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My pet peeves:

1) When you first start the siege as an outnumbered attacker and the defenders sally out, but some of them will actually spawn inside the castle and never come out/up to the walls, forcing you to retreat and start over.

2) When you fight for twenty five minutes and finally manage to clear past the walls, only to find you can't take the city/castle because a couple of defenders locked themselves inside a random building and will just stay there, playing cards and yelling battle taunts every now and then, while your men valiantly fight against the stone walls and door, hopelessly trying to get inside.

I used to wonder about the half empty, half full glass.
But then I've seen 2 girls and a cup and I realized:
The glass was empty and suddenly it was full. Really full.
And the argument was suddenly irrelevant. Really irrelevant.

Valthord said:

BloodLuster said:

And the more enjoyable it is the more players it has, the more players the game have, more money armagan, and armagan with more money can go take a well deserved vacation to Hawaii instead of a cheap full of crabs beach in Turkey(no offense to Turkish)!

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Wo wo wo.

Ever heard of Ölüdeniz? Google it, for God's sake.

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Some people have this notion that, if it's in a third world country, it has necessarily to be cheap, ugly and generally unpleasant.

It comes from the logically flawless conclusion that, with all certainty, no one else can possibly have awesome stuff if they don't.

I fully endorse that line of thinking, just to avoid attracting obese, narrow-minded, ignorant and arrogant tourists to my cheap side of the world.

I *WAS* wearing a hat but now it's in the other side of the room. With both my socks inside it.

dubidalalandi ladilidilidililan di daa

la tubilubila latibilum landelando barabaribiri gadagadaralaralalelu

laripidapidapadu

GAAAH!!!

WOW IT'S AMAZING!! OLD NEWS REALLY LOOK SHINY AND NEW WHEN POSTED WITH ALL CAPS!! AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!! WHO NEEDS A DAMN SEARCH BUTTON!??!?!!!?!

That avatar really needs to go away.

Else I predict that in a short future every user will be using the "Mary can't believe her eyes" banner as avatar.

Your country surely has Telecom standards and the service providers must meet the requirements to stay in the bussiness. Therefore, if it is available in that region, it should work, decently at worst.

Over here, if a lack of technical conditions can prevent a service from working as regulated by our laws, the companies will just say they can't serve the area and won't sell the service.

I will never understand why nudity is a reason of more concern than violence. A mammal species that find the depiction of breasts offending is beyond my understanding.

You're expected to go through life without killing another human being, but the absolute majority of people are bound to get laid one day. Yet violence is labeled as acceptable entertainment, and depiction of nudity/sex as perversion. Not only doesn't make any sense, it smells like hipocrisy. But I digress.

By no means I intend to validate such a strange classification, but under the light of the current moral trend, if the developer itself has made nude skins available it must be taken in account to rate the game.

However, if said skins are the work of a third party, it shouldn't affect the original rating and doing otherwise is indeed a dangerous (and ridiculous) precedent.

I don't think that legal prosecution of modders would be in the best interest of any company. It does not seem to be a valid way of action, unless the mod infringes copyrights - then it should be up to the copyright owner to decide about taking legal action.



 

Unanimity is impossible because there are so many good games out there. I have a huge collection and couldn't decide for a single game to save my life.

I like several old bullfrog titles (theme hospital, dungeon keeper, startopia). Those guys knew the truly meaning of "replay value".

I'll name a few favorites:

RPG: Gothic I and II, Neverwinter Nights;
RTS: C&C: Red Alert 2, Homeworld 2 and Stronghold 2 (smashing an entire army with rolling, flaming logs is teh ****);
FPS: Doom 2 (with the doomsday engine, it rocks), Deus Ex, BF 1945, Return to Castle Wolfenstein (one of the best MP ever), System Shock 2, Half Life and Call of Duty;
Turn-Based: All the Total War series. It kicks ass.
Adventure: Grim Fandango, hands down.

Freelancer, Pontifex, Monkey Island, Prince of Persia... way too many good games. I could go on forever, really.

You can use the unoficial editor, it's pretty easy to do. It allows you to change a lot of things, including dialogs (the nicest feature evah, now I can recruit my prisoners if I feel like that).

If you want to try a more direct approach you can edit the values in the item_kinds1.txt file.
Take note of the item and values you would like to change, open the file, find the item by name and change the values at will.

What will define the perceived speed of your connection is a combination of two factors:

Throughput and latency.

Throughput is often used as a sinonymous for bandwidth. It is the amount of data that can be transfered over a connection in a certain time span. Let's say your ISP offers a 600 kb/s DSL line - they are talking about Throughput, not about speed.

Usually it is measured in kilobits; divide its value by 8 and you will find a figure near your average download speeds (actually your dl will be a little slower because of overhead but that's beyond the scope of this post).

Of course, you will perceive a 2 mbit/s line as faster than a 120 kb/s DSL because you can transfer much more data with it than with only 120 kb/s in a given time frame. However it doesn't necessary mean that the first connection itself works faster than the second one. It means that the band is broader.

Picture internet connections as water pipes. Let's say you have two pipes coming from the same dam, alongside each other. They're under the same conditions - gravity, pressure, terrain and distance. One of them is broader than other. It allows the broader pipe to carry more water than the narrower one, but in both pipes, the water runs at the exact same speed.

That pretty much applies to internet connections.

For gamers, the key word is latency. Round-trip latency to be specific.

It is the time elapsed until you receive a response from a request. Talking games, we can say that it will measure the time between sending and receiving updates from the game world. The higher your latency, the longer it will take for you to exchange updates.  The lower your latency, the better your interaction with the game world. The higher, the worst.

If you're playing turn-based games, like poker or chess, when every player has its own time to make his move, a high latency usually isn't a problem. However, in any game that people interact at the same time (like shooters, racing, RTS) you need to get updates almost in real time to play effectively. The closer you can get of real-time interaction is a low latency.

Otherwise you will lag and suffer. You miss your shots because by the time the server receives your packet informing that you pulled the trigger, your target already moved. Not only he evaded death, but was alerted by your shot and is currently returning fire and unloading his own weapon on you. You strafe and reach a corner to hide behind but as soon as you do, you drop dead because when the server received the information you have moved you were already full of lead. Lag is a direct consequence of a high latency.  Lag can also be caused by packet loss but it isn't really relevant for the subject at hand.

Latency does not depend on bandwidth, because usually games use small packets and there isn't a lot of data exchange during the matches. It means that someone in a 120 kb/s line with low latency will have a much smoother game than someone using a 2 mbit/s connection with high latency.

There is no way around it (external causes) and it and can be negatively affected by several things along the way. Distance from the server, routing problems in the network, transmission delays and so on.

That's why sattelite isn't really a choice for gamers - It has a high latency by design, because of the uplink. That is enough to make a gamer's life miserable. It doesn't affect any other use of the internet - downloads are fast and reliable, even streaming works ok, but it ruins any game that needs fast updates.

That said, ADSL offers many bandwidth options and latency usualy range from good to decent, depending on the type of service you get, the region you live in and, of course, how far is the server you're trying to reach. I've been playing games over an ADSL line for five years and I am happy with it.

You should have no problems with it.

phbbbt107 said:

Wow, people are pretty angry about this review.

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Not at all, I don't even know the guy and I have no reason to be angry.
I just offered my contribution by pointing out what I perceived as flaws and suggested countermeasures. That's all.

I agree with Archonsod.

Here you have a couple more suggestions about your text.
There is criticism, I hope it doesn't sound mean or too harsh.
Please Don't take it personally. Even if I disagree with your opinion, I respect it.


I - WHICH NORTH, MINE OR YOURS?

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You make a big mistake when you say "You will be disappointed for the very same reasons I did".

People have different backgrounds and habits. My first RPG was deus ex and I played the whole game in safe mode because back in that time I had a very crappy SiS videocard with no 3D support. It looked like lego but I enjoyed the game immensely, each minute of it. A few months after that I got a Voodoo 3 and it was awesome, but I grew used to consider fancy graphics as a welcome addition rather than a decisive factor.

What may be mediocre (if that) for you may be good enough for me. If you're in complete dismay because a demo of an independent, home made beta doesn't pack the same punch a million-dollar mainstream title does, though ****. I'm more concerned whether it will run smoothly in my rig, if it has any serious, show-stopper bugs and the like.

And it isn't just me.

People who bother reading (p)reviews (as opposed to just checking the rate and header) are usually aiming for an informed acquisition.
It is logical to assume they want accurate descriptions rather than opinions.

That's a simple concept; everyone can form an opinion once they have enough information.
In fact that's exactly what your readers will be trying to do in the first place - building their own opinion, not borrowing yours.

That's why a good review should contain lots of useful information and just a bit of impressions - if you can amuse your reader while doing so, excellent. They will extract the information, have a blast doing so and come back for more.

If, on contrary, you hand out lots of impressions but fail to deliver useful information, you failed to write a review but excelled in writing a blog entry. You can't expect people to give a flying **** about your opinion if you don't provide them the means to form their own first.
 
It's called OBJECTIVITY. Without it, your text is useless.

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II - COMPARISON: A Many Splendored Thing. 

It serves only one purpose: to provide an useful insight based on similarities x differences between the compared objects. Mostly needed when you have two similar (but not equal) objects and need to take a closer look to sort out matching and opposing characteristics.

If you (and everyone else) can tell the differences a mile away, the comparison is out of proportion and offers no useful insight.

M&B is actually 100x smaller than Oblivion. No one in his right mind could expect it to compete with such a monster anyway.

"Well, this home-made go-kart is cool. I had a great time rolling downhill, it was awesome to dare facing potential, multiple fratures. On the down side, the seat was really uncomfortable and, unlike the new Audi Sedan, it doesn't have ABS, digital displays or Air Bags. That was a big disappointment, as well as the wind messing up my hair." 

No ****, sherlock.

That is called CONTEXT. Without it, your text is useless.

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III - DO YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN? ME NEITHER.


Your review is confusing, at best.

You bash the game in the first two paragraphs.
Every subsequent block of text has at least one complaining or criticism (often the same complaint appearing twice).

Then you say everyone should buy the beta while they still can.

Why?

You just said it sucks big time!

It was made by someone that even you, a gamer since Moses splitted the red sea, never heard about. It lacks content, it has poor graphics, it's difficult to play, it's dull and lifeless, you can't customize your troops, and on top of that it's not an Oblivion, not even a morrowind.

What good reasons you gave to your readers to follow your advice? None. That makes no sense.

When describing the ground combat system you mention 12 different types of weapons "and several more", yet you list as a "con" the fact that it doesn't offer a good variety of weapons.

Each and every point you list as a con can be narrowed to the fact that, as the name "beta" suggest, the game is not complete.

Yet, even the fact that the game is still in development is listed as an issue. I don't get it.

You say that it is a "fairly addicting" game if people overlook its shortcomings, but you don't explain WHY it is addicting. Yet people should buy it right away, "while they can" (as if armagan would close shop next week and move to mexico undisclosed =P).

Man, you spent so much time bashing the game, yet forgot to add the most elementar information that should be stamped in any review worth its name: System Requirements.

You sounded really uncertain sometimes. "There seems to be", "I just don't realize it". If you want people to take you seriously you must know what you're talking about.

Also, if you're reviewing a demo, by all means say so in the header. It's unfair to put such an important detail in the middle of your text, even more when your readers would probably waste less time downloading those 40 MB and installing the demo themselves to know about it, first hand.

For the sake of cohesion, group all the good things together, then all the bad things together in another block. It makes your message much more clear and easy to follow, as opposed of jumping from one to another each couple lines. Of course, avoiding obvious contradictions is a plus.

Hint: If you need to wrap all it up again in the end of the review, you've messed it up.


It's called CONSISTENCY. Without it, your text is useless.

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We discussed form, let's talk about contents:


Too much for a recommendation. You managed to pass an incredibly negative view of an awesome game.
I really don't get it. I could understand if you have said "bad game, don't waste your money with it".
It baffles me that you've found so many bad things about it and you still recommend people to buy it.

There is a pile of interesting and relevant things you could have said to put it under a more favorable light:

* It's an independent game;
* It's being developed by a team of TWO PEOPLE;
* It doesn't have a publisher;
* It is being made with a very small budget;
* It is a 40MB package that contains a huge amount of ass-kicking.

Not to mention game features like escorting caravans or making your own, kidnapping noblemen, joining factions, gaining ranks in the army, capturing and selling enemies to slavers, releasing captives, commanding your troops in the battlefield or just the sheer satisfaction of hitting someone in the face with a mace at full gallop.

However we shouldn't limit it to the bits and bytes of coding and how it translates to moving avatars in the computer screen.

You seem oblivious to the fact that we're witnessing history as it happens, right here. For the first time I've bought a beta as a beta, not as a buggy, untested "retail" that will be fixed in an unforeseeable future with patches and re-rashed as an overpriced "collectors edition" with the missing content one year later.

For the first time I can support the developer directly instead of paying most of the money to greedy publishers that don't know **** about videogames and only care about sales and marketing.

It would be awesome if this kind of thing becomes a trend, and you could use your writing skills to help the cause and spread the word. 

Yet all you have to say is it isn't an oblivion.

But that's ok. Let's agree to respect each other's views, no matter how wrong yours may be.

I've modded some dialogs to make refugees and farmers attackable or recrutable, and not only the castles were guarded by ghosts but when I attacked some farmers near zendar the battle scene was shifted to the castle and the damn peasants were manning the walls.

Very funny, those poor bastards trying to defend the wall with sickles and knifes.

Thanks to Taka it's now working again. Nice catch.

TheHybrid said:

I just wanna ask you guys, how many more versions will appear until the final one is released?

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Being the only man in the world that owns a working crystal ball, I could answer that question.

However, knowledge is power and I'm not giving it away.
You will have to wait and count them as they come out, just like any other puny mortal.

MWHAHAHAHAHAHA

Word is that we shouldn't be using this version of the editor with 0.751. 
Apparently it's a compatibility issue that may happen when you save your modifications, regardless of what you have modded.
I'm under this impression because I've changed a couple dialogs and weapon stats and the same thing happened to me.
Let's wait patiently, in a few days it probably will be updated.

Please read this thread, it may help ya:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,10895.0.html

Cheers!

Well...

I've been using the character editor with success to edit borcha and marnid's stats and skills. I also add them some damn money so I don't have to hand over a lot of equipment for free.

Open the character editor, open your savegame with it and, instead of typing your level and XP, enter the NPC's level and XP. It worked for me in at least four different games.

On the other hand it seems to have some difficult to find my own stats if my char is at a very high level with too many XP. The earlier I use it, the better.

Hope that helps!