Two Worlds II - Patch On The Way

bemushroomed said:

Defending lying developers, thats sooo nice of you, they'll thank you all the way to the bank!

Click to expand...

Sorry you did not have a chance to read the thread after the post you cited. I respect your anger, but you missed that I had never seen the original "lie" and so was completely unaware of that issue. I thought, and was corrected in the following post, that the issue was simply "empty spaces."

Please reconsider your charge that I am "defending lying developers." Methinks your comment, while understandable, was misdirected.

NP, Voxclamant

I'm really not that angry, i think i'm more bored than angry atm, lol.

bemushroomed said:

Hype is one thing, all games are hyped, lying is a different thing altogether.

Click to expand...

I think it's a continuum of dishonesty, not two separate things.

You guys sound naive to me — not for being disappointed, I understand that, but just the level of your reaction. Distorting the truth is Marketing 101. Have you really never been lied to by a marketing/PR dept.? Is that really a new experience for you? You act so shocked and stunned, I have to wonder. And the guy that said it's grounds for a lawsuit … I don't have the words.

Did you follow the nonsense they spewed in previews about their first game? What a bunch of BS that was. Reality Pump is second only to Peter Molyneaux in this department. After the bullshit hypefest that was TW1, this should not have come as such a shock.

I'm not sure i thought TW1 was a hypefest, can't remember if i followed it that much though, what did they hype, the awesome AI? Certain things are always hyped;

* AI. Bethesda even claimed Morrowind's AI was something out of the ordinary. And it really was, in a bad way. I never listen to what devs says about AI any longer, its always BS. It can be described quite vague like um, "it's awesome!" and you cant have it in numbers, which is perfect for the marketing hype machine

* Combat. This is always hyped, and almost never that satisfying. It's also vague.

* Graphics. Kind of hard to lie about, so this hype i can "buy".

* Size of the world and number of quests. This is also not really possible to lie about, since you often have it in numbers. If Betehsda would lie about the world size the whole community would make an uproar, they'd be sued to left and right, no doubt.

I don't think im that naive any longer, i certainly was as a "newbie" to computer games (i've been following games since the Commodore 64 period, so hype is hardly anything new to me.).

I'd love to hear your examples where devs has lied before about world size though, maybe it's more common than i think, but i doubt it.

Misleading previews and interviews aside, the game´s available landmass is pretty big, as is the amount of quests. It also has a good variety of mostly well implemented game systems and the engine is nifty.

The game´s actual problem is the lacking quality of quest content and seriously restricted and unrewarding exploration.
I´ve finished and explored almost everything there is in about 40 hours (so probably 45 hours real time), but it was largely because I had quite a bit of fun with its various game mechanics. Quests are very repetitive and mostly of mundane fed/ex nature, writing mediocre at best and for a supposedly freeroaming adventure, the game isn´t open ended at all. Quests offer very little in terms of putting decision weight on player and those who try exploring on their own will only meet locked areas and few linear dungeons filled with mobs and few chests with leveled non-unique loot.

Interesting - I've been enjoying the quality of the quests and writing. Maybe Arcania scarred my brain...

Just to chime in, I thought the script was a bit boring on the heels of DKS

Actually there were tons of claims of "lies" following Oblivions release. Not only the AI, also the shadows, the world size (yes!) and various other things I have forgotten.. Some people posted long lists of things the devs said at one point that weren't in the final game and screamed "lies!" all over the place. It is one reason why Bethesda are so tightlipped today, I think.

I stopped to follow games in development after Oblivion - it makes playing them much more enjoyable.

Besides, I think I today agree with what Bethesda said back then: "land size", especially in terms of "square miles" is pretty much entirely meaningless for a game. For one, how do you even measure it? Against the size of the PC? Is he 1.64 m or 2.04 m tall? Against walking speed? That is often rediculously fast compared to the real world, and still feels slow to the gamer. Other objects, maybe houses? Often game objects will be distorted relative to the real world or the PC size, respectively, so there is no real fixed measure. Against time need to uncover the map? Depends more on the layout than the size (Gothic to witness).
Secondly, one could create the largest gameworld ever in a heartbeat - the true work is in filling it with content. So I really do think that getting hung up about the supposed size in squaremiles as well as about being supposedly "excluded" out of certain areas is rather silly. The main blunder in the PR is even using such terminology at all. Complaining about heavy handed use of invisible walls etc. is another thing as well as complaining about actually lacking content.

Is it true that dungeons/caves locations are locked until you trigger the quest that unlock them and also areas are empty (apart from some animals) if you have no quest taking place in them?
There are people complaining about it in Z's forums .
What is the purpose of creating a free roam RPG and generate it's population via quest scripts?

I remember tomb riding in Morrowind and found a useless rusty knife inside a chest , several months and characters later i discovered that this rusty knife was actually Mehrun's razor (or whatever it's name was) tied to a quest , in the case of 2W2 i wouldn't be able to even enter the tomb !

Melvil said:

Just to chime in, I thought the script was a bit boring on the heels of DKS

Click to expand...

Yes, it's a bit more earnest, and has been translated. DKS was well-written, in English, and is a good 'romp'. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett. Play both! Support your RPG makers

Tragos said:

Is it true that dungeons/caves locations are locked until you trigger the quest that unlock them and also areas are empty (apart from some animals) if you have no quest taking place in them?

Click to expand...

It's fairly true in Chapter I. If you just choose to explore the early wilderness, there are scattered enemy camps & dungeons, and the odd quest, but the majority open up once you've picked up the relevant quest somewhere. I don't know about the later chapters.

On the original thread topic, the thing that really needs patching is the crashing as far as I can see. They're talking about reinstating DX10/11/AA/AF, but I don't think that'll make as much difference as turning off the edge smoothing and moving the FOV, so I'd rather they made those options available in game… Nothing else stands out to me yet - disregarding the mouse settings in random archery situations is probably the next most annoying thing for me. I think I've seen minor scripting bugs, where the character realises something and responds before I do, leaving me to check what happened in his journal… and some animals don't respond to being attacked, but nothing major yet…