Papy on 10/10/2008 at 16:08
Quote Posted by Chade
There is
no way that you can make a hardcore game into a mainstream game by just tweaking paramaters. The entire game needs to be drastically changed, because the players approach games drastically differently.
The gameplay is now only a very small part of the game development. Give me the source code of BioShock and a map editor and I will make an SS2 out of it in less than three months. Give me a team of 10 people and it will be 2 weeks.
A good example is with a game like Oblivion. The first thing people did with this game is change it to make it less mainstream and more like an RPG. I even did a mod myself after 2 or 3 hours of gameplay to change the character leveling up system and it took me less than a day, including the time to learn the scripting language and to know how to use the editor (funnily enough, I think I spent more time programing with Oblivion than playing it). So if a few amateurs, working alone and on their spare time, can do it in a month, even with a very limited editor like the one of Oblivion, then why can't a dozens of professionals who have access to the source code?
The idea is not to tweak the gameplay, it is to use the same assets to make several and completely different gameplay, each one completely independent.
Quote Posted by demagogue
Also, there's an old debate I remember, to what extent a game should offer more gameplay than a typical player will see. I was under the impression in mainstream gaming, they don't like it when a game has important parts they don't see...
I don't think it would bother them if they don't see what they don't like. Anyway I think the point is to make us don't see things, not them. The idea is to forbid us to do whatever we want whenever we want using limited resources access. The goal is to make us choose.
Quote Posted by BlackCapedManX
The "health-resource management" aspect of DX1 is hardly engaging enough on any difficulty to be something noteworthy of writing home about.
You are completely clueless about what resource management means. RPG are first and foremost management games, but management doesn't mean inventory bookkeeping or resource finding, it means knowing what resource (among the ones you have) to use depending on the situation. Facing a given situation, will you go near the enemy using a short range weapon and knowing you will get hurt (meaning using medkits), or will you use other means which will use other resources (probably rare ammo or energy cells). Resource management means evaluating the use of each resource for each ways to solve a problem, and then choosing the most efficient solution. What is stupid is not the game for making you pay for your bad judgment, it is you for making the wrong choice.
Anyway, I disagree with about everything you said.
Quote Posted by DDL
It's gonna be law of diminishing returns: putting X amount of effort into a game satisfies Y customers. Putting X*4 amount of effort into a game satisfies Y customers + die-hard curmudgeons at TTLG.
A game cost several million dollars. How much money do you think goes into gameplay?
Quote Posted by mothra
I'm sorry for my uninformed autoheal knowledge about Portal, I just never got hit by a turret in portal, it was so easy :joke:
Sorry, but I don't believe you for one second.
DDL on 10/10/2008 at 16:37
Quote Posted by Papy
A game cost several million dollars. How much money do you think goes into gameplay?
It doesn't really matter how much it actually costs, as long as spending more on it is considered to be "more effort than it's worth". I didn't say I
liked this attitude, but that doesn't change the fact it's a popular one amongst the people who set deadlines and fix budgets*.
Also, RE: Portal, the way they implemented the autoheal was actually fairly clever, in that they simply did away with any form of health bar: either you were alive, or you were dead. You'd never know
how close to death you were until you were actually dead, so unless you spend a decent period of time experimenting with turrets, you might simply conclude you were near death for most of the game and just really damn lucky.
*Er..probably. This actually completely unsupported supposition on my part, but hell.
Still, I suspect this is probably one of the reasons a lot of the really interesting, quirky, genre-redefining and engaging games are coming from small startup companies (er..or valve).
mothra on 11/10/2008 at 00:38
Quote Posted by Papy
Sorry, but I don't believe you for one second.
i thought you saw my emoticon: :joke:
BlackCapedManX on 11/10/2008 at 08:54
Quote Posted by raph
Resistance: FoM uses the same system. You get four (iirc) bars and auto-heal is limited to the current bar you're in. Health vials can be used to replenish the rest to full health.
I think something to this effect, with the addition of inventory healing items, would be the best way to implement such things in DX3. That way you aren't punished for scrapes and bruises, but the game also doesn't think you can just shrug off life threatening injuries.
Quote Posted by The_Raven
I think you you're forgetting that all non-hostile areas in Deus Ex were chalk full of med-bots, candy bars, wine, and medkits. In fact, IIRC, this was one of the major complaints leveled at Deus Ex when it came out.
And the minor healing items healed a whole 2 points each. Out of six hundred. My complaint was garnered more from IW anyway, because I'm almost certain I've spent at least one occasion overturning every table in a bar looking for food because I was low on health, and found absolutely nothing. In a non-auto-heal DX3, I could potentially see similar scenarios (especially if they simplify things enough such that they don't see the need for little bits of food and things to be functional... an oversight that would be absolutely atrocious.)
Quote Posted by Papy
Resource management means evaluating the use of each resource for each ways to solve a problem, and then choosing the most efficient solution.
I understand the theory behind how all of this is supposed to work, and that's fine and dandy, and in a comprehensively complicated enough game (say, I don't know, Dwarf Fort?) that actually ties the system of management of items into the functions of the game. With DX, on the otherhand,
in practice "the most efficient solution" is to put a laser sight on the handgun and take head shots on everysingle enemy from a decent enough range to deter accurate return fire. Or tranq and run. That's all you need for the whole game. If DX was actually played about "resource management" and not "player approaces and choices" (in terms of adopting your own path to playing the game) then it would be far more restrictive than it is.
The resources most needing to be actually managed in DX were the skill point and aug allocations, the character growth options. These are the things that are more frequently left out of FPS/"RPG" hybrids (wherein the RPG part is lacking), the customization and character growth that are fundamental to letting the player make choices about how they want to play, the things we should be bitching about and making sure they're included. In DX it's so simple and easy to keep everything you're carrying topped off and fully stocked as far as items, it's really outrageous to claim there's a lot of difficult problem solving there. What's limited is how much your character can grow in a particular fashion, and what makes the game interesting is deciding what kind of character you can build as you progress through the game, since you
can't max out all of your skills and you
can't max out all of your augs (or indeed have all of them at once either.) IW failed spectacularly in this regard because not only did you not have skills, you could also acquire enough aug canisters to get at least two fully maxed out sets of different augs, meaning you were hardly managing or restricted in your decision making. Were this better implemented, something like universal ammo would've been less of a smear in the face of gamers. (Now on the other hand the interesting dynamic in DX is that you only find so much GEP ammo, so it's not like you run around shooting it left and right at everything you see, and with that in mind you can acquire the GEP right of the bat and still be quite restricted in it's use, but it's not as though you ever
need, and I'm not saying you should have infinite GEP ammo either, I'm talking about health, which really wasn't ever withheld from the character, as much as everyone seems to think it should be.)
Papy on 11/10/2008 at 15:59
Quote Posted by DDL
It doesn't really matter how much it actually costs, as long as spending more on it is considered to be "more effort than it's worth".
As I said, unless the code of BioShock is a complete mess, I'm pretty sure I, as well as several other people here, can make an SS2 out of it in less than three months. Ok, I'll need a graphic designer to make some new visual elements pretty... and make it 6 months worth of work instead of 3. Add a bit of play testing and it comes to what? $200,000 at most? Supposing they make $20 for each game sold, we end up with needing 10,000 customers to make people everyone (customers and publisher) happy. So you think their is not even a mere 10,000 people who prefer RPG to FPS? So you think they are not even a mere 10,000 people who would like a true spiritual successor to SS2? Do you realize how absurd it is?
Personally I think the problem is developers and publishers are very, very short sighted. You know what, I won't buy fallout 3. I'm not even interested. Bethesda simply lost their reputation to me. Do you think I'm the only one?
Also portal was first and foremost a puzzle game. It was not an RPG. What is good for a genre can be really bad for another. No implementation can change that fact. Auto-heal will be worse than universal ammo.
Quote Posted by BlackCapedManX
With DX, on the otherhand,
in practice "the most efficient solution" is to put a laser sight on the handgun and take head shots on everysingle enemy from a decent enough range to deter accurate return fire. Or tranq and run. That's all you need for the whole game.
Then why do you complain about healing and having to search for medkits if you didn't need them in the first place? Do you realize that you sound more like a kid who's trying to convince his parents that he doesn't like cookies so they leave the cookie jar on the table?
inselaffe on 11/10/2008 at 16:24
God forbid that there should actually be consequences to getting hurt. I'm sorry but if you are ocd enough to force yourself to backtrack through a game just to heal a small amount of insignificant damage and then complain that this is the game's fault then that's just silly. Better just to play on, maybe finding some health later or just playing on regardless. In fact it is more interesting if you cannot always heal yourself all the time - it adds a lot to the game, making you feel more vulnerable.
For me at least, Deus Ex was a game not just about choice, but the consequences that those choices had on how you had to play the game. That's why I liked the fact that you couldn't aim at the start and things. It's good when you are short on ammo and such like. It forces the player to adapt to situations, and really adds a lot more interest to the game. Providing lots of get out of jail free cards to everyone as is a trend with modern games really does seem to spoil the experience a lot. If developers insist on doing this then please make it so that it only affects lower difficulties or something to keep the game still interesting for the rest. It really isn't as much work as people make out it is - it just requires some forethought of how you are going to do things / implement the different difficulty levels before you get into the project.
Increasing the difficulty by merely ramping up hit points, lowering the damage weapons do etc is not only boring but can make games tedious. That said, a more realistic "the play dies in 1 shot to the head or a couple of body shots" high difficulty is still interesting (an exception to the rule) as it encourages a much more thoughtful, cautious approach. What also would help is improved ai for higher difficulties too. To design around this is not hard though. Simply design around the highest difficulty and then take out (or scale down) ai responses deemed to difficult for the easier difficulties. For example, when a player has been definitely discovered, the ai could take up new patrols and never go back to a fully unalert state - sort of heightening their senses and getting rid of any sleepy behaviour, now that they are sure there is an intruder.
System shock 1 had a good go at a system like this. I'm starting to think a part of the problem though is people wanting to be able to breeze through on highest difficulty and refusing to drop down a difficulty if they get to frustrated, just abandoning the game and labelling it as "crap". Does this actually happen? Or is it just a preconception that developers assume is the case? I guess it's also a scapegoat for when developers can't be bothered to develop their gameplay systems into anything more interesting.
The_Raven on 11/10/2008 at 17:06
Quote Posted by Dan Knott
I'm starting to think a part of the problem though is people wanting to be able to breeze through on highest difficulty and refusing to drop down a difficulty if they get to frustrated, just abandoning the game and labelling it as "crap". Does this actually happen? Or is it just a preconception that developers assume is the case? I guess it's also a scapegoat for when developers can't be bothered to develop their gameplay systems into anything more interesting.
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I almost did that recently with Descent 3. I had played Descent 3 years ago and didn't find it particularly challenging, as well as the fact I've been playing Descent 1 for years. I started up a game at hotshot difficulty last month and found that it was completely kicking my ass. I then tried starting another game at the previous difficulty level, only to find that it was far too easy. The reason for this is because not only does Descent 3 tweak stuff like weapon damage and the amount of shields and health you get from power ups, but it also tweaks the AIs routines. While at the previous difficulty level, the 'bots don't really try and dodge incoming fire. At hotshot, however, they're pretty good at doing this. Not only was it harder to hit the robots, but I got less shield orbs for my trouble. My interest in the game started to wane, but I did persevered; now things are going a lot better. That obstacle presented a challenge that lead me to increase my skill, which ultimately lead to an increased sense of accomplishment.
Jason Moyer on 11/10/2008 at 21:58
Quote Posted by Papy
As I said, unless the code of BioShock is a complete mess, I'm pretty sure I, as well as several other people here, can make an SS2 out of it in less than three months.
The thought of a mod team taking something from start to completion in 3 months is making me laugh so hard I can't see straight. Of course, you'd be off to a good start already, since the first 3 months are typically the time when most mod teams make grandiose claims that they're backing down from 5 years later when all they've released are renders of a couple character models.
I suspect that the odds are high if anyone attempted an actual Bioshock to SS2 conversion, we'd be staring at a single render of a monkey 3 years from now, at least based on the standard amateur development cycle.
The_Raven on 11/10/2008 at 22:05
Haha, I'm sure Fett will back you up there.
ZylonBane on 11/10/2008 at 23:07
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I suspect that the odds are high if anyone attempted an actual Bioshock to SS2 conversion, we'd be staring at a single render of a monkey 3 years from now, at least based on the standard amateur development cycle.
Oh Jason, you never fail to entertain.
Papy didn't say he could turn Bioshock into SS2. He said he could turn it into "
an SS2". What that means is leaving the existing structure of Bioshock, but stripping off all the training wheels that Irrational bolted on to make it palatable to moronic focus testers. The end result would presumably be the true spiritual sequel to SS2 that Irrational originally intended.
