5 réponses à ce sujet

[Morducai]

First of all let me make it perfectly clear. This by no means is a rant or a personal attack on Jennifer Hepler. I came in here in order to rationally voice my position as to why I disagree with her and why I think her comments, while coming from an innocent point of view, are wrong and misguided.

I think she's forgetting the kind of medium she choose to apply her craft in. This is a video game with emphasis on the word GAME. Now I know in recent years that word took on a very wide interpretation, with games like Shenmue, Fahrenheit/Indigo ProphecyHeavy Rain, but at the core video games are just games and their main magic comes from it's interactivity and direct input  from and with the user. Games offer a "skip cutscene" because they are games and that's why we like them. 

What she wants, as a writer, is to enjoy a wonderful crafted story without having to, or to have as little to do, with the actual gameplay.  Basically what she describes is a game without gameplay which to all intent and proposes is a movie, book, interactive story, or what ever you like to call it. I understand her desire to have the same rules we apply on gameplay as they do with storytelling, but those rules just don't work well for this medium. As DA2 clearly demonstrated that the same formula can't work for two different situations. 


If you think I am wrong then look at the early video games and see how successful they were. Take Tetris for example, has zero story to it yet it still manage to be on top selling charts all over the world for more then 20 years. A game doesn't have to have a great story, or even any kind of story, in order to be successful, but if a game has bad gameplay then the whole thing simply collapses. 

Now I am not saying that story telling has no room in video games, quite the ooposite. I think story telling has become a very imprtant part of video games. However, I think gameplay should always take precedance over any other aspect of a video game. The minute you take gameplay out of the equation then it stops being a video game. 

Thoughts?

Modifié par Morducai, 21 février 2012 - 10:01 .

[John Epler]

 I think there's a distinction to be made between avoiding combat in an organic, 'in world' fashion versus a sort of meta-feature where you can easily or automatically resolve combat. In the former case, of course, it's far more of an investment, although it can certainly be a worthwhile one - especially if you let the player feel clever for avoiding the combat (STALKER (take a shot) does this to a degree, as the factional enemies will often fight each other, and every humanoid will fight a mutant. Patient or clever players can bait groups into conflict with each other and then let the chips fall as they may).

The latter is more mechanical, and in genres or sub genres where story or interactive narrative is an equally large draw as the combat and more traditional 'gameplay' elements, I really don't see an issue with allowing for some sort of easy resolve option for the fights. I'd hestitate to put in a 'skip combat completely' option, just because it feels as though it can be an easy way to ensure that fights have little narrative grounding. But a difficulty setting where your party can more or less take care of things by themselves and the risk of death is practically nonexistent? I don't really see any issue.

Of course, at the end of the day, everyone has different tolerances for these sorts of things. I'd be happy with a single-save, Dark Souls system where everything you do has lasting consequences on your character and a misstep can set you back half an hour or more. I realize that I am in the minority, however, and am in favour of providing as many people as possible the tools to enjoy our games. Me, I'd never use it, but why its existence should bother me is something I don't really understand.

[Stanley Woo]

LordPaul256 wrote...
There are very few real choices in DA2.  Something many people have complained about.  Basically, if you remove the action (which I would call the poorly implemented gameplay) than you're down to a handful of choices once you ignore the Protector/Smug/Bad-Ass conversation options which barely affect the story.  You don't even make your first real one until you get to the Deep Roads.  Even then it's mostly an accidental choice.

Then...?  I can't even rember the next choice.  Some of the side missions?  Well, if we're removing action from the game, then why would those even exist?  I guess if we included them in the game, but made them skippable, then they're optional free extra stuff.  Who wouldn't want free extra stuff if you could just skip through the actual work to earn it?  

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Yes, i see that you would choose to play the game as normal. An option to skip the combat/action has no effect on your game. But for someone like me, who rarely finishes games because they require a significant investment of time and effort, it would mean being able to see the end of the story or being able to get to the end boss without "grinding" the rest of the game. It means that someone like me would get to pick and choose which inconsequential, repetitive  fights to skip on my way to the boss or the end of the story. And again, how I play my game has absolutely no effect on your game.

For a more concrete example, i've had Fallout 3 since pretty much the day it came out. According to what I've heard from my friends, even though I've poured a couple dozen hours into the game (across multiple starts and reinstalls), I haven't even begun to see all the content in that game. As i love the setting, wouldn't it be nice if there was an option to skip past some of the random combat encounters so I could see more of the content that the developers made? Even short-ish games like Dante's Inferno and Batman: Arkham Asylum sit on my shelf for months because I either don't feel like playing or have other things to do, including playing on my PC.

For people like me--and people are only suggesting that this might be a neat option to have in some games; they're not demanding that all games force people to have no combat or action (two very different things)--it'd be kinda nice.

[Stanley Woo]

musicallie44 wrote...
What I don't understand is why this is an issue at all?  Eventually someone will try to implement this feature in a game.  Players will either love or hate it...and that will determine the future of skipping combat and/or story.  

A similar system will be presented in Mass effect 3.

[Stanley Woo]

Bad Sandwidge wrote...

This feature has already been in two games I know off the top of my head - Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire. In neither case did I ever use the feature, but I know my wife did. There is absolutely nothing - nothing - wrong with the option.

And guess what? Despite the feature, both games did very well.

Surprisingly, those who felt like using the option, did so. Those who did not want to use the option, did not. Equally as surprisingly, the game industry has not collapsed, neither game failed to sell or be appealing to consumers, and no one's taste in videogames has changed as a result.

[Stanley Woo]

And I think we're well and truly off-topic now. If you wish to continue the discussion of what makes a successful feature, RPG, game, or franchise, please use our Off-Topic forum. Thank you.

End of line.