fully knowing that Game X sold 750,000 of those copies on the brand name alone.

But knowing that, do I feel like going out and buying IWD2? Or any other RPG that strays from what I think constitutes a good RPG? Not really. I don't particularly go for the idea of wasting my money on bucking market trends.

So I guess it boils down to hoping somebody makes a game with the things we used to enjoy, and that it actually sells. And then hope that the industry decides that the game sold because of it's merits rather than smoothing over them. It's a sad thing to admit, but Fallout could quite easily be used by a publisher to prove that Post-Apoc games sell, all the while ignoring the guts of the game. Everything is a little shallow like that.

==

As far as not watching TV, I'm basically the same. I find it absolutely disgraceful that millions upon millions of people watch Big Brother. There's no point to voyeurism when the observed are self-absorbed attention seekers, sitting around and generally being annoying, yet dull.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Jun 05, 2002 6:58 pm

endocore wrote:
For example, I purchased and played both the Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 games from Interplay. In the sense that Interplay succeeded in getting my money for these two titles, perhaps the two games could be considered a "success" from their point of view. Nonetheless, I was disappointed with the games, particularly the second one which I failed to find "fun" at all. As a result, I will never purchase any of the other Infinity engine games in that series (Icewind Dale, Planescape),

Endocore

You don't know what you're missing... Planescape is BI at their second-best - it may be more like an adventure-rpg hybrid than anything, but it's an intelligent, stirring epic. Please, don't judge it by its engine, and the games of the company that made the engine.

Grifman · Post by **Grifman** » Sun Jun 09, 2002 2:00 am

endocore wrote: For example, I can recall purchasing a game from Activision and Reflexive called "Star Trek Away Team" because the packaging proclaimed repeatedly that it was a "strategy" game. To me, "strategy" means "turn-based action," and I even grilled the guy at the software store for information about the game before I bought it. I installed the game and played it for about twenty minutes only to find that it was "Baldur's Gate" set to a "Star Trek" theme. I uninstalled the game, threw the CD in the trash, and rather angrily made a note to myself never to buy another game from Reflexive (another reason I won't be purchasing "Lionheart") because they don't seem to have any scruples about putting misleading descriptions on their packaging materials.

While I am sorry you bought a game you did not like, you have only yourself to blame. First off, it is widely accepted in the PC game marketplace that "strategy" games include RT games. Assuming strategy doesn't mean RT is just plain wrong - and I have trouble understanding why you are ignorant of that fact. Secondly, there were plenty of previews and reviews on the game on the net and magazines - and they all said the game was RT. There's little excuse today for anyone to end up in your situation if you just do a little research. Thirdly, if you want you can blame the guys at the store, but that's not the same as blaming Reflexive - and I'd never trust some clerk

If you say Reflexive was misleading in their packaging materials, I have to conclude the same about your post. You are being very misleading blaming them for your mistakes - but that seems to be quite popular in society today - let's always blame someone else

FYI, I didn't buy the game either because it was RT, but it wasn't hard to find that out ahead of time.

Grifman

Rosh · Post by **Rosh** » Sun Jun 09, 2002 2:25 am

FYI, I didn't buy the game either because it was RT, but it wasn't hard to find that out ahead of time.

Be glad you didn't.

I'm also wondering if they ever did sell that game at full price.

http://www.pcgamer.com/reviews/archives ... 8-08k.html

This is the main point of worry I have about Lionheart.

4too · Post by **4too** » Sun Jun 09, 2002 6:49 am

Quotes:

".........a languid, predictable production devoid of spirit or ambition.".......

..."Star Trek: Away Team certainly isnÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t the worst Trek game IÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ve played -- thereÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s a morass of mid-90ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s junk more worthy of that dubious distinction -- but it is nonetheless a major disappointment..........."

"........lacks personality. The selectable characters -- new to Trek continuity -- are little more than the sum of their toolkits...................."

Gee darlin', am I the sum of my "toolkit"?

Crass materialism, this is how Reflexive handled the Star Trek franchise.

One hope they have is LH is a ""NEW!"" title and have fewer expectations to throw in.

Another hope they have is that not a single person will care, and they'll be bought up for tax reasons. A low horizon is better than no horizon.
Unless this is a new twist on suicide cults.

Actually, all this wasted effort makes me sad, and cynical.

Gee darlin',...""no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!""........

4too

Section8 · Post by **Section8** » Tue Jun 11, 2002 9:15 am

I'm going to come to Reflexive's defense on this, because I can see a lot of similarities between Microforte (Here's SPECIAL. Now make us a game in 15 months) and I like to see the little guys prevail.

From all reports, Zax was quite a nice little action game, and Lionheart seems to bear a lot more resemblance to it than Away Team. All I hope, is that they take fan feedback from the BIS forums seriously (and selectively) to give us a RPing experience beyond the action clickfest. Fairly optimistic, sure, but I don't mind my action games, I just want a bit more on top of that.

Saint_Proverbius · Post by **Saint_Proverbius** » Tue Jun 11, 2002 11:56 am

Wouldn't having Reflexive prevail with Lionheart make MF look worse after FOT?

I agree though, they have an incredibly short time table for Lionheart.

Rosh · Post by **Rosh** » Tue Jun 11, 2002 3:17 pm

Section8 wrote:From all reports, Zax was quite a nice little action game, and Lionheart seems to bear a lot more resemblance to it than Away Team. All I hope, is that they take fan feedback from the BIS forums seriously (and selectively) to give us a RPing experience beyond the action clickfest. Fairly optimistic, sure, but I don't mind my action games, I just want a bit more on top of that.

That's pretty much my view, too. They've done some interesting work, but when it comes to doing a CRPG, 16 months is an incredibly short amount of time unless it's a technological sequel.

Given the dev time I was told for Away Team (about 10 months, but that's a rumored figure, could be wrong and I really hope it was much shorter for obvious reasons), I am rather worried about Lionheart. If a game as utterly simplistic and lackluster as Away Team could turn out that poor with that amount of time (and to call it, no offense, epitome of banal in gameplay), and a CRPG project has just a few more months... It doesn't look too promising, and it looks like another one of Interplay's now-famous screws. I do hope the game does well, but under that crunch of having to basically create an entirely new game from scratch in a short amount of time...it doesn't look good.

You've got these factors to look at:

1. A short time to do a game from scratch. All the game basics and background, too, unless this was from someone's closet notes.
2. A company that really hasn't had much evident experience making CRPGs. A few action games, including one of the most bland I've ever played, but nothing of incredible CRPG material. Despite having close ties with BIS, this is a point of worry as the team would likely be learning as development progresses.
3. Learning a new system and modifying it while also working in the above conditions.

Section8 · Post by **Section8** » Wed Jun 12, 2002 10:54 am

Oh don't get me wrong, I have plenty of reservations too. I'd have money on it being a better game than anything made with the IE though.

Duck and Cover

JE Sawyer on Turn Based

JE Sawyer on Turn Based

Can't blame Reflexive . . .