Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Video game numbering can get a little weird. GTA V, for example, is the eight GTA game.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Leal
Oct 2, 2009
And why do they call it FINAL Fantasy when there is like 18 of them?! And what the hell is a Final Fantasy X-2, is that 12, or 10 minus 2??

Dewgy
Nov 10, 2005

~🚚special delivery~📦

Leal posted:

And why do they call it FINAL Fantasy when there is like 18 of them?! And what the hell is a Final Fantasy X-2, is that 12, or 10 minus 2??

You have to solve for X, duh.

Sally
Jan 9, 2007


Don't post Small Dash!
Doom 3 is Doom 5. Doom 64 is Doom 4. Final Doom is Doom 3.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Count Uvula posted:

The kickstarter backers have a gold name plate so you can easily identify them without talking to them once you know what they are. The only good thing about them is the meta-joke of the expansion adding a soulbound crossbow you need to level up by shooting them lmao

You also used to be able to murder them for no consequence, but they changed it in later versions. Apparently one of them in the starting town was always being killed for a early drop of some expensive armor.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
Why would you change that? I'd be honored if my name was on an NPC that players kept killing for a rare drop.

Robert J. Omb
Dec 1, 2005
The 'J' stands for 'AAARRGH!'

Maxwell Lord posted:

Why would you change that? I'd be honored if my name was on an NPC that players kept killing for a rare drop.

This but irl

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Overwatch Porn posted:



it's insanely transphobic, what are you on about
Frankly I would be so deeply ashamed to have that kind of amateurish writing in my game that I'd pull the plug on that whole aspect before the issue of transphobia ever even reared its head.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Leal posted:

And why do they call it FINAL Fantasy when there is like 18 of them?! And what the hell is a Final Fantasy X-2, is that 12, or 10 minus 2??

You don't have to get pedantic to make fun of Final Fantasy names, you just have to get European.

There are three games that can make claim to being the first Final Fantasy game to be released in PAL regions:
-Final Fantasy Legends, AKA Final Fantasy Gaiden: Seiken Denetsu, AKA the first Mana game. By the time it hit PAL regions the Mana games had become their own series, however, so the game was renamed to Mystic Quest.
-Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. 'Final Fantasy' was dropped from the title in PAL regions because no previous Final Fantasy games had been released there, and 'Legends' was added to, rather than confuse people, instead connect it to the previously released game Mystic Quest.
-Final Fantasy VII. To reduce confusion around the world between different titles, they decided to use the original Japanese scheme in the rest of the world, starting with the seventh game.

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)

My Lovely Horse posted:

Frankly I would be so deeply ashamed to have that kind of amateurish writing in my game that I'd pull the plug on that whole aspect before the issue of transphobia ever even reared its head.

It doesn't even follow a basic meter! A failure of both poetry, humor, and taste.

Lobok
Jul 13, 2006

Say Watt?

Cleretic posted:

You don't have to get pedantic to make fun of Final Fantasy names, you just have to get European.

I love this line. It'd be even better with a pause and a look towards the camera just before you say "European."

BioEnchanted
Aug 9, 2011

He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.
I've started playing De Blob and it is mostly fun so far, but the platforming feels overly awkward and sticky in a bad way. I'm having a lot of trouble controlling that aspect of it.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

RGX posted:

I was thinking about this the other day with Pillars of eternity, when you enter a new city there's a constant feeling that you might be missing something or doing things in the wrong order and it makes me anxious.

I don't really know what the solution is, but what I do know is some games make me feel that way and some games don't. I love to explore in rpgs so there's some subtle difference between being overwhelming and being curiosity inspiring and I don't know what it is.


I agree with this. Like a well run D&D campaign, I think the best games make you think you're exploring and calling the shots are sort of just subtly railroading you without you knowing it. When I used to DM, I had all my maps, NPC's and areas set up ahead of time and then, if the players got weird on me, I'd just move the location of a cave, a mcguffin or a person to some different area.

Grunch Worldflower
Nov 16, 2020

BiggerBoat posted:

I agree with this. Like a well run D&D campaign, I think the best games make you think you're exploring and calling the shots are sort of just subtly railroading you without you knowing it. When I used to DM, I had all my maps, NPC's and areas set up ahead of time and then, if the players got weird on me, I'd just move the location of a cave, a mcguffin or a person to some different area.

The Illusion of Choice is only a problem when you see behind the curtain. Great for a D&D campaign, less so for the late Telltale Games.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Grunch Worldflower posted:

The Illusion of Choice is only a problem when you see behind the curtain. Great for a D&D campaign, less so for the late Telltale Games.

I actually liked how the last Walking Dead wasn't so much about changing the story as it was about what kind of person AJ would be at the end of it:

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
Yeah designing a large area like a town or city and actually guiding the player in it without railroading them is one of those trickier design problems. New Vegas does an okay job I think, first letting you in the outskirts before you find some way into the city proper, and when you first do get permission you have a set goal but that quickly opens up into a bunch of other things.

Phigs
Jan 23, 2019

Just dump me into a big city and let me go at it. People who need direction can play other games.

Triarii
Jun 14, 2003

I've dropped several acclaimed RPGs at the point where you reach The City and suddenly there are a ton of NPCs whose problems I'm expected to care about, and I just can't do it

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters
Baldur's Gate was pretty bad for that. When you reach the titular city it's just six enormous area full of stuff with a vague goal to accomplish and it's just overwhelming, especially as someone who likes to fully explore maps and do everything.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Also doesn't help when games have such huge gulfs between the moment to moment exploration and the obligatory Now You're In A City section(s). Turns out it's hard to make the pacing work well if your game starts with 10 hours of wandering the wilderness, fighting wildife, exploring caves, whatever and then suddenly the entire design style changes to be about city intrigue, infiltrating buildings, and dialogue-heavy quests instead.

Ruffian Price
Sep 17, 2016

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX
Baldur's Gate 2 made this discussion obsolete imo

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

Vic posted:

Baldur's Gate 2 made this discussion obsolete imo

Oh man, I loved when it dumped you into a giant city with a goal (get 20k gold) and a ton of freedom. I think I spent as much time on that phase as I do most other games.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


Bastard stole my kill

https://twitter.com/EvilBillMurray/status/1381399894041092096?s=19

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters

Tigrex gets the carves, only fair.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Umineko really needs to get ported into a modern engine, it is unbearable how clunky the UX still is to this day.

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

MiddleOne posted:

Umineko really needs to get ported into a modern engine, it is unbearable how clunky the UX still is to this day.

My favorite is that the music breaks if my computer sleeps or it changes output

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

RGX posted:

I was thinking about this the other day with Pillars of eternity, when you enter a new city there's a constant feeling that you might be missing something or doing things in the wrong order and it makes me anxious.

I don't really know what the solution is, but what I do know is some games make me feel that way and some games don't. I love to explore in rpgs so there's some subtle difference between being overwhelming and being curiosity inspiring and I don't know what it is.

Thinking on this more, I believe the three factors that instill that sort of anxiety in me are:

1) How does the game handle signposting of quests? Games that instantly dump 20 different yellow exclamation marks on the map the moment you take one step into the city...maybe not the ideal way to do it! I feel like in games that don't operate like that I don't get quite as anxious, but do sometimes go down a rabbit hole of wondering what I could have possibly missed. Bethesda games (+ New Vegas) tend to balance things out by including multiple ways to pick up a quest (overhearing two characters gossiping about it, reading an official notice on a message board, blundering directly into the relevant characters) or just having NPCs straight-up ambush you to give you a heads up on something important.

2) Pretty simple, but most video game cities are not well thought out. Sometimes it's just down to technical issues getting in the way but more often you have weird layouts, shops tucked into odd and inconvenient locations, some NPC houses that turn out to be super important and some that are just glorified set decoration, etc.

3) And then as a sort of extrapolation of the first two, you end up with information overload because you're trying to pick up all those exclamation marks one by one, but also learn the layout of the city because you're probably looking to sell loot, buy new gear, train skills, whatever. And then also as you start accumulating quests suddenly you're keeping an extra eye out because the gnome at the gate wants you to deliver a package to the soap maker's district, which you haven't even found yet, but also your companion has a request for you to hit up a specific tavern, and yadda yadda. Total traffic jam of priorities as you try to untangle the optimization problem unintentionally placed before you.

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost

John Murdoch posted:

3) And then as a sort of extrapolation of the first two, you end up with information overload because you're trying to pick up all those exclamation marks one by one, but also learn the layout of the city because you're probably looking to sell loot, buy new gear, train skills, whatever. And then also as you start accumulating quests suddenly you're keeping an extra eye out because the gnome at the gate wants you to deliver a package to the soap maker's district, which you haven't even found yet, but also your companion has a request for you to hit up a specific tavern, and yadda yadda. Total traffic jam of priorities as you try to untangle the optimization problem unintentionally placed before you.

If a game is going to load you up with a lot of quests, then it needs to have a good system for tracking them. I don't mind games with minimal tracking if you're only doing one thing at a time, but if you can start 20 quests, or meet 20 people who want you to do things (some of which involve trekking halfway across the world and hours of gameplay) - you'd better have a journal that tells me what I'm meant to be doing and who for.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


Questflow is a really underrated art in world design. If you’re gonna send me out to do some poo poo then I wanna do it in the most efficient way possible. Don’t have a quest that sends me out to a location, then another quest that sends me to that same exact location except it’s one town over! Additionally, don’t create a multipart quest with a misaligned flow from the normal turn-in points so that now I’m stuck walking halfway across the world to complete ONE objective when I could be hitting 2-3 sidequests along the way!

Kennel
May 1, 2008

BAWWW-UNH!
One problem for me seems to be that PoE (which I'm currently playing for the first time despite kickstarting it) doesn't have fog of war in the city areas, so I have to mentally keep track, which areas I've explored.

That plus everything else that has been mentioned.

Thankfully once you get over the bump, everything is fine. It took me almost seven hours to comb through the city, but now I'm once again exterminating the countryside and pacing with reading/exploring/combat feels much better.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Danger - Octopus! posted:

If a game is going to load you up with a lot of quests, then it needs to have a good system for tracking them. I don't mind games with minimal tracking if you're only doing one thing at a time, but if you can start 20 quests, or meet 20 people who want you to do things (some of which involve trekking halfway across the world and hours of gameplay) - you'd better have a journal that tells me what I'm meant to be doing and who for.

The fact that there are still games coming out that only let you track one single quest at a time on the radar/minimap/whatever is downright criminal.

Pseudohog
Apr 4, 2007

John Murdoch posted:

The fact that there are still games coming out that only let you track one single quest at a time on the radar/minimap/whatever is downright criminal.

And then there's games like Cyberpunk which force you to have a quest tracked at all times - meaning you always have an on screen marker, a guidance line on the mini map, and quest objective text on the side of the screen.
In order to get a cleaner ui while exploring the city you can toggle off the elements in the settings, but it's annoying toggling them on and off, when they could have just let you not have a quest selected!

Rockman Reserve
Oct 2, 2007

"Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

MiddleOne posted:

Umineko really needs to get ported into a modern engine, it is unbearable how clunky the UX still is to this day.

about 30% of the time when i open it, if i tab away before the 7th expansion/witch hunt splash screen is finished, my mouse locks to the "7th expansion website" button no matter what window on screen actually has focus, and I have to tab over to the window to unlock the cursor


also to this day i'm not sure how/why but episode 4 kept crashing on me so goddamn hard i ended up putting the series down entirely for months

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

exquisite tea posted:

Questflow is a really underrated art in world design. If you’re gonna send me out to do some poo poo then I wanna do it in the most efficient way possible. Don’t have a quest that sends me out to a location, then another quest that sends me to that same exact location except it’s one town over! Additionally, don’t create a multipart quest with a misaligned flow from the normal turn-in points so that now I’m stuck walking halfway across the world to complete ONE objective when I could be hitting 2-3 sidequests along the way!

I just started Monster Hunter World's Iceborne expansion with some friends, and its introduction is egregious about this. There are three separate quests in a row that are 'go out on a fake expedition into this new region, that ends when you incidentally run into a new monster'.

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters

John Murdoch posted:

The fact that there are still games coming out that only let you track one single quest at a time on the radar/minimap/whatever is downright criminal.

Funny we're talking questfllow - been playing some Borderlands 3, and though I'm not very far in, I'm liking it so far. Only, quests - you can swap through Questa rapidly when playing by using the d-pad, but (as far as I can tell) you can't do this while looking at the map, not can you see where the quest location is, like if it's in your region, without opening the map and scrolling to see if it's taking you to an area transition. Kind of annoying, especially how easy it is to cycle through them otherwise.

Edit: thing dragging this game down is that I didn't pick the guy voiced by SungWon 'ProZD' Cho

Morpheus has a new favorite as of 02:21 on Apr 13, 2021

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

Morpheus posted:

Funny we're talking questfllow - been playing some Borderlands 3, and though I'm not very far in, I'm liking it so far. Only, quests - you can swap through Questa rapidly when playing by using the d-pad, but (as far as I can tell) you can't do this while looking at the map, not can you see where the quest location is, like if it's in your region, without opening the map and scrolling to see if it's taking you to an area transition. Kind of annoying, especially how easy it is to cycle through them otherwise.

Edit: thing dragging this game down is that I didn't pick the guy voiced by SungWon 'ProZD' Cho

I wish you could mix and match the voice/appearance and skill sets because FL4K is cool and ProZD’s voice acting rules but the character plays so goddamn boring.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

exquisite tea posted:

Questflow is a really underrated art in world design. If you’re gonna send me out to do some poo poo then I wanna do it in the most efficient way possible. Don’t have a quest that sends me out to a location, then another quest that sends me to that same exact location except it’s one town over! Additionally, don’t create a multipart quest with a misaligned flow from the normal turn-in points so that now I’m stuck walking halfway across the world to complete ONE objective when I could be hitting 2-3 sidequests along the way!

Yeah, that's something that almost immediately killed Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners for me. The very first mission you get is from a survivor to go over to her (zombie-infested) house and go get something for her. So you go do that, and it takes quite a while because the game is basically built around carefully avoiding zombies or stealthily taking them down one at a time. Then you come back to her and your reward is... a key to a safe in the exact house you just went to and came back from. So now the game expects you take the exact same extended walk you've already taken just to collect your actual reward.

That's annoying at the best of times, but putting it literally in the first quest of the first area is just :psyduck:.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Gaius Marius posted:

My favorite is that the music breaks if my computer sleeps or it changes output

I haven't even gotten past the introduction in episode 1 yet and my favorite music fact is that there is no fast-read or fast-click (like you can't just hold the spacebar) and THE MUSIC TRACKS ARE VERY SHORT. Sometimes you have the same track looping at high volume for hundreds of lines and you start feeling like you're passing into the ether.

I'm trying to imagine if I'd actually have the patience for this if I didn't already know that better stuff was waiting. I feel like I'm a kid trying to force myself through classical literature all over again.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Subnautica is pretty good, at any rate I played like 6-7 hours in one day, but catching fish is a pain in the arse. There's the grav trap but that almost makes it harder to pick them up, they seem to move more erratically when they're caught in the field. You'd think I could get a rod or a net or something.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply