609 réponses à ce sujet

[Seraphim24]

The randomly generated quests in Fallout 4 are most definitely boring and one of the companions will constantly give you new ones. Extra horrible for people who like to complete everything in their quest log because it's impossible with that companion.

I would rather do the randomly generated ones in Fallout 4 than the lost rings/goats/whatevers in DA:I since they're the same level of depth to me and I really like the combat style in FO4 vs the DA:I combat which I hate.

 

Whenever games sort of borrow and assembly from other places, it seems like doing so obsfuscates the fact that each game is unique and is composed of many different variables, some of which are supposed to work together.

 

In many ways something like Fallout with it's engines was built for more combat, hence, the volume isn't such a big deal.

 

Dragon Age was a tactical system that became more of like a slush sort of thing.

[vbibbi]

It looks to me like the theory of the design --as opposed to the practice -- was to be able to pop up the related text with the "Related Codex" button so you wouldn't need notes

Right and I am okay with that. I liked that we could go from the journal immediately to the treasure hunt map image. But as you say, he implementation was off. It wasn't consistently applied. And in cases like Chateau D'Onterre, there were multiple codices relating to the quest and they were sorted by name rather than quest. So it was hard for me to remember which ones related to the quest.

[Nefla]

Whenever games sort of borrow and assembly from other places, it seems like doing so obsfuscates the fact that each game is unique and is composed of many different variables, some of which are supposed to work together.

 

In many ways something like Fallout with it's engines was built for more combat, hence, the volume isn't such a big deal.

 

Dragon Age was a tactical system that became more of like a slush sort of thing.

While I do like the combat of Fallout 4 (and the settlement building), I felt that it came at the cost of things I found fun about Fallout 3 and New Vegas which were the more detailed skill/perk system and the frequency of that system to affect dialogue or quest options, more conversation options in general, and the ability to be evil. I also felt fun sidequests were few and far between in FO4 and the game was mostly filled with the boring radiant type quests or quests that were barely more detailed and unique. 

 

I don't know what a "slush" is but the reason I didn't like the combat in DA:I is that it was so limited. That style of combat isn't my favorite to begin with but if I have lots of options in combat: lots of abilities, creative ways to use the terrain, things I can do to prepare the battlefield such as set traps, dig trenches, build barricades and similar, lead enemies to a different group of enemies and wall them in with each other and have them fight each other rather than both ignore each other and fight me, and so on I will have fun with it. DA:I's combat looked like it could be something like that but it fell way short of my expectations. Not only were the things you can do limited but your abilities were limited and unchangeable during combat for no reason, you couldn't switch weapons in combat, and at least in my game the AI was horrible and did stupid things when left alone yet disregarded my commands when I used the "tactical" mode. I felt like I was fighting restrictions and crappy AI more than I was fighting enemies.

 

I think a lot of how much someone can tolerate some shallow quests is related to how much they like the combat and gameplay mechanics of that specific games. If you like it, those filler quests can be an excuse to do more. If you don't then they're something that forces you to do something you already hate in addition to having nothing fun or interesting to add themselves.

[Seraphim24]

While I do like the combat of Fallout 4 (and the settlement building), I felt that it came at the cost of things I found fun about Fallout 3 and New Vegas which were the more detailed skill/perk system and the frequency of that system to affect dialogue or quest options, more conversation options in general, and the ability to be evil. I also felt fun sidequests were few and far between in FO4 and the game was mostly filled with the boring radiant type quests or quests that were barely more detailed and unique. 

 

I don't know what a "slush" is but the reason I didn't like the combat in DA:I is that it was so limited. That style of combat isn't my favorite to begin with but if I have lots of options in combat: lots of abilities, creative ways to use the terrain, things I can do to prepare the battlefield such as set traps, dig trenches, build barricades and similar, lead enemies to a different group of enemies and wall them in with each other and have them fight each other rather than both ignore each other and fight me, and so on I will have fun with it. DA:I's combat looked like it could be something like that but it fell way short of my expectations. Not only were the things you can do limited but your abilities were limited and unchangeable during combat for no reason, you couldn't switch weapons in combat, and at least in my game the AI was horrible and did stupid things when left alone yet disregarded my commands when I used the "tactical" mode. I felt like I was fighting restrictions and crappy AI more than I was fighting enemies.

 

I think a lot of how much someone can tolerate some shallow quests is related to how much they like the combat and gameplay mechanics of that specific games. If you like it, those filler quests can be an excuse to do more. If you don't then they're something that forces you to do something you already hate in addition to having nothing fun or interesting to add themselves.

 

Slush just means like slush in general you can't distinguish the finer points or what they're supposed to mean, instead things just sort of happen in this big mass. Typically, enemies in the game go down just through a combination of auto-attacks and unplanned sorts of things, as much as planned ones.

 

Hm, well there are a lot of things in this post... sorry if I do not respond to all.

 

The one thing that jumped out was "the ability to be evil" lol... couldn't speak to be being outright "chaotic evil" but like this nuanced thing that isn't really so obviously stupid evil but subtly goes against the notion of "established good" (and is in fact a form of good) is indeed quite appealing. It shows up sometimes in SWTOR which is pretty neat.

 

In general, side quests seem to give more latitude on that subject, because the solution consequences is indifferent towards the main story or it's requirements (which typically are not up to player discretion)

[vbibbi]

I don't follow the logic of this. How does having requisitions end make doing them a better idea?

It's the completionism attitude that I know you don't agree with. I like knowing that I've done everything I can in that map, and if I talk to an NPC again they're not going to give me another quest automatically. Immersion-wise, the requisition officer recycles the same 4-5 items in each zone, so it seems redundant to do them again. Unless our soldiers really do use up all that sunscreen I made for them in order to...pick up 5 elf roots at a time

Plus, radiant quests to me seem lazy and immersion breaking. From what I've read about FO4, it's the same quest over and over, defending settlements the PC has armed and protected, so it feels like nothing the PC does matters, if the radiant quests are unchanged regardless of our actions.

[Nefla]

Slush just means like slush in general you can't distinguish the finer points or what they're supposed to mean, instead things just sort of happen in this big mass. Typically, enemies in the game go down just through a combination of auto-attacks and unplanned sorts of things, as much as planned ones.

 

Hm, well there are a lot of things in this post... sorry if I do not respond to all.

 

The one thing that jumped out was "the ability to be evil" lol... couldn't speak to be being outright "chaotic evil" but like this nuanced thing that isn't really so obviously stupid evil but subtly goes against the notion of "established good" (and is in fact a form of good) is indeed quite appealing. It shows up sometimes in SWTOR which is pretty neat.

 

In general, side quests seem to give more latitude on that subject, because the solution consequences is indifferent towards the main story or it's requirements (which typically are not up to player discretion)

Ah I see, I thought it was specific slang or something

 

I like both the realistic, more ruthless "get the job done by any means" kind of evil but also the over the top comical evil. F04 and DA:I didn't have much of either I felt in general our personality/dialogue/roleplaying options were too limited in both games.

[abaris]

 

Inquisition is far from the only RPG to phone it in when it comes to optional content. There’s almost every single MMORPG ever made, for example, but the most notable recent RPG is undoubtedly Fallout 4. This is really Skyrim’s fault. Bethesda decided that what their huge 100+ hour RPGs really needed was more quests. An infinite number of them, in fact. In Fallout 4, these took the form of missions offered by the four factions you can join. Help this settlement. Find this tech. Go to this dropbox. Murder this guy. Actually, all of them mainly involved killing guys. And gals. And mutants. Lots of killing. In an endless loop.

 

Guy nails it.

 

FO4 is easily the least impressive example of all.

 

But there's a general problem of what I like to call FedEx quests with guns or swords. Kill, fetch, repeat is all the content you get. If you're lucky, the main quest offers something besides. FO4 doesn't. Bioware games, not being designed as open world in the first place, usually do. But the FedEx aspect is still there.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Er.......

 

 

Ok so if a game itself calls it cheating like "game shark cheat code enter" would you still not call it cheating?

Yes.

 

What you call something doesn't change what it is.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It's the completionism attitude that I know you don't agree with. I like knowing that I've done everything I can in that map, and if I talk to an NPC again they're not going to give me another quest automatically. Immersion-wise, the requisition officer recycles the same 4-5 items in each zone, so it seems redundant to do them again. Unless our soldiers really do use up all that sunscreen I made for them in order to...pick up 5 elf roots at a time

Plus, radiant quests to me seem lazy and immersion breaking. From what I've read about FO4, it's the same quest over and over, defending settlements the PC has armed and protected, so it feels like nothing the PC does matters, if the radiant quests are unchanged regardless of our actions.

I don't see why we need to rely on quests to give us something to do.  I'd rather be able to just go out and do things without them being quests.  ME1 does this well.  So does Skyrim.

[straykat]

I don't need to read the article to know that most modern developers don't seem to care about side quests. There's some kind of gap in their PnP knowledge/experience or something. They think purely in terms of digital games..and the worst kind (mmos).

[straykat]

I don't see why we need to rely on quests to give us something to do.  I'd rather be able to just go out and do things without them being quests.  ME1 does this well.  So does Skyrim.

 

There's nothing to do in ME1. It's a slog.

 

Skyrim, I'll agree on.. just because they design good environments. But not everyone can do it.. it's something Bethesda excels at (and maybe not much else). Look at how many try to copy it and most of it sucks.

[Nefla]

I don't see why we need to rely on quests to give us something to do.  I'd rather be able to just go out and do things without them being quests.  ME1 does this well.  So does Skyrim.

Because (good) quests have storylines, interesting characters to interact with, and unique ways to resolve that exploration wouldn't normally allow you to do. In any case, why not both? I'd definitely be up for BioWare putting more things to do and ways to interact with the world than just killing things (especially with the current combat system) and gathering supplies though! Being able to steal from anyone, kill anyone, destroy things, build things, etc...

[Sylvius the Mad]

I'm sure you can see how this doesn't really work with a party based game.

I'm afraid I don't. I'm a big fan of classless systems.

The way to make it work in a party-based game is to have way more abilities than one character can learn with any competence, so the party benefits from specialization. They can't all be fighter/mage/thieves if doing so prevents you from being particularly good at any one thing.

Remember how AD&D worked, where XP was split among your classes if you were multiclassed. A Fighter/Mage/Thief was good at a lot of things, but he gained levels way slower than everyone else because it his XP as split 3 ways.

And in 3E D&D, this problem was addressed by only letting you earn XP in one class at a time, but then also limited the total number of levels you could have, so a level spent on Cleric was one that couldn't be spent elsewhere.

Class systems can be great, too, though I'd prefer not to be limited in terms of which characters can do which things. More variety would be good. I was thinking about this recently: imagine a typical fantasy MMO, which has a whole bunch of classes. A small group of 4 characters can be effective, but there are a bunch of different party compositions which can work. Now imagine a single-player party-based RPG like that. That would basically be Wizardry, or Might & Magic, where there are way more classes than you can use at once, and their abilities overlap.

But one of he further advantages of a classless system is that we can swap out one character for another. In DAI, I really liked having a Tempest in my party, but I had trouble designing a character which was compatible with Sera's personality. But, unless I'm playing a Tempest myself, I can't have a Tempest in my party unless I have Sera in my party, and that's irritating.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Because (good) quests have storylines, interesting characters to interact with, and unique ways to resolve that exploration wouldn't normally allow you to do. In any case, why not both? I'd definitely be up for BioWare putting more things to do and ways to interact with the world than just killing things (especially with the current combat system) and gathering supplies though! Being able to steal from anyone, kill anyone, destroy things, build things, etc...

Both would be great.  Too often, though, BioWare hides all the content behind quests (BG2, for example).

[straykat]

Because (good) quests have storylines, interesting characters to interact with, and unique ways to resolve that exploration wouldn't normally allow you to do. In any case, why not both? I'd definitely be up for BioWare putting more things to do and ways to interact with the world than just killing things (especially with the current combat system) and gathering supplies though! Being able to steal from people, kill them, destroy things, build things, etc...

 

I could do with all of those.. but I'm also easily pleased by good dungeon designs.. and just believable NPCs wandering about or doing funny **** that sparks curiosity. This is all Bethesda really does, more or less. It has a kind of "investigative" feel to it. Stumbling on a bundle of corpses, and a nearby cave, wondering what happened and what or who lurks inside. Most of these hardly have any dialogue at all, but it feels alive. And as pretty as the world design is in DAI, it doesn't come close.

[Nefla]

Both would be great.  Too often, though, BioWare hides all the content behind quests (BG2, for example).

I wish you could talk to random NPCs as just part of the ambiance and to flesh out the world rather than having every one of them be a quest giver or reciever.

[Nefla]

I could do with all of those.. but I'm also easily pleased by good dungeon designs.. and just believable NPCs wandering about or doing funny **** that sparks curiosity. This is all Bethesda really does, more or less. It has a kind of "investigative" feel to it. Stumbling on a bundle of corpses, and a nearby cave, wondering what happened and what or who lurks inside. Most of these hardly have any dialogue at all, but it feels alive. And as pretty as the world design is in DAI, it doesn't come close.

I agree and I would love to have some really difficult puzzles and riddles as well and some long and difficult optional dungeons with worthwhile and unique rewards

[straykat]

I agree and I would love to have some really difficult puzzles and riddles as well and some long and difficult optional dungeons with worthwhile and unique rewards

 

I agree on that.. but I don't expect many puzzles from RPGs. It's always welcomed though. I'm a bigger adventure gamer more than RPGer actually.

[vbibbi]

haha it looks like oglaf.com has been reading this thread! This week's comic relates to the topic. Warning, the website overall is NSFW but this comic is.

[Alex Hawke]

I'm afraid I don't. I'm a big fan of classless systems.

The way to make it work in a party-based game is to have way more abilities than one character can learn with any competence, so the party benefits from specialization. They can't all be fighter/mage/thieves if doing so prevents you from being particularly good at any one thing.

Remember how AD&D worked, where XP was split among your classes if you were multiclassed. A Fighter/Mage/Thief was good at a lot of things, but he gained levels way slower than everyone else because it his XP as split 3 ways.

And in 3E D&D, this problem was addressed by only letting you earn XP in one class at a time, but then also limited the total number of levels you could have, so a level spent on Cleric was one that couldn't be spent elsewhere.

Class systems can be great, too, though I'd prefer not to be limited in terms of which characters can do which things. More variety would be good. I was thinking about this recently: imagine a typical fantasy MMO, which has a whole bunch of classes. A small group of 4 characters can be effective, but there are a bunch of different party compositions which can work. Now imagine a single-player party-based RPG like that. That would basically be Wizardry, or Might & Magic, where there are way more classes than you can use at once, and their abilities overlap.

But one of he further advantages of a classless system is that we can swap out one character for another. In DAI, I really liked having a Tempest in my party, but I had trouble designing a character which was compatible with Sera's personality. But, unless I'm playing a Tempest myself, I can't have a Tempest in my party unless I have Sera in my party, and that's irritating.

Class provides more immersion, some personal traits of the character linked to abilities they use.

 

Speaking of D&D, has anyone here played Dragon's Dogma? It strongly reminds D&D in terms of setting. There are classes, but it's possible to switch between them during playthrough.

Also DD:DA strictly divides main, side and notice board quests.

[vbibbi]

Class provides more immersion, some personal traits of the character linked to abilities they use.

 

Speaking of D&D, has anyone here played Dragon's Dogma? It strongly reminds D&D in terms of setting. There are classes, but it's possible to switch between them during playthrough.

Also DD:DA strictly divides main, side and notice board quests.

I played it for a bit but quickly got bored of the generic world and the combat. There was hardly any interaction with people and I think it was focused more on the combat system than story. The idea of dynamic fights with large creatures was interesting, but past that there didn't seem to be much to it.

[straykat]

I still own it, but never played far. Saved for a rainy day, I guess. I'll agree with Vhibbi though.. I liked the combat and boss battles, from what little I played. But this is Capcom, after all. I expect that. I wish more western developers learned this stuff at least.

[AlanC9]

The way to make it work in a party-based game is to have way more abilities than one character can learn with any competence, so the party benefits from specialization. They can't all be fighter/mage/thieves if doing so prevents you from being particularly good at any one thing.

That's the obvious takeaway from playing a PnP classless system. But a lot of CRPG players probably think of TES games, where the PC really can get good at everything. Morrowind outright rewarded you for training in skills you were never intending to use, for instance. Nothing much to do with classless, though; it's just a specific case of the general design intent.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I wish you could talk to random NPCs as just part of the ambiance and to flesh out the world rather than having every one of them be a quest giver or reciever.

We lost that when they atarted voicing all the NPC dialogue. NPC dialogue became too expensive.

Honestly, the way NWN did it was fine. Voice the opening line from important NPCs and leave the rest silent.

That said, I'd be perfectly happy with how Ultima IV handled dialogue.

[straykat]

I like classless games, but there's too much narrative emphasis on magic in this setting for it to be available to all. It needs to be have it's own roleplaying path. Otherwise, I like crafting a character's story/personality through sheer skill. You lose a lot of this with a class.