Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil Forum Highlights
Posted Friday, July 11, 2003 - 14:40 CET by Gopher

Here are today's Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Huy Nguyen, Interface and Magic

On Baldur's Gate and Real Time/Turn Based games:

speaking entirely out of personal preference, combat is the only thing that prevented me from playing any of the Infinity Engine games. i remember picking up Baldur's Gate I, and then putting it in the closet shortly thereafter. it was probably because i was so used to Gold Box AD&D games.

in retrospect, i'm saddened that my dislike for IE combat stopped me from playing what are probably great games (Torment, in particular, so i hear), but i prefer turn-based combat for D&D games.

don't get me wrong, i like both; RT works great for action oriented games, and i loved RT with pause for Battletech: Crescent Hawk's Revenge, but for D&D i like TB, because that's what most feels like PnP to me (as opposed to any question of whether it's modelling "real-life"). i prefer TB to model D&D PnP

and in general, i prefer TB for cRPG and strategy games. i loved total annihilation and starcraft etc, but i loved Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Warlords, Heroes of Might & Magic, etc, way more... probably some nostalgia factor there, heh.

i remember feeling a little bit bad about that, because i focus-tested a few games for Interplay while i was in college, and i remember telling Doug Avery (i think) that i didn't enjoy the Baldur's Gate games (he brought it up). whoops! hehe, he didn't take offense though

to each his/her own! to state the obvious, enjoy the games where the chosen combat system works for you. TB, TB/phased, RT/pause, RT, all systems have their own methods of attempting to make the game enjoyable. as people have mentioned, pros and cons to all.

i think any game that purports to be "realistic" digs its own hole. i thought counter-strike was a great game back in beta 5-6. they just had to keep tinkering and tinkering with it... ok, some bitterness there :P