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GrandpaPants posted:Seconding that the inventory management is terrible. I'd also like to be able to sort, y'know, alphabetically too. Sorting by item groups would be neat as well, instead of having to navigate tabs. And while it's not a drag per se, I wish there were more than two available companions. Larian does a pretty good job with off-beat characters, so I'd have liked to see more classes being represented with actual personalities, as opposed to having to hench rogues and earth/fire wizards and whatnot. I wish I didn't have to do the lovely personal conversation between your two characters. I have yet to figure out what it's supposed to accomplish but it's always: Player 1 Option 1 - Agree Option 2 - Disagree Player 2 Option 1 - Agree with Player 1 Option 2 - Disagree with Player 1 And occasionally I'll see a +1 to Altruism float above my head but I'll be damned if I know what that'll get me.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:32
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Pidmon posted:Getting your account banned is real fuckin fun. Wow, overkill sounds pretty lovely. How dare people not play their co-op only video game anyway but they intended. Those jerks!
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Jul 8, 2014 16:35
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m.hache posted:And occasionally I'll see a +1 to Altruism float above my head but I'll be damned if I know what that'll get me. Go to your character sheet screen. You'll see personality traits and the bonuses they give you if you hover over them, and you may want different ones on each character. Obedient, for example, gives you a bonus if you're influenced by Leadership, whereas Independent just gives you bonuses. So you want your character with Leadership to have Independent, while the other one should be Obedient. I think Spiritual/Materialistic is another one that should be split too.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:44
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GrandpaPants posted:Go to your character sheet screen. You'll see personality traits and the bonuses they give you if you hover over them, and you may want different ones on each character. Obedient, for example, gives you a bonus if you're influenced by Leadership, whereas Independent just gives you bonuses. So you want your character with Leadership to have Independent, while the other one should be Obedient. I think Spiritual/Materialistic is another one that should be split too. And I take it we have to guess which speech options gives what yeah? Hopefully they are clear enough to interpret.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:50
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GrandpaPants posted:Seconding that the inventory management is terrible. I'd also like to be able to sort, y'know, alphabetically too. Sorting by item groups would be neat as well, instead of having to navigate tabs. And while it's not a drag per se, I wish there were more than two available companions. Larian does a pretty good job with off-beat characters, so I'd have liked to see more classes being represented with actual personalities, as opposed to having to hench rogues and earth/fire wizards and whatnot. Two more companions are in development. They just weren't ready for the initial release. Same with more personalities for your created charafters so you can somewhat opt out of arguing with yourself.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:09
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In Vanilla World of Warcraft, escort quests were among the most painful set of quests you could undertake, as the escortees moved at a slow-rear end walk speed, and you couldn't just run ahead and clear out the enemies because the quest itself spawned enemies along the way. The worst offender was "Jailbreak", a painfully long escort quest that was required for Alliance characters to complete if they wanted to do the Onyxia raid. Then when The Burning Crusade expansion came out it looked like the problem was fixed with in the Escape from Durnhold dungeon. It cheered me so much that Thrall hauled rear end during the escort section that I didn't care that this led to other problems (Thall often aggroed enemy groups before you had recovered from the last fight). And then there was an extended riding sequence, where Thrall used a normal-speed mount. 
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Jul 8, 2014 17:41
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I will never forget escorting that loving turtle.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:45
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Elysiume posted:If at any point in a game you need to escort or walk next to NPCs they should move at one of your speeds. NPCs shouldn't move faster than your walk and slower than your run! It happens in too many games for me to list. This is all true and I agree, but the reason they do this is if the NPC moves at your run speed you can't catch up if you fall behind, but if it moves at your walk speed people feel like it is way too painfully slow (see the WoW post above), so they try to shoot for the middle to make it go as fast as it can but still allow you to make up ground. It makes for a super-awkward movement style if you're just walking along next to the NPC though.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:13
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Jivesauce posted:This is all true and I agree, but the reason they do this is if the NPC moves at your run speed you can't catch up if you fall behind, but if it moves at your walk speed people feel like it is way too painfully slow (see the WoW post above), so they try to shoot for the middle to make it go as fast as it can but still allow you to make up ground. It makes for a super-awkward movement style if you're just walking along next to the NPC though. Or, I don't know, maybe have it tethered directly to you. Rubber Band like.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:17
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Jivesauce posted:This is all true and I agree, but the reason they do this is if the NPC moves at your run speed you can't catch up if you fall behind, but if it moves at your walk speed people feel like it is way too painfully slow (see the WoW post above), so they try to shoot for the middle to make it go as fast as it can but still allow you to make up ground. It makes for a super-awkward movement style if you're just walking along next to the NPC though. I think the one that kills me is the "follow this NPC" quests in games. Because often the NPC is slow as hell and will stop dead if you get just slightly too far ahead of them or behind them.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:25
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m.hache posted:Or, I don't know, maybe have it tethered directly to you. Rubber Band like. Well sure, but you give up a lot of control over the situation that way and have to take a lot of other factors into account. Think about the helpers in Fallout 3 constantly getting stuck, lost, or going 3 miles out of the way when you walked over a slight ledge. If it's scripted you at least know it will go exactly how you've scripted it (most of the time...). Games like The Last of Us and Bioshock: Infinite, or even Half Life 2 have shown that you're exactly right in that being the ideal solution at this point, but those were games built largely around those systems, and the NPCs were also invincible in all of those. Hopefully in the future it will become common enough that even small side quests will work that smoothly though.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:02
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Red Dead Redemption had a feature where holding the gallop button on a horse would let it become tethered to NPCs riding with you. So you didnt have to like do poo poo to follow someone. Was smart. And NPCs should totally rubber and to you. Or atleast match speed with you.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:11
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Here's a better idea: if you have a sequence in your game where the PC has to walk along while a character walks beside him while rattling off lovely expository dialogue, cut that poo poo out. If you need to make a cutscene, make a cutscene for goodness sake, but don't piss in my ear and tell me it's gameplay.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:16
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SirPhoebos posted:In Vanilla World of Warcraft, escort quests were among the most painful set of quests you could undertake, as the escortees moved at a slow-rear end walk speed, and you couldn't just run ahead and clear out the enemies because the quest itself spawned enemies along the way. The worst offender was "Jailbreak", a painfully long escort quest that was required for Alliance characters to complete if they wanted to do the Onyxia raid. In Cataclysm, there's a dungeon where he follows you. Between the first boss and the trash before the second boss, there's a sequence where you follow him across an empty path through the snow in ghost wolf form, slower than a normal mount.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:22
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SirPhoebos posted:The worst offender was "Jailbreak", a painfully long escort quest that was required for Alliance characters to complete if they wanted to do the Onyxia raid. Urrrgh, Jailbreak. Being a helpful sort, I went on SO MANY loving Jailbreak runs to help guildmates. A little piece of my soul died each and every time, no matter how many times you did it, it never got any less tedious mostly due to how slowly the guy wanders through. It was supposed to be made easier by a buff the guy gives everyone once he got his gear, but if I remember right if you moved more than six inches away from him you lost the buff and couldn't get it back, so that rarely helped much. Painful.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:48
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RyokoTK posted:Fire Emblem is all you need, friend. Unless you're gonna say it sucks, in which case we'll need to have words. I 100%'d it ages ago.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:06
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Kimmalah posted:I think the one that kills me is the "follow this NPC" quests in games. Because often the NPC is slow as hell and will stop dead if you get just slightly too far ahead of them or behind them. One of the assassins creed 2 games (I dont know if it was 2, Brotherhood or Revelations) had a feature where if you were blending in with a crowd and let go of the sticks your character would just follow along with the crowd. This is relevant because they also implemented it for the "Follow the NPC as they give you the exposition and show you some landmarks in the city" intro missions. It was great. You just needed to walk next to them for a second, you'd blend, you would then follow them and match their speed automatically until something happened that you needed to respond to (I think you get attacked in the intro exposition mission or something). So to stay on topic, one thing dragging assassins creed 3 and 4 down is that they took that back out of the game. It made follow the NPC missions a pain in the rear end and it also made "Tail and eavesdrop" missions even more tedious bullshit than they needed to be because you couldnt just blend in with a group walking in the right direction and let go. There were many other things that dragged AC3 down, but that one stuck out as a feature they removed. SiKboy has a new favorite as of 23:10 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 23:07
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SpookyLizard posted:Wow, overkill sounds pretty lovely. How dare people not play their co-op only video game anyway but they intended. Those jerks! You might say the punishment is overkill.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:10
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The talk about awkward walk speeds reminds me of something that I see in countless games: being forced to stand still to avoid missing or accidentally skipping dialogue. When, for example, a couple of characters start chatting when the player enters a hallway entering a hallway, but opening the door at the end throws up a loading screen that cuts it off. The only way to hear all of the dialogue is to just come to a stop (or walk excruciatingly slowly) any time anybody starts talking about anything. This is especially bad in any game that uses audiologs, but I hate those things anyway.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:40
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Concerning NPC's tagging along with you, Bioshock Infinite did a great job at this with Elizabeth. She's never in your way, and the game was pretty good at predicting where you were going so that she would even run ahead of you, but would always stick close. And if you got to far away, she would just teleport to your location. I wish more games could code companions like that. On the subject of terrible features: Shadowrun Returns has terrible inventory management when it comes to your companions. I can understand not being able to tweak their equipment (especially in the DLC, where it scales itself according to the game's progress and saves you a lot of money) but can I at least put expensive and rare consumables in their inventory without seeing it disappear without a trace after the mission has ended? I think the DLC fixed this, but the fact that you still can't remove items from your companions' inventory to replace them with stuff from your stash irks me without end. It's still a great game, but this just annoys me. Also, GTAV: I can't create a character that doesn't look like a piece of Play D'oh and was smashed into shape with a frying pan. I freaking love the options Saint's Row gives me to do this, and GTAV feels like a huge step back on this front. Also, I see no reason why I shouldn't be capable of selecting my custom character in single player, especially when I've reached the endgame. Just let me do this and play some of the side quests, your narrative can say I'm employed by the main characters. And finally, Assassins Creed should come with a difficulty option that affects combat. I've played the entire series, yet each game seems to believe I'm new and it needs to hold my hand. Combat is so ridiculously easy that I've played all the games as a medieval Batman, using only my fists (while wearing the lowest armour) and killing only my targets. And while I like the fact that I can do a low-lethal run in this manner (since I prefer to think my protagonist is not a complete psychopath), I hate that the game makes no distinction between lethal and non-lethal takedowns. If I'm not allowed to kill guards on this mission, why can't I just bonk them on the head and be done with it? Because that would make me evil? That just doesn't make any sense, especially if the game presumes that I'll happily slaughter entire regiments a few missions later. The worst example of this is in Assassins Creed 3, when you have to infiltrate a British fortress but not kill anyone if you want the highest score. Knock somebody out, and over all the same. Also, non-lethally punch one random guy, and you have to start over. I mean, I understand it's George Washington, but that doesn't mean I can't knock him out. 
A Worrying Warlock has a new favorite as of 00:58 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 00:56
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SpookyLizard posted:People give you free money and you get mad? Free skill points and money to actually use them? You payday people are loving weird. No you just cant have fun! You have to earn it! SpookyLizard posted:Wow, overkill sounds pretty lovely. How dare people not play their co-op only video game anyway but they intended. Those jerks! Yeah, people should be able to play anyway they want! Except if they don't want hacked bonuses and just want to play the game normally, then they're being big babbies over nothing. Also, money and XP from hacks are basically untraceable and they have no way of banning you for it unless somehow someone took a picture of your screen, sent it to Overkill, and said "hey look, this guy has so much money the amount doesn't fit on the screen". The only stuff they can address is if someone specifically reports you for doing blatantly hacky stuff like instantly drilling open vault doors (to which I ask what the point even is). Ironically, the easiest way to fix hacked money and XP is to whip up a lua script and hack it back to where you want it to be. 
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Jul 9, 2014 01:33
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Re: Saints Row character creator, while it's cool that you can edit to many details about your character's facial features, I honestly think there might actually be too many sliders, or at least the sliders could do with being given more intuitive names/indicators, since I find that if I want to fine-tune some certain facial detail that don't look quite as I want it to look, I have to cycle through tons of different sliders just for the region of the face I think that feature falls within, hoping to find the one that controls that specific feature I'm looking to change. Of course, I imagine that's likely  considering that when I first encountered the Saints Row facial editor, my immediate impression that its sheer complexity seemed like a parody of the facial editors from games like Mass Effect.
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Jul 9, 2014 01:47
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m.hache posted:I wish I didn't have to do the lovely personal conversation between your two characters. I have yet to figure out what it's supposed to accomplish but it's always:
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Jul 9, 2014 02:37
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DrNutt posted:Here's a better idea: if you have a sequence in your game where the PC has to walk along while a character walks beside him while rattling off lovely expository dialogue, cut that poo poo out. If you need to make a cutscene, make a cutscene for goodness sake, but don't piss in my ear and tell me it's gameplay. Hannibal Smith posted:The talk about awkward walk speeds reminds me of something that I see in countless games: being forced to stand still to avoid missing or accidentally skipping dialogue. When, for example, a couple of characters start chatting when the player enters a hallway entering a hallway, but opening the door at the end throws up a loading screen that cuts it off. The only way to hear all of the dialogue is to just come to a stop (or walk excruciatingly slowly) any time anybody starts talking about anything. Doctor Bishop posted:Re: Saints Row character creator, while it's cool that you can edit to many details about your character's facial features, I honestly think there might actually be too many sliders, or at least the sliders could do with being given more intuitive names/indicators, since I find that if I want to fine-tune some certain facial detail that don't look quite as I want it to look, I have to cycle through tons of different sliders just for the region of the face I think that feature falls within, hoping to find the one that controls that specific feature I'm looking to change. Tiggum has a new favorite as of 05:35 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 05:06
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It seems like more often than not those fiddly sliders are just used to make a character look like a horrible mutant anyway. City of Heroes had fairly condensed and simple slider stuff, but with the downside that the facial sliders were absolutely tiny in terms of UI space, so fine tuning could get annoying.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:19
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I can't recall a single game which showed multiple perspectives and angles of your character's face at the same time during character creation, which is a shame because it seems like the easiest fix in the world for the "oops my character looks like a mutant during actual gameplay" problem of character sliders.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:28
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Just once I want to play a mission where you get to be the people attacking the lovely escort, with all the retard pathing and AI i've had to deal with over the years. It would be so cathartic.
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Jul 9, 2014 07:00
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...of SCIENCE! posted:I can't recall a single game which showed multiple perspectives and angles of your character's face at the same time during character creation, which is a shame because it seems like the easiest fix in the world for the "oops my character looks like a mutant during actual gameplay" problem of character sliders. On that note, games where turning your character in the creation menu has them realistically turn sideways with a full animation rather than just spinning them on an axis.
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Jul 9, 2014 07:15
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The only game I've played that did escorts right was Dungeon Fighter Online, the guy you're "escorting" is level 80 and one shots every single mob in the places you take him to.
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Jul 9, 2014 07:17
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Doctor Bishop posted:Re: Saints Row character creator, while it's cool that you can edit to many details about your character's facial features, I honestly think there might actually be too many sliders, or at least the sliders could do with being given more intuitive names/indicators, since I find that if I want to fine-tune some certain facial detail that don't look quite as I want it to look, I have to cycle through tons of different sliders just for the region of the face I think that feature falls within, hoping to find the one that controls that specific feature I'm looking to change. I just finished Saints Row 2 and my first Boss looked decent in the character creator, but awful in motion. I think I messed so much with the jaw, cheek and mouth sliders (that alone is like fifty sliders) that she looked like Wes Studi's daughter whenever she talked. It was almost like a fleshy clipping error. Sometimes less is more.
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Jul 9, 2014 10:48
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Can you change your character or main pawn in Dragon's Dogma during the game? It sucks that you get such an in-depth creator, but are locked in to a single character and AI buddy for the whole thing. Saints Row lets you change everything at a plastic surgeon, so they could just have the magical equivalent.
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Jul 9, 2014 12:04
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Mass Effect 2 had an especially horrible character-creator. I had to restart the prologue because Shepard's eyes clipped through her eyelids. It should be a given that if a game has a solid character-creator, then you should be given the option to change your character's appearance at will, barring race and gender should they have a gameplay effect.
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Jul 9, 2014 12:18
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That loving Sned posted:Can you change your character or main pawn in Dragon's Dogma during the game? It sucks that you get such an in-depth creator, but are locked in to a single character and AI buddy for the whole thing. Saints Row lets you change everything at a plastic surgeon, so they could just have the magical equivalent. Yes. If you go back to the camp you fought the first hydra at there's a guy there now who will sell you an item that let's you into the character editor from the main menu.
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Jul 9, 2014 12:26
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Mokinokaro posted:Yes. If you go back to the camp you fought the first hydra at there's a guy there now who will sell you an item that let's you into the character editor from the main menu. Well, that and the fact that NG+ doesn't scale at all, so you never really want to do it.
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Jul 9, 2014 12:50
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Hannibal Smith posted:The talk about awkward walk speeds reminds me of something that I see in countless games: being forced to stand still to avoid missing or accidentally skipping dialogue. When, for example, a couple of characters start chatting when the player enters a hallway entering a hallway, but opening the door at the end throws up a loading screen that cuts it off. The only way to hear all of the dialogue is to just come to a stop (or walk excruciatingly slowly) any time anybody starts talking about anything. This reminds me of one of DA2's many little problems: You enter a zone and trigger a banter hotspot, and your companions start talking. This can lead to the problem you mentioned, but if a random, nameless npc walks by and triggers their own chatter that one of your companions can respond to, the companion banter is cut off for that. And there's no limit to that NPC interruption; if you bring the same companion into the same zone, banter triggers and that same NPC walks by, they can spout their same exchange with your companion again, cutting off another set of banter. The problem is companion banter doesn't repeat, unlike NPC barks, so if you cut it off, you miss it for that playthrough. Mokinokaro posted:Yes. If you go back to the camp you fought the first hydra at there's a guy there now who will sell you an item that let's you into the character editor from the main menu. Initially the item he sells is one use, but when you hit the "post-game" he'll sell an infinite use version.
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Jul 9, 2014 14:15
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The best escort missions are the ones where you can knock out your target and carry them to hiding spots where they can't wander off and trigger alerts while you're busy knocking out patrols. Sorry, EVA and Captain Curnow.
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Jul 9, 2014 16:07
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Why would you ever be apologetic for knocking out EVA for that section? Knocking her out prevents or greatly slows her stamina drain so you don't have to constantly feed her.
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Jul 9, 2014 16:13
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Gothic was a clunky European RPG but its escort missions were loving fantastic because your escorts ran ahead of you, were practically invincible, and you got the experience points for their kills. At the beginning of the game when you have no armor and a fluffy bunny can put you in mortal peril having a friendly tour guide cut a bloody swath through the overworld and get you a shitload of experience points is just the best.
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Jul 9, 2014 16:21
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Hannibal Smith posted:The talk about awkward walk speeds reminds me of something that I see in countless games: being forced to stand still to avoid missing or accidentally skipping dialogue. When, for example, a couple of characters start chatting when the player enters a hallway entering a hallway, but opening the door at the end throws up a loading screen that cuts it off. The only way to hear all of the dialogue is to just come to a stop (or walk excruciatingly slowly) any time anybody starts talking about anything.
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Jul 9, 2014 16:31
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Mierenneuker posted:I just finished Saints Row 2 and my first Boss looked decent in the character creator, but awful in motion. I think I messed so much with the jaw, cheek and mouth sliders (that alone is like fifty sliders) that she looked like Wes Studi's daughter whenever she talked. It was almost like a fleshy clipping error. I tried to make a good looking character in Saints Row 2, with the expected results. Then I hosed around with the extremes of the character creator and made him into Peter Griffin, and it was both really accurate and also loving horrifying. I was so pissed that Saints Row 3 & 4 don't have the same depth of character/clothing customization.
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Jul 9, 2014 17:06
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