Why was a niche game IP worth six million dollars?

Those games had great stories, but also great possibilities. The fun was in those possibilities, (both in dialog, and in combat). The combat mechanics were part of each series, and were incrementally improved with each installment, and without losing site of the original game.

I thought we were arguing turn-based itself; and not specifically Fallout. Uh... I'm still playing Fallout 3. I quite like it, though I do think it has some faults. I'm not saying Fallout 3 had to have been turn-based; I'm only saying that all things being equal, that would have been my preference. That was one of the main reasons I even got into the series in the first place, after all.

Frankly, I was just fine with the Fallout franchise remaining "dead." I'd have been just fine it there never was another Fallout game. The same as I'm okay that there's probably never going to be another XCom. Bethesda wanted to pay X amount of dollars for the franchise and do what they wanted with it, that's fine. I happen to be on board with it - but by no means does that mean I necessarily had to.

Someone wants to pay millions of dollars to reinvent a franchise, that's their perogative. It doesn't really have anything to do with me.

Isn't this like the 10th thread on turn-based?

How many times can we argue or lament the same thing over and over?

I have seen everyone's opinions stated a dozen times, it seems Pointless to me but hey, Its a free country!

M

[quote name='nu_clear_day' post='14720212' date='Jul 20 2009, 04:17 PM']I thought we were arguing turn-based itself; and not specifically Fallout. Uh... I'm still playing Fallout 3. I quite like it, though I do think it has some faults. I'm not saying Fallout 3 had to have been turn-based; I'm only saying that all things being equal, that would have been my preference. That was one of the main reasons I even got into the series in the first place, after all.[/quote]Is it a fair comparison to liken FO3 to a hollywood release based on an Opera?
Its funny, but I found an entry on IMDB for a 1984 film version of [src="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087034/trivia"]Carmen[/url], and it states the following under Trivia:


In this case... It says that this is what the original author intended; But it does seem like a revised version that removes the original format of the story, (and likely removed a good bit of what the original fans liked about it. ~and the reasoning is spot on the same no?)

I know, but at this point there's not much left but to kick dead horses. Next month we'll probably be dragging the SPECIAL system out for a couple more kicks...

That's kind of odd in itself - that it was supposed to have spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. (Because technically that makes it a Musical, doesn't it?) Much less that the movie that breaks from the previous format is actually then "truer" to the original intent.

Wouldn't a simplier anology be that TB is playing chess normal and RT is playing it on a timer? TB alows you to plan things out more were RT requires quick thinking. Neither one is really superior to the other in terms of difficulty and tactics or requires the player to have a higher IQ. The reason being as they both require different trains of thought. In RT you got to think fast because you don't have a time to plan things. Where TB you do have time to plan things out however you can over think things as well. There really just different sides of the same coin.



Some of us prefer RT because it requires quick thinking not because were impatient. I could make a similiar BS statement like yours about TB. Saying that people who prefer TB can't think quickly and play TB because it's slow enough for them to keep up. Both comments are obvious BS and in the end prefering one style over the other doesn't make you smarter or a more patient person.

I would have to say no... Chess is Chess, and Chess on a timer means that you have to be able to play sensible moves faster, and with less time to consider, but its still turn based, and affords the player the ability to apply the rules of the game to work out the possible outcomes in advance ~ based on sacrifices and the options made available by a given move.

I agree that the games require a different train of thought (or method of thought), but I would still say that Fallout played FPP in real time is perhaps like Chess played in reverse (from Mate to start) on a polka-dot board. Its just not the way its intended to be played ~and plays against its strengths.

Agreed.

Right chess is turnbased no matter what but the again all board games have to be. But what I'm getting at with the comparison is that there both the same thing just done differently. Which is what TB and RT are to each other.

I've read that view in many posts (even in several that I agree with for the most part), but I disagree here, because in my experience it is not always the case that TB and RT are flipsides of the same coin. RT games (like a driving sim, or an FPS), are about experiencing the display (be it a winding road or a gun toting mutant leaping out at you) ~the same generally goes for TPP shooters and adventure games (like Tomb Raider).

TB games are about conforming to the rules of play and winning by them. Using the common rules to your advantage; Like ending your turn (in Fallout) by closing a door ~knowing that your opponent must burn APs to follow you and end their turn in a weak position. In Chess (or Go, Fallout, or even Monopoly), you make your decisions during your turn and attempt to put yourself in a strong position to weather the opponents turn and set up future actions in the turns to come. Its not about experiencing the display...(Though in Fallout's case the critical death animations were really really cool).
Chess can be played by snail mail and does not break down, because it relies on different means to keep the players interested. DeathMatching in GLQuake cannot likewise compete (for the same reason).


For myself... I like thing like working out a hex that is likely to be occupied during the round (or at the end of another's turn) and planting a bomb on it, or backpedaling a few steps to drop my opponent's chance to hit down to a more comfortable risk. I sometimes equip stimpaks in one hand instead of weapon for the reduced cost of use, and the ability to heal NPC's as an action during my turn (Dogmeat is a prime candidate for that...). The choices are many and all effecting. Fallout 3 offers VATS shooting, and the option shoot when not using vats . To be fair it also allows you to backpedal while dropping mines, but F3's gameplay is no substitute for F2 IMO. :shrug:

What bothers the most though, is simply that I'll never see an improved Fallout #3 that exploits modern hardware to the fullest from Bethesda. I'll only see their derived Fallout 3 and expansions ~none of which adds what I'd really want to experience [in the game]. In a way its a bit like the new Dune books.

Since I started with Fallout 3 its obvious I like the real time but now that I am playing Fallout 1 I am trying to adapt playing turn based with isometric view its been a long time since I saw this camera since Super Mario RPG to be exact.

In the 80'S, Fallout was hardly a niche market. But still it was a huge gamble for Beth, I think it paid off for them. I mention it, because Bethesda has to design a game that sells on the PC as well as the 360 and PS3. It has to appeal to people over 30 and people under 20. You just are not going to get too many mainstream gamers with a turnbased game. So while I understand you guys like TB gameplay, you are not going to see a major software company make one anytime soon. Not a pure TB game anyways.




Is that game even released? I have never even heard of it. It looked OK, but anyone can make a trailer look good.

And please, F3 is a FPS? Yep, every game site I have ever been to classified it as a FPS. Every review compared it to Halo or Quake. :facepalm:

I would not really compare chess to a turnbased computer game. I have never seen a turn based RPG AI that can match even a simple chess program, never mind an actual human.

Benefit of the doubt... you made a typo with the date.

*These are hardly indy titles :

D3 again but a new clip >

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSorHELRce4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfYDS9gealE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JivY6_meVQQ

That's because they don't tend to use these dual core, multi-Gigabyte desktops with terabyte hard disks for anything but graphical flash. What I'd like to see is a Triple A class Dx10 game with Oblivion class 3d graphics [or Dawn Of War ~ or Diablo 2 even], but have the game be based on Dwarf Fortress mixed with a bit of Dungeon Keeper :drool: (and aspects of Planescape:Torment for good measure)
Such a game might auto generate much of the world terrain on install, and allow you to role play characters in the world at whim, and allow you to pull another PC out of the city to role play with when the your previous one got squashed.

A game that tracks your every significant action along with who saw what and who they might tell. Where the NPC's can query the player's history to decide if they trust them. A game that uses a state of the art Chat parser and perhaps even uses Google to look up what it can't figure out. ~Its is even possible to create a phonetic resource to allow scriptable voiced dialog at the syllable level.

but all we get is what's on the shelf now, cut up and rehashed out again next year.

I firmly believe that the future innovation of computer games lies solely with the independents and small fries of the PC game industry.

I don't think so, no. At least not to my mind. Because Chess with a timer would still be Chess. It's more about the rules of the game than how much time you have.

This is something I really struggle to put into words, though. The only examples I can think of are the ones I've already put forth. It's not really so much about time (though that might be one thing that skews people one way or another; I think focusing on that is missing the point.) I like a good turnbased game for the same reason that I like a good puzzle game or any other genre. I look for it to do different things. Ugh, I really just don't how to make this clear, though... For me, it's not just "oh, I wish I could pause the game more," I just like the way that are played.

I agree.
EDIT:

I don't think "challenge" has anything to do with it, though. The AI in a realtime game can be just as bad. On any game, I can play it on it's easiest settings. Not to mention that difficulty is purely subjective anyway.

Not to mention, you do realize they make multi-player turn-based games as well.

For some reason my brain wants to put Fallout and Baldurs Gate in the 80's and not the 90's. It just seems like it was a long time ago.


As a programmer, I can tell you that a good AI is very hard to write. I tried missing around with some of the AI combat routines in Kotor. I don't care what your PC has under the hood, a programmer is never going to be able to create a strategy that can compete with a human.



That would be cool. Is it some MMOG? Are they mostly co-op or player vs player type?

Civ has been multi-player for quite some time. Back in the day, we used to do it play-by-email (which obviously took a long time.) Currently, you can play it online with other people just like any other game - though PBEM is still an option, (can't remember what the limit is, though.) But you can mix it up between human and computer opponents, and there's a number of game types. There's a number of others that work in the same way, as well. Fallout Tactics, as well. And Advance Wars on the DS. (Plus more, I just can't think of them at the moment.)

Most of them are usually PvP, though you can find co-op, as well.

As far as MMO's, that's something I don't really see happening, for rather obvious reasons I think. At least, I can't think of any that have been. (Though if you want to get technical, a lot of them basically used to be turn-based at it's core, ie taking turns doing damage back and forth...)

Not surprising if you ever played any of the Gold Box games. (though unrelated officially... there are a lot of parallels between them and FO/BG, and those two basically evolved from the GB game type)

I've never messed with them. I recall that BG2 let you scan 40,000 nodes for the NPC AI (navigation).

The thing is... Its been done ~Chess is solved (for all but the grandest grand masters); The trick is to design gameplay that limits to what you are expected to do to what can be coded for an AI to be effective at. :shrug: (And you can always cheat with the AI, though many don't think highly of it in their games). What I have read about Dawn of War, is that the AI does not cheat, it just gets hellishly efficient as you ramp up the difficulty. (and the lands are simple... I've never had units get stuck or act weird.)

I would say though, that if your goal was to design a game that facilitated superb AI over superbly irregular terrain and used more abstract environments, then the task might be a whole lot easier, and the gameplay a whole lot better for it. The plus side to abstraction is that the mind is very good at filling in the blank spots (so you don't have to).

** Off topic, but cool... This is some amazingly neat AI (not for games, but I don't doubt game will have this soon enough)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1P_B65XW4I&feature=related

Here's another that http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showuser=376731 linked to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXDZZt7TEAo

I believe that all of the games I linked to are multiplayer (though I'm not positive about King's Bounty)

Played the series in order. Prefer real time, but it has to be executed far more realistically.

Probably since ive been with turn based since back in the days of fallout 1&2, i think that 3 panders to much to the new demographic of shaky ritolen popping Halo-freaks... No Offence, but i was expecting something like... Kotor turn based wise, that would have been good but hey ive got it now, and its something ive got to live with.

Its alright could have been better but i prefer Turn Based to Real Time, in some instances.

Bethesda have made several comments that they make a certain kind of game and like making that kind of game, and personally I think that's great. Make what you want to make, do it well, and please your fans. Bethesda makes open-world action/RPGs focused on exploration, and they do it very well.

What I would bet happened with Fallout is that certain people in the company loved the IP and knew it could be had, and they were looking to branch out from just doing TES games. They thought about it and decided the Fallout world and story would fit well into an open-world action/RPG focused on exploration, which it certainly does, and so they jumped on it.

If you are someone who doesn't like Bethesda style games, but did like Black Isle style games, I can see how you would be dissapointed, but this doesn't change what happened, nor does it make Bethesda fans any less satisified with the end product. No one was done a disservice, as if Bethesda had made a unique new IP, or bougth another IP, there would be no new FO game in FO3's place.

So... it is what it is. I don't see Bethesda making a turn-based isometric RPG, I don't think they would be good at it, so I would rather they not do so. Plus, I would miss their unique kind of games.

Ahh, yes I remember those old Gold Box games. Maybe that was it. I actually had to go google the release dates for BG and FO after you posted your comment about the dates.



Sounds soo easy, but it really is not. And combat in some D&D games is probably a whole lot more complex the game of chess to program. There are only 6 different pieces with only so many different places to move to. Most computers just brute force it and look for patterns. Compare that to 200+ spells, different weapons, terrain and tactics you can utilize in the latest NWN. That and a chess program can not really get away with having a bad AI, but a computer game can.

Its not easy, but would it not be a lot easier if the lands were not entirely free-roam, and parts of the terrain were just flagged as cover, flagged as hindrance, and designed such that minor floor obstructions were meaningless? (In Fallout 3 the AI will often not step over a 6" curb, unless it happens to select a pounce attack and hops over it by chance).

:hehe: I watched the count the other night as Chessmaster anolyzed a saved game and topped 100,000,000 paths looking for the best.

AI can cheat and appear better than it is ~but is it really? ~I mean, it works right? I remember reading an article [years ago] about Warcraft and how they had the orc shamans cast a 'seeing eye' (or some other) spell that [for the player], would clear the fog of war for a time, but that the AI saw through it always, and casting the spell was just for looks.

For me its just that games seem to be going "up" instead of "out"; They race for the prize of realistic appearance, and not the prize of realistic behavior (guess which ones' easier ) *But then... I could play a Fallout 4 that had graphics like the Gold Box games ~if it meant that they were taxing my cpu to the fullest for the bleeding edge chat-bot, AI, and world events.

That could very well be.
A lot of people would have preferred it that way. It would have meant that another of the studios vying for the IP could have bought it. :shrug:

Personally I don't mind that Bethesda bought it, I think they did a fantastic job creating the game environment (Better than Troika would have done :shocking:)

What I mind is what they did with it. Some would say, "that's what they do"; Maybe it was naive to hope otherwise. I bought Oblivion because I wanted to see what they were capable of in their native IP, and I was very impressed with parts of it, and thought, "This could be great!" ~At the time, gears turning, I was imagining how the Havok based traps and triggers could come into play, and how their established dialog system could easily be converted to be more Fallout like. How Traits were basically Birth Signs, and Perks were basically permanent spell effects. It didn't occur (for months!) that they might actually not make it a turnbased continuation of the series. When it first came out in the press I was elated, and said so to the developers here... When I got a really good look at it, and realized it what it was, I dumbfounded, and felt robbed of a long awaited third in the set. FO3 is out of place in the set.

I agree with that. Despite what it might appear, I actually prefer that Bethesda stuck to their guns and made the game they wanted to. That's really the only way go about anything, anyway. If you're just trying to please everyone, you're going to end up with a pretty dull game - design by committee isn't very good for making unique games. Todd and Co. had an idea of the game they wanted to make, and that's what they did.

Honestly, looking at some of what I find to be the more noteworthy shortcomings of Fallout 3, I doubt they could have made a "traditional" Fallout game. (I'm not a very big fan of the ruleset in this game - it lacks a certain amount of polish. I'm probably biased from my tabletop background - but I wouldn't have bought this game on ruleset alone. And that's a very, very important factor to take into account if you're going to make a turn-based game - as it's all about the rules, after all.) At the very least, it wouldn't have as "good" a turn-based game as the current Fallout 3 is a real-time one. (If that makes sense.)

It's my understanding that other companies were also interested in purchasing the IP. So I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't know if anyone knows who else was involved, and obviously there's no telling if they would have done any better. (I'd rather have this Fallout 3 than another FOBOS, after all...)

Agreed. (Like I said above, I don't think anyone at Bethesda seems to have enough interest in the technical aspects of the ruleset to have pulled it off all that well.)

One thing I do think gets misunderstood alot, though, is that when people say "turn-based Fallout 3," people seem to envision the current game exactly as it is, but with that one change. I don't think that's what anyone has in mind when they bring that up. A turn-based RPG is only going to play very different from a real-time one. (That's why the TB mods don't work, among other technical reasons.) And I wouldn't have wanted them to just tack on an extra option as an afterthought either. It also wouldn't have looked exactly like Van Buren, either. But rather than being a simplistic either/or - I think there (hypothetically) could have been a third option as well. (It just wouldn't have sold as well, and most of the people on this board wouldn't have touched it with a ten-foot pole. )

Anyway, I don't look at like "gorramn you, Bethesda - you ruined the franchise!" It's just that if I'm being honest, I can't very well say that this is what I would have found ideal. I find it good enough. There's few enough quality RPGs out there. Fallout 3 is certainly one of them. But so long as the franchise continues in this direction (without, ironically, a spin-off at this point,) it doesn't really satisfy my "Fallout" craving.

In the same way that if someone ever actually made a decent XCom "update," it wouldn't matter how good an FPS or RTS or whatever it was ended up being, it still wouldn't be what I was looking for. Fallout 3 I think is a very good game. But have you ever gone to the store late at night because you were really craving something specific, only they were sold out, and had to get something else? What you come home with might be very tasty, you might feel it was still worth going to the store. But you're probably still going to stop by the next day to see if it's back in stock; because you're still craving that one thing. That's what Fallout 3 feels like to me. It's like going to the store for mint chocolate chip ice cream, and coming out with chocolate chip cookie dough...

Gee, way to branch out. They made an Elder Scrolls game set in the Fallout universe.

There's specializing your talents, and there's making the same game over and over again.



There still isn't a new Fallout game.

Real Time is much better, but you still get the turn based feel with the Vats. I think when Fallout 1 & 2 came out, it would have been very, very hard if not impossible to make them real time. So they did what they could and made great games for the time.

But I think now we have moved past the slow paced turn based type of game. I could see some games like maybe some of the Table Top Wargames like Warhammer 40k, Chronopia, or Vor: The Maelstrom using a turn based system and maybe doing well with that.

But I am for the faster paced real time myself

I don't see why. Diablo came the same year as Fallout 1. Baldur's Gate came out a year later (which in videogame development terms means it used pretty much the same level of technology.) There were real-time roleplaying games much, much earlier than '97 as well. If you want to talk realtime post-apocalyptic RPGs, there's always Bad Blood, which came out 7 years prior to Fallout 1. Just off the top of my head.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... Turn-based isn't for everyone. It's even "niche," these days. But I don't get where people are getting this idea that Fallout 1 was only made that way because they had no other option... 1997 was hardly what I would think of as the "dark ages" of PC gaming, after all.

Seriously. I don't want to sound flamey, here. I really don't think it's as big a deal as I might make it sound at times. I live in Wisconsin at the moment, in a township that recently voted against installing a windfarm (even though the company that makes the windmills is the biggest employer in our area,) because - and I kid you not - people didn't want it to get any more windy... So I'm used people making assumptions without looking into the facts. But I do find it confusing at times. This is just a forum, after all. The way it works is everyone else gets to put their two cents in, and then I get my turn.

But you know why alot of old RPGs were turn-based? Where do you think those games came from? It's because a lot of game designers are nerds. And nerds back in the day used to spend lots of time sitting around a table playing old-school roleplaying games. The older CRPGs were made by fans of those games. The only reason we have an RPG genre for videogames is from nerds playing D&D and saying "hey, wouldn't it be cool if a computer game could take care of all the rules?"

Today, most people who are fans of roleplaying games came to it by way of videogames - which is why all the real-time stuff. That's really all there is to it. It wasn't because they couldn't make them real-time (they had the processing power, and it's not any more complicated to make one or the other - the computer certainly doesn't care. There's just as many animations going on in Fallout 1 as there are in Diablo, for example.) It's because those were the games they wanted to make.

Not everyone is going to like those. And that's fair. But it's never been a matter of technology, either. (Okay, maybe waayyy back, we're talking Ultima 1, here... There might have been specific examples of designer who just didn't know any other way to do it. But that's because that was one guy in a basemant, teaching himself how to program. The computers back then could have handled, and there were people who knew how to do it, though. And even then, I think you'd find it hard to prove that it was because of technology - because then what about Pac-Man and Pong? If you can make a real-time game, then what about RPGs would make it so hard to do the same? But by the time we get to even the mid-80's, where you had groups of experienced people making games, that wasn't a problem.)