MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

I'll post a new one soonish. I'd add it to the site, but, well, it IS kind of a dead project.

Fallout 3, Fallout 3, and Fallout 3.

Some thoughts, in response to your thoughts, in response to my thoughts:
(Disclaimer: Still not defending or even discussing Laxius Power.)

Em, obviously? Using RTP in a commercial game of all things is severe lack of effort thus making such a game seem like a waste of time.

This is idiotic. Graphics do not equal effort. Not everyone is an artist/employs an artist. Leaving out rips (which you clearly have an ethical problem with) that leaves the RTP. What you seem to be missing is that RTP games can excel on other fronts. That and the fact that there's nothing wrong with the RM(V)X(P) RTP graphics, which are in fact good to excellent compared to most ripped/custom resources. If graphics are your priority, you shouldn't be PLAYING RM games at all, let alone buying them, because they will always be at least 5-10 years behind the big budget commercial games.

Likewise, by this same standard, you wouldn't buy a roguelike or text adventure game because they don't have graphics at all.

Are most RTP games awful? Of course. Does that mean that a game made with RTP graphics can't be surpassingly excellent enough to be worth paying for? Not in the slightest.

Are you aiming to work at a commercial standard? If so, wrong wording choice or I'm just not understanding the logic here.

When I say "amateur games", I do not mean "games not good enough to pay money for". I mean games produced by the indie game development community.

While it is true that most indie games aren't worth paying for, that doesn't apply to all of them.

A "commercial standard" is a fairly arbitrary concept. Cave Story does not have the production values of Halo 3, but that doesn't mean that it is not something people should pay money for.

Yes, I am in fact (and almost always have been) aiming to work to a "commercial standard" even when NOT charging for my games and not planning on charging for them, but clearly a "commercial standard" means different things to different people.

If I just played an RM game which I thought was REALLY good, then MAYBE I'd DONATE. Otherwise, I wouldn't buy a game I possibly wouldn't like because of the risk of, you know, being a waste of money.

This is what demos are for. But donating is a nice gesture which I encourage.

-Max

P.S.

Well if the person I knew wasn't a great writer, I wouldn't buy it. So?

Do you have any idea how good a writer you have to be to even stand a chance of getting published? (Well, unless you are J.K. Rowling, Christopher Paolini, or that Twilight bitch, but don't even get me started on those fucking hacks.)

1.) You can still play CN, LN, CG, and LE. It's just now they're not treated as game mechanics because all the game mechanics related to them were stupid, and no one could agree on the differences between them anyway.

Then why not just get rid of them all, for the same reasons. You can roleplay whatever alignment you want, but none of them should have game mechanics because morality is not absolute. And I feel there are disturbing philosophical implications to pairing LAW and GOOD and CHAOS with EVIL.

As for classes....there are 8 core classes included here, (3E only had, what, 9?) which cover a lot of ground, and a lot of the "classic classes" that they left out they still hadn't figured out how to fit in the new system yet. They weren't sure if Druids were controllers or leaders or what, for example.

I always thought having wizard and sorcerer was stupid, and I also think gnomes and hobbits are gay, and that half-orcs are gimped to unplayability. I'm amazed how much Wizards AGREES with me on this shit.

However, I don't feel that the mystifying inclusion of the historically broken "Warlock" class or the choice that the vague "Warlord" class was a better alternative Fighter than Barbarian are any less weird or arbitrary than the array of classes presented in 3E. Likewise, the inclusion of Eladrins and Tiefling and Dragonborn but not Avorals seems weirdly asymmetrical to me, but maybe that's just me being OCD.

That said, I have...issues...with the role system I don't feel ready to discuss at this time. I guess that I don't agree with them taking their cues for how a ROLEPLAYING GAME should work from World of Warcraft. There's something recursively incestuous about it all, a closed loop and all that. More on this later, if I feel like it.

I try to avoid using "fast travel" in Oblivion whenever possible, and sometimes when playing games like Oblivion/System Shock/Bioshock/Deus Ex I do weird little things that don't really effect the game or story for "roleplaying reasons". Like in Morrowind/Oblivion I try and make sure my character eats at least one meal and gets eight hours of sleep every day even though the game doesn't penalize you for not doing that.

In Morrowind, at one point, one of my characters took a break from questing/adventuring and spent a summer living as a farmer, which the game's economy actually makes possible. In Oblivion my character has an extensive library and will frequently read books by the fire before bed.

I do the same shit in most Grand Theft Auto games, actually, and actively try to avoid killing people or commiting crimes unless it's for a good reason, trying to make the game more realistic by my actions.

The entire appeal of Final Fantasy Tactics for me is creating the weirdest possible (yet most effective) class combinations. In my current game, my "Ramza" is Roland, and is effectively a GUNSLINGER. The one time I ever beat the game, he was a teleporting ninja.