So Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines will be a decade old this year. LET'S TALK ABOUT OTHER RPG'S

[Athelas]

Roguey will fuck you up, son.

 

[Ackermanus]

While I maintain that both have pretty bad combat I prefer the calm but stupidly simple and slow turn-based combat of Fallout 1 to the hectic shitty FPS combat of NV. I think the calmness fits Fallout much better but more crucially there is A LOT LESS COMBAT in Fallout 1 than there is in NV. This cannot be emphasized enough.

Quoted because this cannot be quoted enough.

NV is one of those games I would really, really love to enjoy, and every few months I give it another shot in the hopes of at least reaching New Vegas proper. But I simply can't withstand the combat, not because it is particularly bad, but because of how long it takes, both in the amount of encounters and the length of said encounters. That, and the goddamn hiking. In fact, personally I would consider traveling across boring brown area after boring brown area a far greater flaw than the fighting itself.

VTMB's combat wasn't much better (for the most part), and apparently some even found it worse, but it ended relatively quickly. The amount of walking you had to do was also relatively minor, from what I recall, mostly just enough to enjoy the atmospheric music and the game's overall ambiance without becoming saturated with it. Even taking the sewers into account, the only area I remember being infuriating enough to make me want to quit was Grout's mansion. No such mercy for NV.

If you have enough tolerance for the aforementioned hiking and combat, then it's easy to consider NV a better experience, what with all the C&C and whatnot. Indeed, I hope one day I will have trained my body and mind enough that I will be able to enjoy it as much as superior beings such as Roguey. Until such a time comes, however, VTMB will remain one of my favorite games, and NV merely a very small glimpse of what could have been.

 

[dryan]

You guys have a lot of stamina for these arguments.

 

[Irenaeus]

You guys have a lot of stamina for these arguments.

Thank God. It's entertainment.

 

[CyberP]

See when you just leave it like that I can't even try to understand you, which makes me think you're just trolling.

There is a lot of difference to the systems.

AP's reticule expands with each shot taken and takes 90% progress through the game to invest in acceptable levels of accuracy. Deus Ex's only expands if the player is moving (only at low skill levels), or if he has damaged arms. In Deus Ex you can also reach 100% base accuracy early in the game if you invest in it.

 

[CyberP]

I had a hell of a lot more fun with Bloodlines than I did with New Vegas

Other way around for me. New Vegas is a lot of fun whereas Bloodlines' gameplay sucks. Both are great experiences though.

 

[CyberP]

NV is one of those games I would really, really love to enjoy, and every few months I give it another shot in the hopes of at least reaching New Vegas proper. But I simply can't withstand the combat, not because it is particularly bad, but because of how long it takes, both in the amount of encounters and the length of said encounters. That, and the goddamn hiking. In fact, personally I would consider traveling across boring brown area after boring brown area a far greater flaw than the fighting itself.

What the fuck? As you can see by Rogueys stat sheet, you can put enemies down in a matter of seconds, though it doesn't seem to factor difficulty into the tests strangely enough. Put the game on easy though and everything is basically a one shot kill.

VTMB's combat wasn't much better (for the most part), and apparently some even found it worse, but it ended relatively quickly.

What? VTM:B's battles lasted far longer, objectively.

The amount of walking you had to do was also relatively minor, from what I recall, mostly just enough to enjoy the atmospheric music and the game's overall ambiance without becoming saturated with it. Even taking the sewers into account, the only area I remember being infuriating enough to make me want to quit was Grout's mansion. No such mercy for NV.[quote/]

1. Grout's mansion is awesome.
2. NV's world has points of interest every few hundred feet.

If you have enough tolerance for the aforementioned hiking and combat, then it's easy to consider NV a better experience, what with all the C&C and whatnot. Indeed, I hope one day I will have trained my body and mind enough that I will be able to enjoy it as much as superior beings such as Roguey. Until such a time comes, however, VTMB will remain one of my favorite games, and NV merely a very small glimpse of what could have been.

VTM:B= walk to the asylum, talk to skitzo bitch. Walk to the Larry's bailout bonds, talk to Larry. Walk to location x, talk to character Y. Don't forget the fucking loading screens also. This is ALL that fucking happens the whole game with 10-15 missions with shitty combat to break it up. It's half genius design (writing, atmosphere, level design) half absolute shit (overall gameplay, including aspects of the level design).

 

[CyberP]

^Oh for fuck's sake.

The amount of walking you had to do was also relatively minor, from what I recall, mostly just enough to enjoy the atmospheric music and the game's overall ambiance without becoming saturated with it. Even taking the sewers into account, the only area I remember being infuriating enough to make me want to quit was Grout's mansion. No such mercy for NV.

1. Grout's mansion is awesome.
2. NV's world has points of interest every few hundred feet.

If you have enough tolerance for the aforementioned hiking and combat, then it's easy to consider NV a better experience, what with all the C&C and whatnot. Indeed, I hope one day I will have trained my body and mind enough that I will be able to enjoy it as much as superior beings such as Roguey. Until such a time comes, however, VTMB will remain one of my favorite games, and NV merely a very small glimpse of what could have been.

VTM:B= walk to the asylum, talk to skitzo bitch. Walk to the Larry's bailout bonds, talk to Larry. Walk to location x, talk to character Y. Don't forget the fucking loading screens also. This is ALL that fucking happens the whole game with 10-15 missions with shitty combat to break it up. It's half genius design (writing, atmosphere, level design) half absolute shit (overall gameplay, including aspects of the level design).

 

[Nikaido]

The real reason why the codex loves VTMB so much : tits. Goths. And goths tits. Vampire goth tits. It's pretty easy for the average codex virgin to be so entranced by this that he doesn't even pay attention to all the retardation and shit combat going around. There's always time to look at some vampire goth ass too. The only thing the game is missing is a multiheaded cock.

 

[dryan]

The real reason why the codex loves VTMB so much : tits. Goths. And goths tits. Vampire goth tits. It's pretty easy for the average codex virgin to be so entranced by this that he doesn't even pay attention to all the retardation and shit combat going around. There's always time to look at some vampire goth ass too. The only thing the game is missing is a multiheaded cock.

Fuck off.

 

[Excidium]

 

[CyberP]

Heh

 

[Roguey]

There is a lot of difference to the systems.

AP's reticule expands with each shot taken and takes 90% progress through the game to invest in acceptable levels of accuracy. Deus Ex's only expands if the player is moving (only at low skill levels), or if he has damaged arms. In Deus Ex you can also reach 100% base accuracy early in the game if you invest in it.

Oh right that.

Reverse-engineering their intent, it seems clear to me those features were included to address flaws that are obvious in Deus Ex (being able to quickly headshot with pinpoint accuracy all the time = goodbye challenge).

though it doesn't seem to factor difficulty into the tests strangely enough.

Oh right, this.

Sawyer DNGAF about tuning for any difficulties other than normal with hardcore mode enabled, even when it came to playtesting his personal mod.

"Very Hard" was already implemented in F3. Hardcore mode was new for F:NV and was a meaningful difficulty tweak.

I had forgotten, but IME people who complain about spongey enemies in FNV tend play on those unsupported higher difficulty modes.

 

[Akasen]

I had a hell of a lot more fun with Bloodlines than I did with New Vegas

I'll be honest, I have not played New Vegas a second time through and through. I haven't even bothered to play any of the DLC. That engine man, it just ages in such a shitty manner that the game feels ancient already.

VTMB? Maybe ten. Maybe more. Good chunk as Tremere and I have nearly always played the same way. Gun touting, high charisma, min maxed, Tremere.

 

[CyberP]

Reverse-engineering their intent, it seems clear to me those features were included to address flaws that are obvious in Deus Ex (being able to quickly headshot with pinpoint accuracy all the time = goodbye challenge).
.

There are enemy types in Deus Ex that do not go down with a headshot/cannot be headshotted, including MJ12 Commandos, turrets & cameras, Karkians, bots of all kinds and MiB/WiB.
The game still got too easy in general though, thankfully there is a certain mod that fixes this

 

[uaciaut]

Maybe none of these are as bad as the vampires but NV is rife with unlikely craziness and over-the-top factions which is more in tune with Fallout 2 than Fallout 1 and at least personally chafes me quite a bit.

This. Fallout 1 wasn't a great game because it had great RPG mechanics - its mechanics were rather crappy, especially when compared to some stuff that came before it (like Darklands or QfG series). However, it was a game with the superb atmosphere, stemming from incredible visuals (not in terms of graphical complexity, but artistic vision), great audio part, excellent sense of style and decent writing. All that, combined, really created the illusion of vast and diverse world with lots to explore (when in reality F1 is rather short and not that varied, with all that "alternative solutions" schtick being vastly overhyped).

And all that isn't present in neither F2 (it kept the visuals, but got fucked in the style department, and, of course, the storyline retardation began there) and, obviously, F3 and New Vegas. New Vegas is buttfuck ugly (because of its engine, most of all) and, just as F2, its whole world is built around the idea of putting as much dumbfuck lulz in the game as possible. Sure, F1 also wasn't a 100% serious game, but the world wasn't built around jokes and it got serious where it needed to be. Like the Cathedral, with all those sly cultists, demented experiment victims and Master mindfucking you. Or, y'know, one of my brightest memories of F1 - cultists blowing themselves up at the Military Base after the death of Lieutenant. Compare to Enclave, for example, where the main thing going on is president Dick putting his dick into a secretary. Oh, how fucking clever.

It's amusing to see people who can't let go of their fallout 1 illusion trying to claw their way into arguments of NV being a shitty game objectively by attacking only subjective aspects of the game and bitching about retarded shit.

Engine was fucking fine for its timeframe though they had to limit are-size because of console restrictions. If you're unhappy with the engine there are literally a metrict shitton of mods that bring the engine pretty fucking close to up-do-date graphics with texture, effects, etc.

And stylistically NV is superior to pretty much anything i've played in a very long time in its genre, this whole talk about "artistic vision" is the biggest load of horseshit i've read.
From the abandoned houses + farms in goodsprings to novac to the strip, sunsparilla hq and even legion HQ everything has a specific, well-defined art direction and while you may not like the texan/las-vegas flavor or whatever other elements they used it does not make the game stylistically bad, even though it doesn't try to emulate perfectly your autistic version of how first-person (or isometric) Fallout 1 would be (without copying too much of course because then there would be endless whining about lack of originality if they somehow used the same locations only in fp or some shit).
Fallout 1 was a gem sylistically especially for its time and given how little resources Cain&co had but that was back then, times have changed and there are plenty of graphics-related devs that are actually good and make really good looking games (beyond going strictly with tech/engine things).


And this whole "omg it's too lulzy for me" is also retarded as fuck, unless the ONLY thing in NV you played is OWB (which does fit in that category imo).
Like the cathedral with the cultists, victims etc you have a lot to be interested in in NV - from listening to Caesar about how he created the legion and his mentality on leading and conquering to how House created the strip or how NCR is falling apart due to bad leadership there's substance around every main "protagonist" of the story.
You can argue that NV doesn't have as many overly-dark influences to it but the whole variety of conflicts that revolve around who gets the dam etc aren't any more lulzy than the themes in F1.


Also people comparing Bloodlines to NV in terms of immersion/atmosphere w/e are also being dumb as fuck, Vtm is not a fucking open world, the only quest that you actually have freedom of finishing/exploring is the one with the cult, literally EVERYTHING else is as straight-forward and stream-lined as possible, you only interact with your points of interest, the action ONLY takes place at night, the world is MOSTLY conveniently filled with supernaturals, ghouls and blood-dolls while NV is actually trying to create an open-world that tries to emulate a post-apocalyptic alternative history, not a goth forever-nightime world-of-darkness mini-world.

I'd love to see a vtm of the scope NV had but Bloodlines had so little funding it literally had to cut corners constantly to achieve what it did (and it did so beautifully for the most part) but it's the main reason you can't compare it to NV because if you actually did you'd be constantly complaining about said cut corners instead of ignoring them.


I also took immense enjoyment in playing both games and as such don't have a huge hardon for trying to compare them, especially for aforementioned reason.

 

[Jedi Exile]

I don't get why people keep comparing Bloodlines to New Vegas. The only Obsidian game that is more or like Bloodlines is Alpha Protocol.

 

[Pope Amole II]

And stylistically NV is superior to pretty much anything i've played in a very long time in its genre, this whole talk about "artistic vision" is the biggest load of horseshit i've read./QUOTE]

Oh my gawd, so much style, so much vision!!!

Yeah, poor, poor beginning of fallout 1, it just can't compare to the AWUSUMNESS of New Vegas' style. (and I don't give a fuck that I compare movie to non-movie footage - F1's starting cave is prettier than anything in New Vegas).

from listening to Caesar about how he created the legion and his mentality on leading and conquering to how House created the strip or how NCR is falling apart due to bad leadership there's substance around every main "protagonist" of the story.

Too bad that both Caesar's legion and NCR are dumbfuck as hell concepts, otherwise, I could've even believed you.

 

[Roguey]

There are enemy types in Deus Ex that do not go down with a headshot/cannot be headshotted, including MJ12 Commandos,

Sniper rifle.

turrets

Grenade/rocket.

& cameras,

Master Sniper rifle.

Karkians,

Grenade/rockets.

bots of all kinds

Rockets, upgraded grenades.

and MiB/WiB.

Sniper rifle, grenade, rockets.

The game still got too easy in general though, thankfully there is a certain mod that fixes this

If you're referring to Shifter, it's a bad mod.

I don't get why people keep comparing Bloodlines to New Vegas. The only Obsidian game that is more or like Bloodlines is Alpha Protocol.

One is open-world and the other uses hubs, but other than that they're both similar enough. You have walking & talking, static threshold checks for dialogue/lockpicking/hacking, deterministic stealth, mostly-deterministic damage, real-time action melee and ranged combat.

 

[uaciaut]

/QUOTE]

lol

Oh my gawd, so much style, so much vision!!!

lol

(and I don't give a fuck that I compare movie to non-movie footage - F1's starting cave is prettier than anything in New Vegas).

lol

Too bad that both Caesar's legion and NCR are dumbfuck as hell concepts,

lol

otherwise, I could've even believed you.

lol

 

[CyberP]

Roguey: People labelling you as Sawyer are way off the mark, and it's an insult to Sawyer himself.

If you're referring to Shifter, it's a bad mod.

No, I wasn't referring to Shifter, that makes the game easier.

One is open-world and the other uses hubs, but other than that they're both similar enough. You have walking & talking, static threshold checks for dialogue/lockpicking/hacking, deterministic stealth, mostly-deterministic damage, real-time action melee and ranged combat.

Yeah, can draw some comparisons, but Obsidian had a larger budget and a massive head start (FO3 assets).

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Can't wait to see the "RPG genre is now five decades old!" thread.

 

[TheGreatOne]

Guys, you should listen to Josh Sawyer's words of wisdom.

ITT a bunch of people argue which junk systems are better than others.

Even though this is the decade of First Person Shooters, not a single FPSRPG has managed to reach that level of design perfection where everything works, yet during the last 10 years both a blobber and a hack n slash RPG have managed to reach that level.

 

[Roguey]

yet during the last 10 years both a blobber and a hack n slash RPG have managed to reach that level.

Bullshit.

 

[Nikaido]

Plane tickets bitches.