Rumour: Disney Is Closing Warren Spector’s Junction Point

[Jonas]

That's true I suppose. But imo total conversions like that are on the very edge of being mods and very close to simply being different things in the same engine. I mean, did they turn HL2 into an rts, or make an rts in the source engine?

Doesn't matter. If they can turn Half-Life 2 into an RTS, they can fix any mechanic in the game that might be found objectionable. "Fixing" Skyrim to the satisfaction of most people would probably always be less work than turning an FPS into an RTS.

A TC is not so much a modification of the original work as it is an new game using the assets, in most cases.

But isn't that basically what you want done to Skyrim?

Skyrim would take years to "fix", nearly every dungeon would need redesigning, Gameplay mechanics overhaul, quest improvements etc (just my douchey opinion).

So your problem isn't really bad core gameplay, but that you inexplicably hate every single aspect of the game. That takes us into somewhat different territory. I was addressing Jaedar's claim that mods can't fix individual core game mechanics that are interfering with the fundamental game experience. Clearly no mod could ever turn Skyrim into a game that you would enjoy.

[Cybernetic pig]

But isn't that basically what you want done to Skyrim?

Well, yes and no. I suppose it would almost be a completely different game....it would be more like Morrowind, but with less copy & paste, Skyrim graphics, refined and deepened gameplay mechanics and better dungeons.

So your problem isn't really bad core gameplay, but that you inexplicably hate every single aspect of the game.

Huh? I never said that. I very much enjoyed Morrowind, and they are quite similar.

That takes us into somewhat different territory. I was addressing Jaedar's claim that mods can't fix individual core game mechanics that are interfering with the fundamental game experience. Clearly no mod could ever turn Skyrim into a game that you would enjoy.

Something akin to a combination of Revision & GMDX, only on a huge scale? How many dungeons are there in Skyrim? But that is part of the problem for the bad design- trading depth for breadth/quality for quantity.

I generally prefer as much content as possible in a game, but not when a lot of that content is just copy n paste or poorly designed.

Anyway going off topic: Whatever happens I wish WS all the best, but you know that I secretly hope for him to get fired and make a game better than Deus Ex, because I am a selfish asshole. Hey, from Ultima Underworld to System Shock to Deus Ex, why stop the evolution there?

[DDL]

Well, it did evolve from there. Just not in the directions you desired.

[Cybernetic pig]

Indeed.

[gamer0004]

Skyrim would take years to "fix", nearly every dungeon would need redesigning, Gameplay mechanics overhaul, quest improvements etc (just my douchey opinion).

So your problem isn't really bad core gameplay, but that you inexplicably hate every single aspect of the game. That takes us into somewhat different territory. I was addressing Jaedar's claim that mods can't fix individual core game mechanics that are interfering with the fundamental game experience. Clearly no mod could ever turn Skyrim into a game that you would enjoy.

Not really. The designs of Skyrim dungeons are part of the core game design. And, much like CP, I don't like that core game design in Skyrim very much.
Game design, and especially "good" game design has focused far too much on mechanics in the past few years. The dungeons are a great example: you go through the dungeon, find good loot and the quest item at the end, go through some door or down a cliff and hey presto you're back at the entrance, which means you don't have to backtrack. That's good gameplay mechanics by rewarding the player and reducing unnecessary and unfun effort. In terms of the bigger picture, of a game as a package of gameplay, narrative and setting (which in my opinion is especially important in RPGs) it's terrible. It makes the game feel like a theme park, designed to maximise fun, not like an actual place.

To improve (to my preferences) Skyrim it would be necessary to completely redo all dungeons, all quests, the narrative, the setting (particularly politics: only two really important factions is rather dull) and probably much of the gameplay mechanics (I prefer not being able to handle all enemies at level 1, and to actually become powerful rather than merely specialised).

A mod isn't going to do that. Even if there were people who'd more or less agree with me, it's impossible to revamp Skyrim in such a way that it becomes a good game with a team of less than 30 people who know what they're doing working full time for a number of years.

(I'm playing Morrowind again and gosh it is good. It somehow manages to feel like a real world with interesting and complex relations, politics and history.)

[DDL]

So you would be perfectly ok if Warren Spector made a DX-alike game in the near future, but it turned out like Invisible War, or worse than IW? (Imo IW wasn't that bad, just nowhere near as good as the original).
I would be devastated myself, as I said- the industry needs saving. Plus I would be so hyped because there hasn't been a good FP/RP/IS since 2002 (Arx Fatalis), except for FO:NV (haven't played STALKER yet as you know).

Feel I should address this. Yes, I'd be delighted if Spector continued to make games, no matter what they were, since he's a visionary figure in gaming. I'm sure epic mickey had a ton of interesting features: It's not his fault I can't fucking stand mickey mouse. The point is, he's generally not afraid to try new things, to try to make the games HE wants to make, not the games WE want him to make. Or indeed, the games that sales figures would suggest he should make.

Secondly, the industry doesn't need saving. The industry is, all things considered, fucking THRIVING. The entertainment sector is one of the few that has weathered the recession well: people are miserable and poor, so seek "FUN!". Games now sell to a huge section of the population, and casual gaming itself is a huge section of this. The more easy and accessible your game is, the wider the market it can appeal to. Mariokart games tend to sell vastly more copies than, say...hardcore tactical shooters with realistic barrel rifling mechanics.
So there's that. Gaming is now an established part of the economy: it's no longer the sole preserve of spotty teens crouching round a LAN, it's something even grandma can enjoy. You are simply going to have to come to terms with the fact that you've gone from being a devotee of a fringe hobby, to a devotee of a fringe aspect of a mainstream hobby. Still, one advantage of this mainsteam uptake is that people can come from the other direction: Human Revolution was essentially an exercise in seeing how much RPG the casual gamer could handle, and given that it sold fairly well, this is encouraging.

But anyway: this is why the industry benefits from visionaries: without crazy people trying crazy things, the industry may stagnate (and indeed, if you look at the FIFA series, the Madden series and the Call of Duty-em ups, it effective has in places). Wishing that those crazy people would make the same games they used to, only more modern, is EQUALLY stagnant, however. It's like wishing Da Vinci had painted multiple versions of la giaconda, each using slightly more modern oil paints.
"Hey! Hey, Leonardo: they can do this amazing green now! It has shader model 4 and everything! I reckon you should do that painting again, you know: the one with the smiling chick? I fucking LOVE that painting."

Or, we could sit back and see what flavour of crazy he coughs up next. It might fail, it might be awesome. But it will hopefully be different. Games are art, and art evolves. You may particularly like renaissance cityscapes, but you'll look a bit silly saying "Have you seen this shit people have pumped out since Canaletto? The art world needs saving". The same applies to gaming.


Finally: seriously the only two first person RPG-a-like games you've liked since DX have been Arx and New Vegas?
Not Bloodlines? Dark Messiah? Anything else?

[gamer0004]

It's not a binary choice, either making the same game over and over or making new, innovative games. He could do both: make a sequel to DX, and an innovative new project after that &c. There aren't many good RPGs around, so it would be awesome if he'd make another DX and leave the innovation for the coming two years to others who won't make the next DX.

[DaveW]

The dungeons are a great example: you go through the dungeon, find good loot and the quest item at the end, go through some door or down a cliff and hey presto you're back at the entrance, which means you don't have to backtrack. That's good gameplay mechanics by rewarding the player and reducing unnecessary and unfun effort. In terms of the bigger picture, of a game as a package of gameplay, narrative and setting (which in my opinion is especially important in RPGs) it's terrible. It makes the game feel like a theme park, designed to maximise fun, not like an actual place.

Jesus, I'm glad they did do that because what you seem to suggest sounds fucking terrible. I don't want to backtrack an empty dungeon for 'immersion'; that would just annoy me, which would break the immersion anyway.

[Cybernetic pig]

Secondly, the industry doesn't need saving. The industry is, all things considered, fucking THRIVING. The entertainment sector is one of the few that has weathered the recession well: people are miserable and poor, so seek "FUN!". Games now sell to a huge section of the population, and casual gaming itself is a huge section of this. The more easy and accessible your game is, the wider the market it can appeal to.

Well of course, you know that what I meant by "saving" was a gaming revolution sparked from a WS epic that causes more games I consider good to be made.

Wishing that those crazy people would make the same games they used to, only more modern, is EQUALLY stagnant, however.

In your opinion.

Or, we could sit back and see what flavour of crazy he coughs up next. It might fail, it might be awesome. But it will hopefully be different. Games are art, and art evolves. You may particularly like renaissance cityscapes, but you'll look a bit silly saying "Have you seen this shit people have pumped out since Canaletto? The art world needs saving". The same applies to gaming.

Well, I dont know about that. Making games is far more advanced than painting a picture (which is no easy task in itself), and when someone says "Have you seen this shit people have pumped out since Canaletto? The art world needs saving", there's likely to be a lot of opinion behind that. There is a HUGE difference between say popular smartphone game app x, and Deus Ex, so I dont think it's quite as silly as you say.

Finally: seriously the only two first person RPG-a-like games you've liked since DX have been Arx and New Vegas?
Not Bloodlines? Dark Messiah? Anything else?

Well FO3 was brilliant, but now completely overshadowed by FO:NV for me, and yes, Bloodlines is fucking amazing with the community patches, yet I still believe it deserves some actual decent (in my opinion) mods, not some bullshit mod that adds companions, or improves the pixelated pin-up gir pictures. Entering douche territory again, but meh.

Jesus, I'm glad they did do that because what you seem to suggest sounds fucking terrible. I don't want to backtrack an empty dungeon for 'immersion'; that would just annoy me, which would break the immersion anyway.

Well. I disagree with Gamers statement that those are good gameplay mechanics. I'll follow up later, brb whatever.

[DDL]

Edit: @DaveW
It's an understandable desire, though: there's definitely a market for the truly "immersive sim" type environment. It's just that it's SUCH a fringe market, it's unlikely to ever be profitable catering to. And of course, generally speaking the more fringe a group is, the harder they are to please, so even if you made a skyrim-a-like with a stamina bar that depleted after four minutes of gentle jogging, that forced you to eat a decent meal three times a day, get plenty of sleep, with wound recovery times measured in weeks and permanent injury systems, you'd still have people complaining that the "deer skinning mechanic" isn't complex enough or something.

Some people truly, honestly do want to lose themselves in a gameworld, warts and all. And indeed, often the more warts the better. Look at DayZ, for instance: that fucking game is unforgiving as hell, but some people love that shit.

Most of us, though, just want to kill dragons with hammers.

Edit: @CP

I think it's fairly safe to say "doing the same thing over and over again" qualifies as stagnation, without needing to bring opinion into it. Though of course, that is just my opinion.
Would you say the COD series, the FIFA series, and the Madden series are stagnant? Or does Madden 2013 bring something to the table that NO OTHER MADDEN GAME HAS?

[Cybernetic pig]

I think it's fairly safe to say "doing the same thing over and over again" qualifies as stagnation, without needing to bring opinion into it. Though of course, that is just my opinion.

Well yeah, but in my opinion FP/RP/IS games are FAR from stagnation, and even though they all share many similar (superior) characteristics, each are unique in their own brilliant way.
If they kept being made the same way, they would never get stagnant for me. They are all unique.
Deus Ex in space needs to be done, Mass Effect is silly in my opinion. Smart, but has bad design in vital areas.

[Cybernetic pig]

The dungeons are a great example: you go through the dungeon, find good loot and the quest item at the end, go through some door or down a cliff and hey presto you're back at the entrance, which means you don't have to backtrack. That's good gameplay mechanics by rewarding the player and reducing unnecessary and unfun effort. In terms of the bigger picture, of a game as a package of gameplay, narrative and setting (which in my opinion is especially important in RPGs) it's terrible. It makes the game feel like a theme park, designed to maximise fun, not like an actual place.

If it were designed to maximize fun, then I would not be complaining. Fun is what I look for first when I play a game. Following that same dungeon routine is not fun.
The keywords for better skyrim dungeon design is variety and challenge. And whilst there is some variety to Skyrim dungeons there is not enough.
Yes, they all follow that same simple routine, but it was designed to maximize accessibility, not fun.
On to the puzzles- the reoccurring picture matchup puzzles. Well, nothing really needs to be said about them.
Theme, there are what, 8 different themes that each dungeon designer has been allowed? All probably with a checklist- no platforming, only picture matchup puzzles allowed and on special occasion maybe a whirlwind sprint or other shout related puzzle allowed, and all have to follow the circuit design for the player to exit no hassle.
No challenge, minimal variety. That is not good/fun design.

And what happened to challenge progression? Sure it's open world so the player can stray right from the beginning, but that should result in increased challenge if the player doesn't want to follow the starting quest/dungeons to gain power and knowledge first.

You only need to look at Fallout: NV to see how it's done right anyway, although there is not as much challenge as I would like. And I would like a bit of platforming for a few dungeons too, but everything else is spot on.
Fallout needs an acrobatics perk/skill Also for agility to actually effect running speed as it clearly states it does right at the beginning of the game.

Anyway are not the objective markers and easy mode enough for accessibility? And then there is always the internet or guide books as a last resort if they have trouble.

How about an in-game guide book in the options that casuals can refer to if stuck? More thought on the subject can result in a better solution.

As for Dave saying he is glad he doesn't have to backtrack in Skyrim dungeons every time, I agree with the every time part, they should be like Morrowind's dungeons- a good mix of both.

Morrowind was popular enough, happy customers. And if they went the honourable route they still could have achieved great sales with subsequent releases. Happy customers=Word of mouth/hype. Games in the past have been very successful without selling out.

Well, at least Bethesda seemingly allowed Obsidian to do their thing with FO:NV, so that's great....other than forcing them to release early, resulting in a shit ton of bugs, AND they missed out on their $1.000.000 bonus because they were 1 point off of meeting their Metacritic target of a score of 85.
Well, they obviously had a contract- release by x date, get scores of 85 and receive a 1mil bonus, but the game was filled with tons of bugs so they did not get the review scores needed. So they shouldn't have even had a silly contract like that to begin with.
I suppose I am not in the position to say how that shit went down, but the game still had great sales and was popular even without dumbed down design and all the bugs.

The objective Markers and easy mode were enough for Obsidian. And what are they doing now? Designing a game funded by fans that met it's kickstarter target of 3 million in what was it, a day?

The only thing I dont get is that apparently they are the same devs who made Alpha Protocol, and that game was even sillier than Mass effect

[gamer0004]

Edit: @DaveW
It's an understandable desire, though: there's definitely a market for the truly "immersive sim" type environment. It's just that it's SUCH a fringe market, it's unlikely to ever be profitable catering to. And of course, generally speaking the more fringe a group is, the harder they are to please, so even if you made a skyrim-a-like with a stamina bar that depleted after four minutes of gentle jogging, that forced you to eat a decent meal three times a day, get plenty of sleep, with wound recovery times measured in weeks and permanent injury systems, you'd still have people complaining that the "deer skinning mechanic" isn't complex enough or something.

Some people truly, honestly do want to lose themselves in a gameworld, warts and all. And indeed, often the more warts the better. Look at DayZ, for instance: that fucking game is unforgiving as hell, but some people love that shit.

Most of us, though, just want to kill dragons with hammers.

An accurate observation. Indeed, I loved Day Z. Right up to the moment when, after I had finally found some nice gear and sufficient food and drink, I turned into a cow. My character literally shapeshifted into a cow, and although I didn't die, all my gear was gone when I logged on again. 'Cause h4x.

Anyway, I'm not so much for realism, but I am very much in favour of simulation. The simulation doesn't have to be strictly realistic (I'm fine with being able to jump further than people can in real life, quicker day/night routines, simpler hacking &c.) as long as it more or less covers all types of meaningful interaction the player character is supposed to encounter.

Jesus, I'm glad they did do that because what you seem to suggest sounds fucking terrible. I don't want to backtrack an empty dungeon for 'immersion'; that would just annoy me, which would break the immersion anyway.

Morrowind did that (and many other games). Of course, in a well designed dungeon, the path is unlikely to be completely linear, so you won't have to go back in a straight line. But in Morrowind (which sold 4 million copies!) you more or less had to go back through every single hallway at least once. Which was fine, because it wasn't boring because it wasn't linear and you could use that to look for loot.

@CP: With "fun" I meant: what the game designers think the general public thinks is "fun". I think it's "fun" if it's immersive simulation. You think it's fun if it's hardcore. But that's not what I meant.

[bobby 55]

The only thing I dont get is that apparently they are the same devs who made Alpha Protocol, and that game was even sillier than Mass effect

Fuck, I musta played Alpha Protocol: The Sensible Version.

[DDL]

Depends on how you're designing a dungeon: lots of morrowind dungeons were non-linear affairs with a bit of z-axis action thrown in (hell, so were oblivion's for that matter). These are less aggravating to exit, since the route out is unlikely to match the route in. If your dungeon is more or less A-->B, then trekking out is going to be a tedious repetition going from B-->A unless you bodge it with a backdoor.

However, if you're providing a game with that much content, making dungeons a "go in here, kill everything on the way to here, leave by the back door" affair is probably a great move, since it makes things much easier to drop & pick up again: you log back in and you're in a dungeon? You know exactly where to go and what to do. I can't count the number of times I've logged back into oblivion or morrowind and thought "where the fuck am I, and what the fuck am I doing?"

It may seem simplistic (and indeed it is), but when the majority of your playerbase are not going to be able to sit down and play for five days back to back, and indeed will probably only get an hour or two before their other half starts getting antsy, it's a sensible move.


@CP: I'm quite surprised at all the love that New Vegas is getting, especially since you're usually so fussy. I found it to be every bit as horrendously clunky as FO3, just with extra funz like dehydration and starvation and ammo weight. The movement feels awkward, the aiming and shooting never feels very natural (it feels like you're trying to force a non-shooter game to be a shooter, essentially), and I shudder to think how badly it would handle any sort of "platforming" puzzle, since the jumping is horrendous. And it still has that FO3 vague sense of aimless wandering, except now half the time it's DEATHCLAWS.
It's...not bad, certainly, but I'm not finding it as gripping as say, mass effect 3, or even..hell: my current distraction of choice, dragon age 2 (and dragon age 2 is really pretty terrible).

I'm just intrigued as to what it is that particularly floats your boat (other than the nebulously defined 'challenge'). It's quite odd to meet someone who is so strident in their opinions of which genre is 'best', yet so fiercely specific in exactly which games in that genre qualify. I would've though with your emphasis on choice and consequence, something like Alpha Protocol would be right up your street, but apparently not?

(also, what bobby said. AP is aces)