CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

Post by DaveW »

Cybernetic pig wrote:That is just ignorant. Yes PC is superior in so many ways but saying no console games are good is just....
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(I'm sure this is the second time I've used this on the forum in as many months.)
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Wow sorry guys I took that completely the wrong way. Both of your posts... #-o
In response to your posts in the other thread, no hard feelings.

But I will say that its not just the lack of a jump mechanic, its regen health, sticky cover shooting, hand holding, streamlined RPG mechanics, Cutscenes substituting gameplay.
I believe some of the above can be great in games if used in moderation and effectively, its just that they are usually all bundled together and overused (especially the cutscene substitution technique).

I came late to the party, I was happy playing old console & old PC games for years, then I got an Xbox360 in 2009 and was SWAMPED with all this bullshit, and well it was a huge disappointment. I had the perspective of buying all the new generation sequals to my old favourites cheap & all in a small time frame. I'd say the only one I even remotely enjoyed was Wolfenstien, and it wasn't amazing. everything else was dumbed down, and new IPs did not impress. It was surreal, even racing games like need for speed were dumbed down.
The only actual real improvement to an old series was Fallout imo.

I have found some great modern games since though, but I have about 13 xbox360 games vs hundreds of older generation PC & console games(I only keep games I consider good). DX1 is still my favourite out of the lot.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Cybernetic pig wrote:But I will say that its not just the lack of a jump mechanic, its regen health, sticky cover shooting, hand holding, streamlined RPG mechanics, Cutscenes substituting gameplay.
I believe some of the above can be great in games if used in moderation and effectively, its just that they are usually all bundled together and overused (especially the cutscene substitution technique).
I don't see what's wrong with regenerating health. When you have a persistent health level system, you get problems like poor medkit placement or saving the game when you've got low health and not being able to progress (without restarting the level.) - both of which ruin the enjoyment of the game. Neither system is 'perfect' - and regenerating health won't suit some games (Deus Ex, Stalker etc.) but for most shooters it's better than the alternative.

And I love streamlined RPG mechanics. Deus Ex was fucking bloated. I want to focus on the experience, I don't want to spend hours just figuring out the menu system of a game.

Other points I generally agree on - cover shooting is boring, excessive hand holding takes some of the interactivity out of the game, and I mostly hate cutscenes unless they're essential.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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I also love streamlined RPG mechanics. But I love bloated and overcomplex FPSRPGs too.

I think sticky cover is a great mechanic, but not having it can create some fun dynamics as well.

Regenerating health is a huge relief and really lets you focus on the minute-to-minute gameplay. Yet, without regenerating health you're forced to strategise and plan on the longer term, which is great for certain game experiences.

...

I'm pretty easy to please, all told.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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DaveW wrote: And I love streamlined RPG mechanics. Deus Ex was fucking bloated. I want to focus on the experience, I don't want to spend hours just figuring out the menu system of a game.
.
WHAT!? That is the best thing about DX gameplay-wise. You are being sarcastic again, aren't you? Who takes hours figuring out the menus in a video game? Does that mean you were happy with the RPG gameplay mechanics in invisible war?
I am noy being patronising, I am generally confused wether or not you are being sarcastic again? Lol.
Jonas wrote:Yet, without regenerating health you're forced to strategise and plan on the longer term, which is great for certain game experiences.
This. But yes regen heath is great too as long as it is not overpowered. But it does not belong in RPGs.

Just look at System Shock 2, there is a ton of strategy and options linked to the health system alone.
I dont think I ever played a game with bad medkit placement.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Cybernetic pig wrote:
DaveW wrote: And I love streamlined RPG mechanics. Deus Ex was fucking bloated. I want to focus on the experience, I don't want to spend hours just figuring out the menu system of a game.
.
WHAT!? That is the best thing about DX gameplay-wise. You are being sarcastic again, aren't you? Who takes hours figuring out the menus in a video game? Does that mean you were happy with the RPG gameplay mechanics in invisible war?
I am noy being patronising, I am generally confused wether or not you are being sarcastic again? Lol.
No the best thing about DX's gameplay were the choices you made - but you don't need hundreds of different ways to make those choices. In Deus Ex you had multiple overlapping systems which felt like a mess - I preferred IW's approach in a lot of ways because by focussing on Augmentations they became critical to character development. In my first DX playthrough I didn't even have to use any Augs.

IW oversimplified, but I think the general idea they had of streamlining was correct - Human Revolution was between the two and got the balance right. In terms of gameplay mechanics, HR is far better than the original in my opinion.

Cybernetic pig wrote:
Jonas wrote:Yet, without regenerating health you're forced to strategise and plan on the longer term, which is great for certain game experiences.
This. But yes regen heath is great too as long as it is not overpowered. But it does not belong in RPGs.

Just look at System Shock 2, there is a ton of strategy and options linked to the health system alone.
I dont think I ever played a game with bad medkit placement.
Depends on the RPG. It worked fine in Human Revolution, but wouldn't work in Stalker or Skyrim.

I can't speak for SS2 because I didn't get very far in it before getting bored, I've been meaning to start playing it again. Add if you haven't played a game with bad medkit placement, you can't have played many games.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

Post by Cybernetic pig »

Evaluation: Does not compute.

I fail to accept your opinions in that post, even though I agreed with everything you said in the other thread when discussing jump mechanic etc. Hopefully SS2 can change your mind when you play it again, because its design, along with DX, is far more advanced and entertaining than any other games in my opinion.
Well at least for their time they were far more advanced, but I dont think anyone has quite got it right since, no depth and simulation design, hand holding and cutscenes instead.
Last edited by Cybernetic pig on Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

Post by AEmer »

I'm...not sure I should be joining the conversation here but...I do feel like I have something to add.

There _is_ a problem with regenereating health: It's like placing a medbot after _every_ encounter. It makes encounter design simpler, because you always know what the player has, but it makes encounters less dynamic, because the player always has a rigid baseline of options.

Human Revolution was f'in awesome, but that's because it managed to provide absolutely brilliant fighting environments and an awesome stealth-centric AI. Furthermore, sure, you had full health, but that health was really very low if you picked your augs and difficulty level right, and the bioelectric energy was a long term strategic resource allowing you to splurge on some encounters if you wanted, giving you that additional variability between encounters. So if you played the game on "deus ex" mode, you really got something that had significant elements reminiscent of the original.

But the original Deus Ex, I'd say, had much more variability between encounters due to the multitude of inventory items and the health system, and as such, how pressured you felt was more dynamic and the situations were more changeable...not to mention, your augs and skills underwent massive changes throughout the game, making every encounter feel like a significantly distinct problem, one unique to you, one requiring your unique creative solution.

Arguing back and forth about the regenerating health, or the interface (or perhaps more precisely, the result of said interface)...eh, that seems to be just a couple of mechanics contributing to the variability of encounters. I mean, sure, these elements do push the game towards dynamic situations, or away from dynamic situations, but ultimately they're tools for generating the dynamic situations, not things that automatically cause them. As such, saying that their pressence is one thing or another seems to miss the point.

To say that modern games are more or less likely to generate these dynamic situations is absolutely silly. It's a specific design goal; either a game design team tries to achieve it, and values it, or it doesn't. Perhaps it's a less common for games to be designed with that goal these days; I don't think so, but I could see that being possible. But either way, if games you can't find as many games with dynamic situations, then that would be the reason; not the pressence or absence of regenerating health, but rather the fact that fewer game designers value those dynamic sitations highly enough.

When talking about games, you need to divorce yourself from analysis that says "this mechanic results in this" or "game designers do these mechanics because they're popular". It's frankly too simple, and only hack designers would do that; they'd set up goals, and try to look at the techniques in relation to those goals.

In other words, if games have fewer dynamic situations these days, or fewer games have dynamic situations these days, or however you want to put it, the root cause is this: The designers _do not want_ the games to have them. At least not for these specific games. If you want to understand why that is - well then, that's a discussion that takes us in a completely different direction than this completely mechanics-focused approach.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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DaveW wrote:
No the best thing about DX's gameplay were the choices you made.
Hmn yes I probably agree with you on that one, but The RPG elements tie into choice and consequence.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Aemer wrote:Arguing back and forth about the regenerating health, or the interface (or perhaps more precisely, the result of said interface)...eh, that seems to be just a couple of mechanics contributing to the variability of encounters. I mean, sure, these elements do push the game towards dynamic situations, or away from dynamic situations, but ultimately they're tools for generating the dynamic situations, not things that automatically cause them. As such, saying that their pressence is one thing or another seems to miss the point.
Exactly. The player's health status is just one of many variables that can differ at the start of each encounter. At the very least, games with regenerating health also have weapon load-outs and ammunition count - look at Halo and CoD which were the first games to start using regenerating health, they were also the first games to limit you to two weapons at a time. RPGs have even more variables to account for, particularly experience level and the fundamental build of your character. Resetting one particular variable between every encounter does not mean you always enter every encounter in the same state. It just means at the very least you'll have a fighting chance - if you're hurled into a fight with no guns, no ammo, and not enough special abilities, at least you'll have enough health to make a run for it :P
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Jonas wrote: Resetting one particular variable between every encounter does not mean you always enter every encounter in the same state. It just means at the very least you'll have a fighting chance - if you're hurled into a fight with no guns, no ammo, and not enough special abilities, at least you'll have enough health to make a run for it :P
But that is what easy mode is for- to ensure gamers who are not very good never get into those situations. In the case of RPGs there is usually temporary buff items iyou can use if you run into a hardcore enemy when at a low level and need to escape.

I think most games should be designed with medkits etc in mind, but easy mode has regen health comparable to skyrim. Multiplayer however matches regen health perfectly.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Cybernetic pig wrote:But that is what easy mode is for- to ensure gamers who are not very good never get into those situations.
There are two really obvious counters to that argument.

First, if health is a finite resource, no matter how easy you otherwise make the game, you can't ensure that players won't get themselves into an unwinnable situation.

Second, allowing the player to get into an unwinnable situation is typically seen as poor design. Perhaps you disagree, and that's certainly your right. I know you're not alone. Most people, however, do not appreciate having to start all over on a game because they forgot to save in different slots and now they're facing down 20 enemies with no bullets left and 5% health. That's an extreme edge case I'm describing, sure, but unless you have health regen, you can't guarantee that they won't happen.
In the case of RPGs there is usually temporary buff items iyou can use if you run into a hardcore enemy when at a low level and need to escape.
But what if you've already spent all those buff items?

A special ability with a cooldown, you say? Well what if you didn't pick that one when you levelled up?

Ah, perhaps the old "if you pick a poor character build you may have to start over and that's fine" argument. Sure, that's valid. Just realise that people who like that sort of game balance are a pretty small niche, and you're not going to be able to justify building expensive modern games with high production values if that's your target audience.

Sorry to put words in your mouth, I'm just trying to anticipate some possible retorts :P
I think most games should be designed with medkits etc in mind, but easy mode has regen health comparable to skyrim. Multiplayer however matches regen health perfectly.
That might work, but it just seems like you're setting yourself up to a spanking as a developer if you decide that your game should be balanced both for medkits and for health regen. The encounter design for a game like that would be the most massive clusterfuck imagineable :P
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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Cybernetic pig wrote:
DaveW wrote:
No the best thing about DX's gameplay were the choices you made.
Hmn yes I probably agree with you on that one, but The RPG elements tie into choice and consequence.
I agree that RPG elements tie into it - i.e. choosing your augs or your skills. What I'm saying is that you don't need both doing the same thing.

For example: take the Aqualung Aug, the Swimming Skill and the Rebreather. If I can just carry a rebreather, why would I make the choice to upgrade my swimming skill or get the aug? I have more flexibility with the item because I can drop it if I need to, so I'm inclined not to make that decision about my character. However, if the rebreather and swimming skill weren't there, the only way to swim a long distance is the aqualung. I then have a choice to make - do I want to frequently use water as a means of travel?

Multiple systems overlapping remove that.
AEmer wrote:But the original Deus Ex, I'd say, had much more variability between encounters due to the multitude of inventory items and the health system, and as such, how pressured you felt was more dynamic and the situations were more changeable...not to mention, your augs and skills underwent massive changes throughout the game, making every encounter feel like a significantly distinct problem, one unique to you, one requiring your unique creative solution.
I think Deus Ex had more variable encounters than HR because the environments were more varied. I don't think, in reference to what I've been saying, having both skills and augs makes it any more varied than just augs.

In fact I think if Deus Ex had the augmentation system HR did, the encounters would be even more varied. Who frequently upgrades their swimming skill or environmental resistance on a Deus Ex play-through? In HR, every aug has a purpose and benefits a particular play-style: I can see why someone would pick each one to play a certain way.
Jonas wrote:Most people, however, do not appreciate having to start all over on a game because they forgot to save in different slots and now they're facing down 20 enemies with no bullets left and 5% health. That's an extreme edge case I'm describing, sure, but unless you have health regen, you can't guarantee that they won't happen.
This is the main reason I do actually like Regenerating health, because it's a frequent occurance in older FPS games (for me, anyway) - sure, I could go back and redo a section again, but that ruins the fun of the game. I want each encounter to be challenging but I want a fair fight.
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Re: CD Projekt is making a new "triple-A RPG"

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@ Jonas comments on painting yourself into a corner.

I do recall having to restore from earlier saves a lot when I was younger. In particular, I've made plenty of characters for both fallout 2 and baldurs gate, and even planescape torment, because I couldn't seem to get certain builds to work. Same thing with Morrowind.

This is most certainly not the way current game designers do things, but honestly, this old timey design paradign isn't necessarily inferior. I mean, in some regards it's clearly supperior, and in others, it's clearly inferior, which means that designing for personal taste is always going to play into it...but even disregarding that, we don't really have any metrics that condemn or redeem the old timey paradigm of letting the player figure out how to make characters by expecting him to try his hand making a few.

Anyway, it cuts relatively close to the issue Jonas mentions: The threat of painting yourself into a corner. It's one of the only ways to truly scare a player; to invalidate all that he has done so far. I know that plenty of gamers abuse the quick save to avoid it, ensuring optimum conservation of resources; and to be perfectly honest, I did something similar a couple of years ago when I replayed several crucial battles in King Arthur multiple times to ensure that I didn't commit to a phyrric victory.

It is also without a doubt the single most appealing part of survival horror games; it's crucial to the gameplay of those games that you can fuck yourself over.

But again, as with the other games I mention, we don't really have any metrics on this. I mean, it's obvious that Jonas is right, and that currently, game developers seem to shy away from allowing players to fuck themselves over, but we don't actually know if this is what the majority of players would be happiest with...and for some games, it's clearly part of the appeal.

Finally...
You can fix a system that allows the player to paint himself into a corner in many fashions. First of all, having a nice checkpoint based save system that ensures you have a permanent record of your game that you can roll back onto is a cheap and simple fix to 99% (guesstimate) of all issues in this area. The remainder can be solved by having a grossly inoptimal but potential fix available at key points during the game that will fix the issue going forward, as well as allowing easier game modes.

continued below:
@ Deus Ex dynamic situations

Here's the thing though: You don't actually need to allow a player to paint himself into a corner to have a huge number of dynamic situations. Health is a simple and solid resource, but there's no reason it should be the only resource that has an impact on how the player plays. In fact, the more resources that source a player with capacity for action, the more dynamic the encounter; and if you make sure that a player always has a base amount of a specific resource, and always can adjust the difficulty level such that this amount will be enough, then the problem is permanently solved. I would probably gloss over this problem, and simply build in a system of cheatcodes that chatsupport/phonesupport could hand out upon getting a description of a location where a player has painted himself into a corner to get him unstuck. After all, a player who does this isn't at fault, and if he gets the code legitimately, it's not like a regular cheat, particularly if it's very limited in function...
But again, that's besides the point: You don't have to eliminate regenerating health to provide dynamic situations. You just don't. IF there aren't enough dynamic situations it's because game developers don't feel they're important to engineer, not because health regeneration is popular.

@ DaveW

I think you're wrong about the rebreather vs. aqualung, and here's why: In 2 of my 4 deus ex playthroughs, I've gotten the swimming skill. Not even a lie. The rebreathers though, I've rarely gotten, because they take up too much damn space.
I've also run with the environmental resistance a couple of times. It's brilliant in conjunction with gas grenades.

That's besides the point though: Having overlapping systems where one seems supperior is absolutely fine. Systems don't have to be even. Some players don't care about skill points, but care a lot about inventory space and augmentations. Some don't care about augmentations, but about skillpoints and inventory space. And some don't care about inventory space, but want the other two to be perfect.

Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Each way of swimming for longer without air has it's own strengths and shortcommings, and each one is paid for by a unique currency.

Alright, you don't think the systems are balanced, because you think one is clearly supperior in every regard. Well why not balance it then, why argue that it should be cut down? Make the rebreather a scuba kit taking up 4 or 6 spaces inventory spaces if it's that onesided. By having the various overlapping systems, you create not only a more detailed and interactive game world, you make the encounters more unique and dynamic.

My point is this: Even if you somehow think cutting down on the ways to become a better swimmer would make the various relevant situations in Deus Ex _more_ dynamic, surely simply _balancing_ those ways to become a better swimmer would be even better still.

This again underlines the problem, and the only real solution: Having a prolific number of situations that have dynamic issues and difficulty is ultimately best solved by working towards that specific goal, not by choosing any one gameplay technique over another.
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