Fallout: New Vegas Dev: Recent RPG Advances "Undermine" the Genre
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
That is just sad.Dirty Apple said:
I mean sure, I look up the answer online upon occasion, after my 20th death or so, but I only feel clever or powerful when I beat a challenge fairly... or when I at least find the exploit on my own.
That said, I still want finding my questing area to be simple. Unless there's a legitimate "gather information" quest where you can logically figure out what sort of people, the locations of which are known to you, would be likely to know about the thing you're looking for, I don't think that traipsing all over creation unguided is much of a challenge, just busy-work.
Get me to the dungeon, though, and all I'll use that marker for is to figure out which way to go last.
Frankly, I think Skyward Sword's Dowsing system worked pretty well... you could always get a hint as to where you needed to go next, but it wouldn't tell you how to get there necessarily and you paid for it by having to hold your sword out vulnerably and search in all directions. Otherwise, you could just slaughter your merry way accross the map until you found what you were looking for, which is generally what I did since the whole game was constructed more like a set of dungeons than an expansive world map.
But then, when you got to the actual dungeons, your Dowsing stops working. You want it to find keys or levers or puzzle clues for you? Well too bad, because you're on your own in here.
Seems a decent compromise.
I don't think compasses and whatnot are a difficulty matter at all. Fallout 2 was hard but not because you didn't know where to go, it was hard AND you didn't know where to go.
Mainstream modern games are all generally easier simply cause they're aimed at a wider audience and the problem is that turning a game like that harder doesn't make it actually more difficult, it' just makes it more broken so you need to in turn play the game in a broken way, rather than be even more strategical about it, since they don't actually develop higher AI for a mode most people won't use.
Mainstream modern games are all generally easier simply cause they're aimed at a wider audience and the problem is that turning a game like that harder doesn't make it actually more difficult, it' just makes it more broken so you need to in turn play the game in a broken way, rather than be even more strategical about it, since they don't actually develop higher AI for a mode most people won't use.
The man makes some fair points, and fortunately, it seems some other developers have taken notice as well. Can't remember the link, but Bioware confirmed that [for Mass Effect] there will be different campaign styles to adjust for the different types of gameplay, like an action focused one, and a story focused one.
I think they need to change how difficulty settings are done. Instead of harder difficulty just giving enemies more health/damage certain features need to change,while still keeping the game balanced. Also as a personal preference I'd like more games with melee combat to adopt the bushido blade style and instead of your dps v wall o health it's glass cannon v glass cannon. And also, no more big enemies to increase difficulty. Yeah it's big omg so scary but hey 100% chance that boss is all gimmick and 0 skill.
I agree. I think a certain air of challenge and mystery is important to a good rpg. Games that handle quests like objective lists miss out on that. You know exactly where you need to go and what to do right from the start and as a result there's no excitement when that objective is completed. There's no challenge, no sense of accomplishment or adventure and for me at least that's kinda the point in an rpg and often just gaming in general.
Which isn't to say a clear and well marked objective is a bad thing, often quite the opposite especially if it's something important the game is trying to steer you towards or a matter of story pacing. But still I think there's also a need for the less well marked and trodden path, for situations where the player genuinely does get lost and as to explore or use their own wits to get out of it. Why? It involves the player. Makes playing the game less of a brain-dead check-list of activities and gives them some puzzle, however small, to solve.
Which isn't to say a clear and well marked objective is a bad thing, often quite the opposite especially if it's something important the game is trying to steer you towards or a matter of story pacing. But still I think there's also a need for the less well marked and trodden path, for situations where the player genuinely does get lost and as to explore or use their own wits to get out of it. Why? It involves the player. Makes playing the game less of a brain-dead check-list of activities and gives them some puzzle, however small, to solve.
I can take or leave what he is saying. I don't see journals as a bad thing. Compasses are great but not if they show you everything. The problem is, without these things you cannot create an open game that is accessible to everyone. How about a simple option to turn them on or off. Back in the days of good old Final Fantasy (SNES for me) they didn't have these things. They did however have a linear story. Same thing with Super Metroid. You had to end up finding the right item to progress in the game, but the game lead you there by restricting you from going to other places by not having the right item. It was really quite genius.
His statement is far too broad. He has had his hands in some great games, but to denounce the use of tools to find your way around a world is just stupid. Spending 4 hours trying to find a temple doesn't make you a hard core gamer, it makes you someone with far too much time on their hands.
His statement is far too broad. He has had his hands in some great games, but to denounce the use of tools to find your way around a world is just stupid. Spending 4 hours trying to find a temple doesn't make you a hard core gamer, it makes you someone with far too much time on their hands.
Bethesda said he didnt know what he was talking about when trying to explain the PS3 bugs with Skyrim.
He is lashing out in a hissy fit of critical comments aimed exclusively at Skyrim.
Obsidian has never made a game that I would say is truely excelent. KOTOR 2 is their best one, and its missing an ending.
He is lashing out in a hissy fit of critical comments aimed exclusively at Skyrim.
Obsidian has never made a game that I would say is truely excelent. KOTOR 2 is their best one, and its missing an ending.
Ehem. I said EHEM! EASY ? You are the one that actually developped these mothers right here!
Has anyone ever tried taking one of these on, without a companion and without the T-51b Power Armor ? Huh ?
Also, journals and compasses are a given when you are up against a world the size of Washington DC or Skyrim. They let you keep track on where you are and I always wanna know where I am.
Has anyone ever tried taking one of these on, without a companion and without the T-51b Power Armor ? Huh ?
Also, journals and compasses are a given when you are up against a world the size of Washington DC or Skyrim. They let you keep track on where you are and I always wanna know where I am.
My problem with journals, quest markers/maps, and voice acting isn't that they exist, but that they're implemented badly. Journals in RPGs don't seem to be written by the same person that scripted the dialog. It's easy in these games to run into a new quest while in the middle of another one. So say your off to kill some ogres that stole something and you talk to someone who asks you to rescue their daughter. They tell you their daughter was taken to a fort and to get there you go south until you see a big tree then head west. But it's ogre smashin' time so you put the kidnapping aside, go to the ogre cave, kill them, and recover the Chalice of Unflatulence. Now that the king is safe from beer farts, you can rescue the girl from the Wet T Shirt Bandits. So you open up the journal and it says, "Rescue Natia Ipples from The WTS Bandits. They are hiding in a cave south of town." WHERE DID THE SPECIFIC DIRECTIONS GO! You go back to the parents to get the directions again, but all they do is ask, "Have you found our daughter yet?" Yes you idiots, she's just invisible. Who would have guessed that the Wet T Shirt Bandits wanted to make women less visible?
I have the opposite problem with quest markers and maps, they are too specific. I was playing New Vegas today and I needed some information from a deputy, but he had been captured by some escaped convicts so I had to rescue him. Someone told me he was in the hotel across the street and I got a map marker for the hotel, reasonable enough. But when I entered the hotel, I still had a marker that lead me right to him. Now none of the dialog told exactly where he was in the hotel; No one said,"They probably tied him up in the bathroom, because our deputy gets the squirts when he's nervous." Where did the specific directions come from? Holes like that really damage my immersion in RPGs.
Voice acting, yeah I have some problems with that too. You always get an opportunity to name your character, but no one ever uses it. In New Vegas, everyone refers to you as "that Courier," which is a problem because getting shot in the head pretty much ended that career. In Fallout 3, you're the "Vault Dweller" to Three Dog, even when you've gotten so famous or infamous that he should know your name. (Shoot him shoot him in the head Go get the dish he wants then drop it in the radio station and say,"Here's that dish you wanted you extorting prick and here are some bullets too!")
Another problem I have with voice acting is that conversations always return to a medium tone. In the beginning of Fallout 3, a female character wakes you up to warn you of impending doom. I always respond to the wake up call with the dialog choice,"Oh I was just dreaming about you," to which she says something like,"Oh Gross!" My problem is that the creeped out tone of voice she has stops after that line and she goes into the normal exposition of the situation. It must be too expensive to have a voice actor record the same lines with different underlying emotions, but what is possible just feels unrealistic to me. And it gets worse, just tell your father (Liam Neeson) that you murdered an entire population and he'll be upset for about two lines before he remembers that he needs you to advance the plot.
I have the opposite problem with quest markers and maps, they are too specific. I was playing New Vegas today and I needed some information from a deputy, but he had been captured by some escaped convicts so I had to rescue him. Someone told me he was in the hotel across the street and I got a map marker for the hotel, reasonable enough. But when I entered the hotel, I still had a marker that lead me right to him. Now none of the dialog told exactly where he was in the hotel; No one said,"They probably tied him up in the bathroom, because our deputy gets the squirts when he's nervous." Where did the specific directions come from? Holes like that really damage my immersion in RPGs.
Voice acting, yeah I have some problems with that too. You always get an opportunity to name your character, but no one ever uses it. In New Vegas, everyone refers to you as "that Courier," which is a problem because getting shot in the head pretty much ended that career. In Fallout 3, you're the "Vault Dweller" to Three Dog, even when you've gotten so famous or infamous that he should know your name. (Shoot him shoot him in the head Go get the dish he wants then drop it in the radio station and say,"Here's that dish you wanted you extorting prick and here are some bullets too!")
Another problem I have with voice acting is that conversations always return to a medium tone. In the beginning of Fallout 3, a female character wakes you up to warn you of impending doom. I always respond to the wake up call with the dialog choice,"Oh I was just dreaming about you," to which she says something like,"Oh Gross!" My problem is that the creeped out tone of voice she has stops after that line and she goes into the normal exposition of the situation. It must be too expensive to have a voice actor record the same lines with different underlying emotions, but what is possible just feels unrealistic to me. And it gets worse, just tell your father (Liam Neeson) that you murdered an entire population and he'll be upset for about two lines before he remembers that he needs you to advance the plot.
What could possibly be wrong with journals? All it does is remind you what you're currently supposed to be trying to do. It's great if you accidently skipped some dialog or haven't been able to play in a while. It also makes perfect sense in the universe of the game, unlike some of the mini-map stuff. I think having your ultimate destination (if you're supposed to know what it is) marked on a map makes sense, especially in larger and more open game worlds, but having a mini-map guide you every step of the way like some of them do now (I remember the one in Bully being especially egregious) can definitely suck a lot of the fun of exploration and experimentation out of a game. That was one of the things that really attracted me to Demon's Souls, actually, it had a relatively linear design but it still let you explore and figure out how to get past obstacles on your own.
That was Joe Sawyer, this quote came from Chris Avellone. Different people, dawg. Avellone wrote Planescape: Torment, worked on Fallout 2 and Icewind Dale, he knows his RPGs.ninja51 said:
>quest markers
Agreed
>Blatantly obvious descriptions of what to do and where to go
Also agreed
>Journals
Fuck no man, I'm 'not' wasting time writing down clues that I already heard a character speak in the game. And SURELY my character is intelligent enough to write down what he's heard and learned.
Overall, I think a mix of journals, visual and audible clues are the best way to go. Needless to say, the 'quest marker' approach is beginning to make things a bit too easy in games these days. Also gotta agree on the comment about Skyrim getting kinda easy after level 25/30, it's kinda why I'm straying from playing my original character I initially created. =/
Agreed
>Blatantly obvious descriptions of what to do and where to go
Also agreed
>Journals
Fuck no man, I'm 'not' wasting time writing down clues that I already heard a character speak in the game. And SURELY my character is intelligent enough to write down what he's heard and learned.
Overall, I think a mix of journals, visual and audible clues are the best way to go. Needless to say, the 'quest marker' approach is beginning to make things a bit too easy in games these days. Also gotta agree on the comment about Skyrim getting kinda easy after level 25/30, it's kinda why I'm straying from playing my original character I initially created. =/
@Chris Avellone
Ever played Skyrim on Master ?
A broad mind has a broad field of view and opinions.
Ever played Skyrim on Master ?
A broad mind has a broad field of view and opinions.
I did. Was no different than on any other difficulty. The only thing that changes with difficulty setting is numbers on enemies. Their health pool and Their damage output. It doesn't really make game harder, enemies don't use smarter tactics, it just makes the fights longer/more expensive early on.ciasteczkowyp said:
As for Journals, They would be fine, if They were more...authentic in their feel. Rather than provide and explanation of what that NPC just said to the player character, let it be written by the character, in a way that requires from player at least minimal level of thinking to understand it. Preferably with some more fluff in between the lines.
To certain extent some "convince" features direct a player towards a more goal oriented play experience but the problems with the logic are thus:
1. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just because your game is made to be non-linear does that mean your going to punish the player for wanting to be linear? Are you going to slap his hand away and say "no, go do side quests" when he just wants to find the next story goal?
2. If players want to go exploring, there going to fucking explore. In fact the bigger you make the arrow that says "go here" the more some people are going to want to not go their. People who want to explore deliberately avoid the path that leads to the story to explore, making the path to the linear goal more obvious isn't going to suddenly change how they play.
3. Making the path that players need to take is a good thing. Players need to constantly know what they are doing and where they are going, its a basic game design principle. If a player is lost and does not know what is going on, then you fail as a design. Interfaces should be intuitive and maps should be clear. What this article is promoting is taking away clarity and making paths muddled for the sake of ensuring people don't follow a linear path and that's bass ackwards logic.
Now maybe I'm, just interpreting his sentiment wrong or he worded his ideas poorly, I don't know but as far as I see it, this idea needs some rethinking.
1. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just because your game is made to be non-linear does that mean your going to punish the player for wanting to be linear? Are you going to slap his hand away and say "no, go do side quests" when he just wants to find the next story goal?
2. If players want to go exploring, there going to fucking explore. In fact the bigger you make the arrow that says "go here" the more some people are going to want to not go their. People who want to explore deliberately avoid the path that leads to the story to explore, making the path to the linear goal more obvious isn't going to suddenly change how they play.
3. Making the path that players need to take is a good thing. Players need to constantly know what they are doing and where they are going, its a basic game design principle. If a player is lost and does not know what is going on, then you fail as a design. Interfaces should be intuitive and maps should be clear. What this article is promoting is taking away clarity and making paths muddled for the sake of ensuring people don't follow a linear path and that's bass ackwards logic.
Now maybe I'm, just interpreting his sentiment wrong or he worded his ideas poorly, I don't know but as far as I see it, this idea needs some rethinking.
I partially agree with him, but I don't think player convenience is as negative as he depicts it. I'm currently playing the PAL Xenoblade and find the lack of quest markers CRIPPLING. I'm unable to complete some quests because I cannot find the quest-giver anymore. They're one of a hundred generic-looking people in the city, they move around depending on the time of day, and you have to be on top of them for the red "!" symbol to appear.
That is NOT exploration, that's just making me trudge over an already gigantic game tracking people like I'm some bail bonds agent. It makes no sense in-game, the characters know each-other, they could visit the quest-giver's house or pick up a freakin' phone and call him! GAH!
Anyway, I do agree that you could basically switch the language to Pashtu and you'd still be able to complete 90% of the quest in Skyrim because they involve following an arrow and clicking on something. That IS quite limiting. I much more prefer the way Witcher 2 did it, with loads of flowery text for each quest, describing accurately and thoroughly what the quest is about. It's interesting to read, obtuse enough to make you explore and experiment, but also points you in the right direction. 20 hours into Skyrim and I can barely remember what half the quests in my journal are because they only have one-line-descriptions, and I picked them up days ago. Sure, they put quest marker on your map (sometimes) but following that in an effort to solve the quest just rings hollow.
I can do without quest markers if the instructions and ancillary information is rich and detailed enough, and I don't remember ever being stuck in Planescape wondering "how am I supposed to solve this quest?" or that it's unclear where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do. In modern games, solving the quest isn't the problem, it's all pointed out clearly, but often you have no motivation or background for what you're doing. If you're following markers, you're not questing, you're just chasing your tail.
That is NOT exploration, that's just making me trudge over an already gigantic game tracking people like I'm some bail bonds agent. It makes no sense in-game, the characters know each-other, they could visit the quest-giver's house or pick up a freakin' phone and call him! GAH!
Anyway, I do agree that you could basically switch the language to Pashtu and you'd still be able to complete 90% of the quest in Skyrim because they involve following an arrow and clicking on something. That IS quite limiting. I much more prefer the way Witcher 2 did it, with loads of flowery text for each quest, describing accurately and thoroughly what the quest is about. It's interesting to read, obtuse enough to make you explore and experiment, but also points you in the right direction. 20 hours into Skyrim and I can barely remember what half the quests in my journal are because they only have one-line-descriptions, and I picked them up days ago. Sure, they put quest marker on your map (sometimes) but following that in an effort to solve the quest just rings hollow.
I can do without quest markers if the instructions and ancillary information is rich and detailed enough, and I don't remember ever being stuck in Planescape wondering "how am I supposed to solve this quest?" or that it's unclear where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do. In modern games, solving the quest isn't the problem, it's all pointed out clearly, but often you have no motivation or background for what you're doing. If you're following markers, you're not questing, you're just chasing your tail.
Like everyone else, I agree to a point. He's mistaking casualization with the ever advancing genres. People get so irrationally protective of old school games, especially RPG's, that they fail to realize how outdated and broken the games they were protecting really were.
