To play new CRPG's or not?

That brings tears to my eyes. Those are 2 of the best crpg's ever made my friend. Playing through BG and then importing your character into BG2 is pure bliss.

Icewind Dale? Really? I played ID1 until about chapter 4 or so but it seemed pretty light on story compared to BG. Hack and Slash.
 
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He said IWD2.

I really enjoyed both of them. IWD2 was better, but they were both good. They weren't meant to be big on story. Plus IWD2 used the 3rd Edition D&D ruleset.
 
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I'll have to give IWD2 a try. A few months back I tried BG2 for about an hour immediately after completing BG1. I got annoyed at the lightning bolt ricochet. The Infinity games are the only D&D games that implemented that lame feature and it drives me nuts.
 
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BG2 is not for the weak that's for sure. I got frustrated many times during that game, and had to look online for help more than once. Once you get hooked though, it's pure joy. I loved the variety of monsters and items in that game. The Infinity engine did a better job of capturing the atmosphere of D&D than any engine since. NWN single player felt like a cheap whore in comparison.
 
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That is the problem with me, for some reason I can't get hooked up to bg, really tried because I knew it was one of the most famous games around, but I just can't. other games i feel me becoming the lead person, in bg or ID I just dont feel it
 
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Same here, started both BGs back when they came out bundled and never really caught fire. Both remain unfinished as I didn't feel the urge to play on. It was the same with DS and NWN later on... and completely the opposite with PS:T where I couldn't stop playing, much to hubby's chagrin.
 
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After dungeon Lords I promised myself to wait but still preorder. It's best to wait and have a backlog of patched games if you can.
 
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Same here, started both BGs back when they came out bundled and never really caught fire. Both remain unfinished as I didn't feel the urge to play on. It was the same with DS and NWN later on... and completely the opposite with PS:T where I couldn't stop playing, much to hubby's chagrin.

I also enjoyed Planescape quite a bit, but the combat in BG was sooo much better..
 
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If one can keep ones head cool it is better to wait for at least 3-4 months. Objectively this goes almost every time. The only RPGs that I have that were reasonably bug-free upon release are the BGs, the IWDs, and Oblivion (which lacked in other areas, but it was at least bug free). Especially open ended RPGs require delicate balancing and checking for script bugs, and unless one builds on a familiar engine (like the infinity engine games post BG1 did) this is difficult to pull of in one go. If you wait for a few months you'll likely see a few patches and maybe a price drop, and maybe even an expansion:)

That said I dont have the discipline to keep my cool today and wait when encountering a new title from devs I trust, or sequels to titles I like. I got Gothic 3 very soon after release (even though I knew the predecessors took quite some patching to run well). I played through half of the game before patch 1.08 finally balanced the boars...

The list of RPGs that were well patched by the time I got them is luckily longer, though many purchases were staved off by me not meeting hardware requirements (I didnt upgrade my PC any time between 1997 and 2004).

Found in the budget bin and well patched:
BG1 + TotSc (might well be my best value for money ever), BG2 + ToB, Icewind Dale I&II, Arcanum (only took this up seriously last week as I couldnt get past the beginning before), Gothic I&II(was hard to get, I only bought it after finishing BG), Morrowind (due to hardware requirements:p Unfortunately even the patched MW crashes A LOT, but it still kicks its sequel in the nuts), Might and Magic VI-VIII, Darklands...

Demise and Gothic 3 are the ones that I got immediately, both were buggy but playable on the initial release.

If we go outside the RPG world to the strategy games that I enjoy they tend to be buggy as hell upon initial release... Paradox Interactive (Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Victoria, Crusader Kings) might be worse than ANY RPG developers when it comes to bug ratio upon release, but they do have a good patching policy. Always wait for 3-4 months before getting one of their games:p

Waiting also has the benefit that you are more likely to have hardware able to run the game on full settings. The problem for us is however that not that many good RPGs are released, so it is tempting to jump at interesting titles immediately when they come out.

EDIT: I really miss the days when games were bug-free upon release:p The gold box games (except Dark Queen of Krynn), Eye of the beholder, etc were always playable out of the box.
 
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If one can keep ones head cool it is better to wait for at least 3-4 months. Objectively this goes almost every time. The only RPGs that I have that were reasonably bug-free upon release are the BGs, the IWDs, and Oblivion (which lacked in other areas, but it was at least bug free).

Of course, since Oblivion was supposed to be a X360 launch title and then got bumped to the end of march, it could be argued that they absorbed that 3-4 months ... jumping off of the launch ship isn't a trivial thing.
 
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Back in the 'old' days, there wasn't a great deal of variation in PC's, now, no two rigs are remotely alike and the devs have to try to create a game which will work under all these possibilities, something console devs don't have to worry about. This, I think, is one reason modern games have so many initial bugs!!
 
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The reason so many PC games are shipped with a slew of initial bugs is that the publishers get away with it, since most people won't experience any game breaking bugs, the ones that do can be told to download patches. Same thing with non game breaking bugs, they get away with it.

Zaleukos: Yes, Paradox patching drives me nuts, though the games are usually significantly improved by the last patch. Not that that'll stop me from buying Europa Universalis 3 on release day. <3
 
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Corwin: I'd say the "slight" increase in the size of the program code has made debugging tougher, but that's only a part of the story:p On the other hand Windows post 95, Direct X, OpenGL , and other technologies have given developers vastly improved and standardized APIs. There is really no excuse for a hardware incompatibility to cause anything more than a "hardware not supported"-type message (Like I got when I tried to start Morrowind on my -97 vintage PC) or a poor frame rate. Sure, having to create multiple object detail levels and texture adds to the workload, but it shouldnt induce bugs per se. Changing things like viewing distance in a modern 3D engine doesnt add much to the programming complexity either.

Many bugs arent hardware related either but faults in game logic that appear on all systems, things that should have been discovered by proper quality control procedures. The flawed scripting in the beginning of Gothic 3 is one example. Replaying the start two or three times would have shown the devs that doing things out of order makes the player miss out on an important part of the background story (strangely enough I havent encountered any other such scripting bugs, so I wonder how they could have missed this one)! I am with Kazik in that devs let this slip because they can get away with it. I play niche games with relatively loyal, computer literate, and forgiving fanbases. Thus devs like Paradox/PB and publishers like Jowood can get away with bugs. Their customers love the unique franchises and dont have anywhere else to go.

If you on the other hand take any EA sports franchise, a FPS, or a run of the mill RTS, that cater to a more fluid and impatient mass market they tend to be much more polished (at least in the technical sense:p) and require much less patching... And this doesnt just go for the big teams like EA.

Markets do and should work like that. Sellers sell as little as possible for as much as customers are prepared to pay. The power we as customers have is the power to vote with our feet, and in the RPG world we would probably do that if there were more titles to choose from:p

Kazik: I'll get EU3 eventually, but not on release day. Not after the immortal monarchs of EU2 1.0 or the ghost popes of Crusader Kings:p I trust them to patch it up nicely in 3-6 months, and if I have something else to play or books to read I can wait for that long:)
 
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You brought up EA, so I'll just mention one EA game/rpg: Ultima 9!!
 
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You brought up EA, so I'll just mention one EA game/rpg: Ultima 9!!

Ah, the only game where I got stuck because a vital quest-related enemy had gotten his z coordinate wrong and was stuck on top of an unreachable roof... A truly horrid experience that even when it worked was more of a puzzle platform jumper than an RPG. And admittedly a rather severe exception to the rules I laid out:) On a more serious note I was more thinking of their annual sports releases. I still think developers take less risks when dealing with hordes of casual gamers.
 
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Companies are concentrating too much on graphics instead of fun. Because the publishers told them so.

Another example is Gothic 3, which contains almost no women, because, as I read, the graphics arists were not satisfied with the creation of hair and gowns for them - so they just let them out or gave them to the "contents" section of their studio just too late to make voice acting, which eventually resulted in women being left out in general in the game, anyway.

Source : Olnigg
 
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It doesn't matter so much on a specialist site for a lean genre like ours, where we'll play the same five games forever and ever, Amen, but if you want to discuss games on general gaming sites then you have to stay contemporary. Otherwise you show up brimming with questions and opinions, and everyone's moved on.
 
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