dartmonkey

Video Game mechanics to retire

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Nintendo have been highlighting important words since at least Ocarina of Time, as part of their ongoing effort to ensure you only need to pay as much attention to the plot and characters of video games as went into coming up with them.

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Highlighting words is awesome especially if you're talking about a Video Game or Relevant Theme in a forum thread

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Nintendo have been highlighting important words since at least Ocarina of Time, as part of their ongoing effort to ensure you only need to pay as much attention to the plot and characters of Video games as went into coming up with them.

To be fair the narrative in Nintendo games has become gradually less interesting over time. I didn't even know there was a story in ALBW until the ending.

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Really? That is so weird to me because I gradually noticed all the NPCs starting to disappear after I visited them the first time, and then realised that, oh shit, it's the plot being handled through incidental details in the world instead of having your helpful companion tediously tell you.

 

I mean, Zelda's plots have never been particularly good, they are basically an excuse plot, but my point is more that it is very common for game plots to be about the level of a Zelda plot. Go to The Bad Guy's Place! Collect The Macguffin! Rescue The Fair Princess End-Of-The-Game! Generally we're satisfied if there's a justification to get people to the next level, and maybe like a character moment or two. If you're lucky, you'll get a character arc, but don't go in expecting, like, a unified theme or anything.

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I never noticed that stuff. But I played for about 1 hour per week so it's not impossible that I simply forgot someone was somewhere at some point.

Although I agree. I don't play Zelda or Mario for tha narrative...but that's kind of the point. Highlight the key words Nintendo so I can ignore the rest of the bullshit on the screen and get back to killing bad guys/solving puzzles/platforming.

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Are people still making FPSes where your character wheezes and swoons after sprinting for 20 seconds? Because I wouldn't mind seeing that mechanic relegated to, not retirement, but at least some kind of special-case consulting position. =P (I'm about 5 years behind on shooter-games though though so maybe this isn't a thing anymore).

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Not sure if this is entirely the right place to talk about this, but right now I am wishing for a specific thing. Playing through the ACIII DLC, I am exploring around trying to get all the chests and be done with them. Many of them are lockpick chests that are guarded by a bunch of dudes. I have no difficulty at all with the AC combat at this point. I swear I must have killed at least 300 dudes doing this little run, and I would kill for the game to, after some preset number of kills, just give me an option to skip that shit. Once I have in some way proven my competency with your combat system, as long as combat is not the whole point of your game (it is definitely not the point of AC), please just say "We cool. Press back to auto-kill this group of dudes." All this combat just feels like it's wasting my time and sapping my enjoyment of what otherwise would be pretty fun. Man, fuck combat in that series.

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I could probably use without fighting a boss battle in most games. I remember six or seven years ago playing the first FEAR and the first Bioshock, thinking, "That's great. We've gotten past ending games with huge bullet sponges that scream the game's themes at us in explicit terms while we kill them." And then Bioshock had an actual boss after you killed the boss.

 

I never miss boss fights when a game doesn't have them, but nine times out of ten I wish I could skip them when they do appear.

 

Eeeeurgh.

 

Ok, I get them for like, God of War and other brawler type games. That's where boss battles are from, that's what those games are there for. And I can understand them in Zelda. But any boss battle in an FPS is a bad boss battle, same with many other genres. That's why my favorite boss battle of all time is Fable 2. The main bad guy just stands there blubbering and babbling on and on and on, and anything you hit him with kills him instantly, which is hilarious when you don't expect it and are just trying to get him to shut up.

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I think morality systems need to go away.

I think they've ruined more games than they've improved, all they ever do is create very narrow paths for you to adhere to in your playthrough.

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The main bad guy just stands there blubbering and babbling on and on and on, and anything you hit him with kills him instantly, which is hilarious when you don't expect it and are just trying to get him to shut up.

 

That is also the final boss for the first FEAR (minus fleeing from Alma) and it was one of the few moments where I realized something was truly great at the same time I was doing it.

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I think morality systems need to go away.

 

Oh this. I hate how you get bonuses for being super good or super bad. It stops me playing an RPG like I want to: making the choices I would make in that situation. 

 

Sometimes I want to stab the guy in the back. He was a pain in the ass all along. Others I want to help the beggar because I just found a chest full o'gold and I'm feeling charitable. 

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I think morality systems need to go away.

I think they've ruined more games than they've improved, all they ever do is create very narrow paths for you to adhere to in your playthrough.

 

Completely agree.  I hate the way most games portray morality as black and white.  Granted, most games tend to have extreme or absurd situations such that there usually is a clear difference (ie help the cops or kill the cops), but I prefer it when games show consequences of actions rather than just filling up some invisible meter.

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I think morality systems need to go away.

I think they've ruined more games than they've improved, all they ever do is create very narrow paths for you to adhere to in your playthrough.

 

I think binary morality systems that tie into game systems need to go away.

 

The two kinds of morality systems I think work are:

* along multiple trait axis, where 0% is 'has not or does not usually show this trait' and 100% is 'showed this trait at nearly every opportunity'. I like it because it lets you put your themes into a game system, it lets you build choices that set up any two (or more!) traits opposed without having to commit to a dichotomy, and you don't have to dichotomise it by having every trait have an opposite.

* along NPC axis, where 0% is 'they hate you' and 100% is 'they would die for you'. For similar reasons.

 

The idea is to build a system that reflects your choices, instead of shaping them; essentially it means that you can let traits flavour the world and your character's actions, but they shouldn't have serious gameplay implications. Honestly if you can swing it, have the meter fill in such a way that it fills up much slower when it's higher, so you can't really "cap it out".

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I think more games need to take a page from Dishonored's morality system. I like that, on one hand, it's in the background and never pops up with dumb, "Do you SAVE the puppy, or MURDER the puppy?" choices (hi, Infamous!) and it doesn't constantly scold you or judge your actions, but on the other hand, they way you play does have an impact on the world, and at the end it commits to saying, look, if you got here by killing way more people than you had to, you're kind of a psycho and you're getting a bad outcome from that. And all ways of playing are equally valid - you can be as loud or quiet, lethal or not as you want. I like Dishonored.

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I'd enjoy a game where there are a couple of different playstyles, but if you specialise in one your reputation starts to precede you. So if you do a violent playthrough, friendly NPCs stop trusting you because they think you're a sociopath. A stealth playthrough means that the late-game enemies start putting mines in the obvious passages. A persuasive playthrough, and at some point the bad guys decide you're a soft touch and manipulate you into a vulnerable location. Best used with plot elements reinforcing the 'can't play how you want' theme.

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Those aren't so much morality systems, more like the game reacting to your playstyle. That's something I think is really cool, but not very common (probably because it's not easy). At least in my eyes they're 2 different things.

Morality systems should simply be on the player - I know the difference between good and bad. You don't have to tell me with arbitrary Blue or Red points.

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I have a feeling that what Merus describes is something every game designer wants, but due to it's difficulty and how it's probably easy to break, it becomes a morality system, which is an easy binary 'good/bad', as it's easier to implement. I'm sure I've read previews before about AI reacting to this stuff, which is then quickly buried when people realise how hard it actually is. 

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I know the difference between good and bad. You don't have to tell me with arbitrary Blue or Red points.

 

It's not so much the points rating that bothers me rather than the fact that implementing it neccesitates every choice to be a GOOD/BAD one with no room for ambiguity unless you want to turn it into frustrating game of guessing the developer's moral standpoints (you performed an abortion, have 50 paragon points!). Not really ideal when you want to tell an interesting story.

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I think more games need to take a page from Dishonored's morality system. I like that, on one hand, it's in the background and never pops up with dumb, "Do you SAVE the puppy, or MURDER the puppy?" choices (hi, Infamous!) and it doesn't constantly scold you or judge your actions, but on the other hand, they way you play does have an impact on the world, and at the end it commits to saying, look, if you got here by killing way more people than you had to, you're kind of a psycho and you're getting a bad outcome from that. And all ways of playing are equally valid - you can be as loud or quiet, lethal or not as you want. I like Dishonored.

We're going to disagree here, because i think Dishonored's morality system still largely ruins that game by pigeonholing you into either one of two play-styles.

You know what i liked?

I like what Dragon Age did, where each individual character had their own moral compass and judged your actions based on that. You couldn't make everybody happy, and you were frequently forced to make choices that were much more gray. It was a much more mature and intelligent way to deal with the concept of morality.

Shame i didn't actually like much else about the game.

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I think binary morality systems that tie into game systems need to go away.

 

The two kinds of morality systems I think work are:

* along multiple trait axis, where 0% is 'has not or does not usually show this trait' and 100% is 'showed this trait at nearly every opportunity'. I like it because it lets you put your themes into a game system, it lets you build choices that set up any two (or more!) traits opposed without having to commit to a dichotomy, and you don't have to dichotomise it by having every trait have an opposite.

* along NPC axis, where 0% is 'they hate you' and 100% is 'they would die for you'. For similar reasons.

 

The idea is to build a system that reflects your choices, instead of shaping them; essentially it means that you can let traits flavour the world and your character's actions, but they shouldn't have serious gameplay implications. Honestly if you can swing it, have the meter fill in such a way that it fills up much slower when it's higher, so you can't really "cap it out".

 

This is essentially what Pillars of Eternity (I.E. Project Eternity) is doing. They keep track of who like and dislikes you, both in your party and as a group, as well as several axis of how it is you behave in general (violent, diplomatic, etc.) I don't know of course how well it will be implemented, Obsidian is uneven to say the least and the game's not out yet. But it sounds cool enough in concept.

 

I also hated the morality in Dishonered. The stealth is so easy once you learn how to abuse the teleport that I beat the final mission in 2 minutes on my first try (oh, hello teleporting from roof to roof, my how easy you are) while the actual combat looked like a blast, but I wanted to get the "good" ending.

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I also hated the morality in Dishonered. The stealth is so easy once you learn how to abuse the teleport that I beat the final mission in 2 minutes on my first try (oh, hello teleporting from roof to roof, my how easy you are) while the actual combat looked like a blast, but I wanted to get the "good" ending.

The "morality" in that game was indeed dumb, but Dishonored is one of the few games for which I've done two playthroughs immediately back to back. Both methods of play were equally fun and satisfying for me. I have nothing else to say, really. Just that I like Dishonored. I have opinions, isn't that cool. U:

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So the morality system in Dishonored was definitely not what made that game good, but the morality play that unfolds in the Brigmore Witches DLC is fascinating.

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So the morality system in Dishonored was definitely not what made that game good, but the morality play that unfolds in the Brigmore Witches DLC is fascinating.

Really! I haven't gotten around to the DLC, yet. Maybe I'll do that sometime soon.

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