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STEAM | April 2016 - HL3 releasing today. Left 4 Dead 3 and Persona 5 this summer

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S

Soulflarz

Banned
Knurek said:
Durante alert:

13 Shocking Facts about Fallout 4 That Will Forever Change the Way You Think about RPGs
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I want to disagree because clickbait, but for the most part...yeah?

Rhaknar said:
I cant wait for the internet to turn on the Souls games / From (hell its already slightly starting lately with Bloodborne). Its going to be scrumptious.
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"Souls fatigue!" is something I've suffered with since DS1, but only in one regard.
I still love the series endlessly. I'm just acknowledging I love it for the story and strong gameplay, but not the "wow that was so hard, I get such a good feeling beating it!" that so many players feel. I haven't felt that in forever, mainly because the last time I had any notable difficulty was with false king allant.
 
H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Knurek said:
Durante alert:

13 Shocking Facts about Fallout 4 That Will Forever Change the Way You Think about RPGs
Click to expand...

Let's look at a few examples of story quests. First, there's “MacCready for Action”, which is the story of your companion Robert Joseph MacCready. MacCready's a returning fan favourite from Fallout 3, where he served as the adorably obnoxious child mayor of Little Lamplight. He's a fully grown man now, and after a few hours of passionate lockpicking he will reveal his tragic backstory to you: MacCready's wife was ripped apart by feral ghouls a few years back, leaving him to care alone for a terminally ill son who is suffering from an unknown disease. MacCready has set out into the Commonwealth in search of a cure, and he needs somebody to help him follow the quest markers. Half an hour of pew-pew later, you hold an experimental cure for an unknown disease in your hands, and now you're off to try and see if it will cure the kid! No, actually you aren't, because the kid is lying comatose in a shack somewhere near Washington D.C., and that's outside the game world. Well, then MacCready has to go and try to cure his kid himself! Goodbye Robert, hope you and your spawn find happiness! Ah, but no – MacCready is bound to you, his lord and mistress, and will not leave your side. Instead, he gives the cure to “a caravan master he trusts”, sends it off to his son, and then the quest is over and the story's done.

And here's my analysis: Jesus Christ, are you fucking kidding me? Why the hell wouldn't the guy go home to his dying son? Is he mentally ill? Why can't I order MacCready to go? His kid is dying! The cure may not work! It may kill him! He may already be dead! Why does the game build up such a strong thematic connection between the PC and MacCready (dead spouse, son in distress, now they're scouring the Commonwealth for a solution), only to fuck it all up by saying “eh, that dude's kid will be fine, he's just suffering from an unknown fatal disease with an experimental cure and may very well be dead already. Your kid, on the other hand – quick, let's have another emotional dialogue! Start quivering, girl!” This type of writing is not merely self-defeating, but it's actually harmful to the game; until I played through this quest, I had no idea what utter hacks Bethesda's quest writers were. After this uncomfortable episode, I never used MacCready in my party again; when the main quest was over, he was still hard at work tilling my fields.
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Yeaaaah.... I think I'm just gonna skip this game.
 
P

Phinor

Member
Mr. Doop said:
I don't think there's a single shocking fact in this list. I'm pretty sure a lot of people realized all of this a really long time ago.
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Even if a lot of people realized that, most people didn't. The game is still getting nominations and winning game of the year awards. I mean it's not as bad as in 2014-2015 when Dragon Age Inquisition did the same (but was even worse game), but still...
 
A

Arthea

Member
I tried to play Phoenix Force once, it didn't go well, but then again it's a shmup, so that was expected.


Phinor said:
Even if a lot of people realized that, most people didn't. The game is still getting nominations and winning game of the year awards. I mean it's not as bad as in 2014-2015 when Dragon Age Inquisition did the same (but was even worse game), but still...
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popular games always do and always will and we don't have any influence on what is popular and what's not, as it's often dependent on simple playing habits, unwillingness to try new things and as what's bad and what's good can be known only in comparison.... so yeah, also marketing budget and general gaming trends.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Lomax said:
I think the reality is, the limitations of the past actually made it easier to have more options. When there's fewer animations, no recorded dialogue, and distant views, you can have "options" that need to be little more than a change in text and selection box. Now, you couldn't do those things without adding large volumes of created content. It's just like turn based combat, that was necessary to conserve computing power, but it actually made for an interesting tactical system that disappears once everything is continuous.

Another thing is a lot of what I consider jRPG design has seeped into western RPG design (at least on the AAA level). For me the big difference between jRPG and cRPG was that jRPG focused on story choice while cRPG focused on character and party choice.

All that said, there's still more great RPGs now than ever, from basically every genre and style. I know it's cool around here to throw shade at Bethesda or whatnot, but the success of those games also helps the market support games like Witcher 3 and PoE and Shadowrun.
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i agree with what u say but my answer to this has always been "make your game have worse graphics"

i don't need a game to look like witcha 3 if it's gonna be as restrictive as witcha 3 was

it's ok, i guess, but i'd rather be able to stealth when i want and to be able to kill whoever i want and to come up with creative solutions to quests and whatnot

that's a million times more important to me than fancy graphics
 
T

Teggy

Member
Speaking of Bethesda RPGs, I think I have fallen into the Oblivion trap I have heard about, leveling up and becoming too weak to beat the content.

I'm supposed to go kill a cave of vampires for the main quest and they are too strong. In order to gain access to this quest you have to collect some glow dust which I wound up just buying. Turns out you are supposed to kill some wisps that are right next to the quest area to get the dust, but those things were nearly insta-killing me.

Not sure how to handle this...
 
A

Arthea

Member
zkylon said:
i agree with what u say but my answer to this has always been "make your game have worse graphics"

i don't need a game to look like witcha 3 if it's gonna be as restrictive as witcha 3 was

it's ok, i guess, but i'd rather be able to stealth when i want and to be able to kill whoever i want and to come up with creative solutions to quests and whatnot

that's a million times more important to me than fancy graphics
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that's not popular opinion even if I can relate very much. I don't care about top notch graphics or huge open worlds, only thing I care for, that a game would be interesting and gameplay diverse, nice artstyle is a plus, but big companies left this concept behind long ago, as graphics totally sell games, sad state of affairs but that's how it is.
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
Bethesda's problem is that they're pigeonholed into allowing players to do anything, always, and every way, which means that the world can never be truly affected by a players actions; it can be altered, yes, but not truly changed. More successful roleplaying games (as in, games more successful at allowing roleplaying) realise that roleplaying is all about the restrictions imposed on the player, and not the possibilities that are inherent to the role. (The Witcher, for example, gives players ample room to define their own Geralt, both mechanically and in roleplaying terms, in spite of the character being pre-defined to a large degree.)

It's not even an issue of class vs. class-less systems, because, again, Bethesda goes to no lengths to actually recognise what a player can actually achieve. Quests and objectives are not designed to be completed in any specific way (for the most part being, achieve X somehow) and significant quests are downright binary in their approach, if even that. It is a design issue that is further compounded by the facile nature of the player's abilities at any level, with levels 1 through whatever giving virtually identical player capabilities.

And the worst part is, Bethesda's apparent pigheonhole in design doesn't even make sense... because New Vegas has already shown everyone how to have both openness and consequence.
 
H

hardcastlemccormick

Banned
gkFANxd.png
 
AHA-Lambda

AHA-Lambda

Member
T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
dex3108 said:
As far as i know people are using his tools for ages now. But i never checked BF forums or something like that for reports about bans cause by this tool.
Click to expand...

At least he's covering his ass:

Note that some games like Battlefield 4 and Rainbow Six: Siege, for example, include anti-cheat systems that may detect the tool as a hack and ban you. I do not take any responsibility for banned accounts and such. Use at your own risk!
Click to expand...
 
H

hardcastlemccormick

Banned
Grief.exe said:
The dialouge wheel system is fine, that's not what the article is referencing.

What they are discussing is RPG design that presents choices that have no effect on the outcome, think Bioware or Bethesda design. Alpha Protocol, Witcher, Pillars of Eternity (?), Vampire: Bloodlines would be good examples of games where you are presented narrative choices that actually have an effect on the gameplay.



Morrowind was damn good, a lot of the talent left after that game and now we are stuck with Todd Howard lol.

I'm judging on modern Bioware games at this point too. Clean up your tastes SteamGAF.
Click to expand...

The thing is, people keep harping on this "dialogue that has meaningful impact to the gameplay" as if it's an objective good design decision. From my point of view, I can't stand it. I vastly prefer a story with a dialogue system I can freely use without gameplay consequences. Sometimes I really like a story and will poke and prod it in whatever way I can. Sometimes I just want to speed through it and not bother. And in some games I do both at the same time.

And it's very rare I find a game that has writing good enough to justify tying in gameplay consequences. Plus, too often I pick an option and the game's like "oh ho ho I tricked you!" and suddenly things go some other direction. I hate that shit, some people seem to like it as if it shows off moral ambiguity, but to me it's just really damn annoying.
 
D

Deitus

Member
Enter the Gungeon is pretty cool, but it hasn't quite clicked with me yet. I'm only a few floors in, but I haven't yet found any really cool weapons (except for cool looking weapons that aren't very useful), and I end up using mostly the base pistol to conserve ammo, at least until boss fights. I really like the enemy designs so far though. I'm definitely struggling with the bullet hell component (or bullet hell-lite I guess), and I get completely overwhelmed with so much happening on the screen at once. I definitely intend to keep at it, though I'm not sure when I'll find the time after DS3 launches tomorrow.

I was amused when the very first gun I found in my first run of the game was the Klobb, and it was just as useless as in Goldeneye.
 
Bartholomuse

Bartholomuse

Member
I only feel "Souls fatigue" when I see the souls game's name being used in a marketing capacity by people who don't make or understand souls games. Being Souls-like is becoming a real buzzword which, may have been helpful in finding games similar to Souls at first, but has quickly been milked to death.

There are rare exceptions of course, like Salt and Sanctuary but every time I hear "X game is great, it's like Souls" I just mentally turn off. Associating yourself with the Souls games brand of high quality is starting to turn into some kind of seal of inherent quality, sort of like "Metroidvania" or "Roguelike" was a few years ago, it means very little at best, and at worst it lumps you in with the long list of developers who describe their game in the exact same way.

On an unrelated note I'll be putting up my Greenlight page for my up and coming; 16bit, retro arcade, Metroidvania, Souls-like, Rogue-like, non Euclidean puzzle platformer old school JRPG later today, I expect to see you all vote for it, the future of video games depends on it. Also the kickstarter is going well we reached our third tier and we will be releasing on Dreamcast as well.
 
V

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
Bartholomew said:
I only feel "Souls fatigue" when I see the souls game's name being used in a marketing capacity by people who don't make or understand souls games. Being Souls-like is becoming a real buzzword which, may have been helpful in finding games similar to Souls at first, but has quickly been milked to death.

There are rare exceptions of course, like Salt and Sanctuary but every time I hear "X game is great, it's like Souls" I just mentally turn off. Associating yourself with the Souls games brand of high quality is starting to turn into some kind of seal of inherent quality, sort of like "Metroidvania" or "Roguelike" was a few years ago, it means very little at best, and at worst it lumps you in with the long list of developers who describe their game in the exact same way.
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darksouls2-full-11.png
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I'm joking of course but I felt like posting that image for the hell of it
 
T

TheLetdown

Member
Arthea said:
Unfortunately that's not popular opinion even if I can relate very much. I don't care about top notch graphics or huge open worlds, only thing I care for, that a game would be interesting and gameplay diverse, nice artstyle is a plus, but big companies left this concept behind long ago, as graphics totally sell games, sad state of affairs but that's how it is.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, agreeing with the other.

Screenshots sell right now. Flashy, seemingly open worlds sell right now.

Look how many people get upset in the PS Plus thread each month indies are showcased. And this is in GAF, an advanced gaming forum.

I love the refinement going on in video games. I just don't want to see the baby go out with the bath water, you know?
 
D

DasFool

Member
Lashley said:
God DAMN, The Banner Saga is so good.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear that you're enjoying it.

Despite being a fan of turn-based SRPGs, I have found The Banner Saga to be impenetrable. I don't know what it is, but I've started the game maybe four times now and never have gotten past chapter 2. Maybe it's the alien concept of "your move, their move" or the stringent difficulty in the beginning, I can't say.

It's a shame because this game hits all the right notes in every other area. The animation is stellar, the music fantastic, and the setting/characters intriguing enough to make me want to continue on. I almost wish they had made an animated series out of it.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
Banner Saga has lots of problems on the combat front. Tying experience to killing blows is baffling as it makes specialized units (like ones focusing on breaking armor) kind of useless, or it forces you to game the system so they get killing blows too. A lot of the skills are also kind of useless. Like you get that white haired archer that has an ability to trap a single square, which is an ability that makes sense if there are natural choke points as a defensive measure, but with wide open areas for every map, getting anyone to walk on it is pretty much pure luck. So it ends up being a wasted turn over just using her to shoot someone normally. There are many skills that require adjacent or diagonal enemies, but with the flip flopping turns it's an excercise in tedium setting things up to make most abilities useful, and I often only ended up using them when pure chance set things up for me. Normal attacks were most of the time the better and more efficient way to do things, which is kind of dull.

I do like the armor and health systems, but there's a lot of issues with the systems in place. I hope some of them got fixed for 2. I know they've added obstacles and some terrain elements to battlefields, so that's one positive change that might make abilities work out better.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Teggy said:
Speaking of Bethesda RPGs, I think I have fallen into the Oblivion trap I have heard about, leveling up and becoming too weak to beat the content.

I'm supposed to go kill a cave of vampires for the main quest and they are too strong. In order to gain access to this quest you have to collect some glow dust which I wound up just buying. Turns out you are supposed to kill some wisps that are right next to the quest area to get the dust, but those things were nearly insta-killing me.

Not sure how to handle this...
Click to expand...
maybe mods? that's what happened to me in oblivion too, but i wasn't liking it much so wasn't too upset

Arthea said:
Unfortunately that's not popular opinion even if I can relate very much. I don't care about top notch graphics or huge open worlds, only thing I care for, that a game would be interesting and gameplay diverse, nice artstyle is a plus, but big companies left this concept behind long ago, as graphics totally sell games, sad state of affairs but that's how it is.
Click to expand...
thing is, a lot of genres have evolved into different artstyles and ideas that are less expensive in development costs while rpgs have consistently gone for the typical fantasy or sci fi stuff

why not make more minimalistic or abstract rpgs, or using simpler artstyles. maybe do your rpg in 2d, look at valkyria chronicles, that game gorgeous and fantastic

i'm not talking specifically about aaa games btw

in general i think games should look uglier haha, i know that's like a dumb way to put it but i think games look too pretty and i don't really care about that. i love mount & blade, i don't think every game should look like mount & blade, but i wish more games did lol

maybe not exactly like mount & blade, but u get the idea lol

LurkerPrime said:
Bethesda's problem is that they're pigeonholed into allowing players to do anything, always, and every way, which means that the world can never be truly affected by a players actions; it can be altered, yes, but not truly changed. More successful roleplaying games (as in, games more successful at allowing roleplaying) realise that roleplaying is all about the restrictions imposed on the player, and not the possibilities that are inherent to the role. (The Witcher, for example, gives players ample room to define their own Geralt, both mechanically and in roleplaying terms, in spite of the character being pre-defined to a large degree.)

It's not even an issue of class vs. class-less systems, because, again, Bethesda goes to no lengths to actually recognise what a player can actually achieve. Quests and objectives are not designed to be completed in any specific way (for the most part being, achieve X somehow) and significant quests are downright binary in their approach, if even that. It is a design issue that is further compounded by the facile nature of the player's abilities at any level, with levels 1 through whatever giving virtually identical player capabilities.

And the worst part is, Bethesda's apparent pigheonhole in design doesn't even make sense... because New Vegas has already shown everyone how to have both openness and consequence.
Click to expand...
i mean, i wouldn't say the witcha is too successful at that

in fact, that's why i actually kind of like the idea of beth's games, because the beth "engine" (not like the tech but the gameplay base or whatever) in the right hands creates new vegas

but the witcha engine can't create that because it's so restricted in what you can do. you can't pull out your sword and murder random npcs, you can't stealth, you can't steal, you can't cast magic to do weird stuff, you can't have reputation with different factions, etc.

even if cdpr are great at writing and make really good games, i never got really invested in the roleplaying part of the game because of how special case everything was. like the story is very interesting and everything, but i'll never "roleplay" x kind of character because it's kind of all the same, you either free the troll or you kill it, but how you do that is always the same, you fight it until a dialogue screen shows up and you make a decision and you're locked out of any more interactions with it

fallout said:
My brain keeps replacing "witcha" with "wichita" and now I'll likely forever associate The Witcher with Kansas.
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sorry i had this polish friend that called it witcha and i think it sounds cute and just i like speaking like that lol
 
A

Annubis

Member
animlboogy said:
As for story choice being a Japanese game... which games would those be?
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The ones that let you choose your waifu (I'm actually being serious).

Look at Ar Tonelico as an example. All three game play slightly differently depending on who you choose through the game.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
depends on when they're talking

like 80s early age of crpgs as in final fantasy, wasteland, ultima, nethack, etc. were all turn-based

late 90s golden age of rpgs was pretty evenly split between turn based and real time i think, probably leaning more towards real time i think

most early rpgs were turn based afaik, but i guess the reason might not be accurate, dunno how easy it would've been to simulate multiple complex characters with complex ai, etc.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
zkylon said:
in fact, that's why i actually kind of like the idea of beth's games, because the beth "engine" (not like the tech but the gameplay base or whatever) in the right hands creates new vegas
Click to expand...

That is great and all, but Bethesda isn't the right hands, and seemingly the likes of Obsidian will not get the chance to do a new game with that "engine".

When everything you want out of a Beth engine is utterly undermined by nearly everything they design, one has to wonder why it is worth anything at all. You also get other downsides like simply awful mechanics, world design and astoundingly terrible writing to boot.

I'd definitely agree with the writer of that codex article, that Beth's writers and quest designers are utterly bankrupt creatively. It is astounding the amount of lines of dialogue and VO time spent on saying exactly the same thing, not even adding any flavour to dialogue or quests; characters that you only remember for all the wrong reasons.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
tuxfool said:
That is great and all, but Bethesda isn't the right hands, and seemingly the likes of Obsidian will not get the chance to do a new game with that "engine".

When everything you want out of a Beth engine is utterly undermined by nearly everything they design one has to wonder why it is worth anything at all. You also get other downsides like simply awful mechanics, world design and astoundingly terrible writing to boot.

I'd definitely agree with the writer of that codex article, that Beth's writers and quest designers are utterly bankrupt creatively. It is astounding the amount of lines of dialogue and VO time spent on saying exactly the same thing, not even adding any flavour to dialogue or quests; characters that you only remember for all the wrong reasons.
Click to expand...

i'm not saying it's perfect, the end result has unfortunately always been very disappointing to me, but that's one thing i've always respected of the beth games and i think as a systems base it has way more potential than most rpgs, because of the almost ultima-esque simualtion of the world

to me that's really important and i wish more games pushed in that direction instead of the opposite (including beth's newer games) because that's just a kind of really solid foundation to me, having so many lootable objects and inventories on all characters and killable characters everywhere and stealth systems and reputation systems and advanced ai daily routines and all that, i think that's amazing and something that should be done waaaaaaaaaaaaay more.

if fallout 4 somehow ends in obs' hands i'd be really happy, happier than if the witcher did. not only because i love fallout but because i think smart people like the people that work at obsidian would be able to get a lot more interesting stuff out of it than witcha's engine
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
zkylon said:
if fallout 4 somehow ends in obs' hands i'd be really happy, happier than if the witcher did. not only because i love fallout but because i think smart people like the people that work at obsidian would be able to get a lot more interesting stuff out of it than witcha's engine
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The witcher won't because they won't be making one for quite a while if at all. However, from the little details they have spoken of about Cyberpunk, they're definitely going in that direction. There is nothing about the witcher engine that precludes this and it is more a question of game design.

For example the RedEngine 3 dialogue tool is a way way more sophisticated than the trash Beth developed, in fact the NV dialogue system was all done by Obsidian (they chucked out the FO3 dialogue system).
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
im kind of worried about cyberpunk 2020, but i also think they announced it way earlier than they should've

also to clarify
- i think the witcha games are great, 1 and 2 specially. 3 i have a lot of issues with but i still enjoyed it
- i'd still would like a witcha game made by obsidian cos i want obsidian to design everything
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
Vampyr is the next big RPG to get excited for.
zkylon said:
i mean, i wouldn't say the witcha is too successful at that

in fact, that's why i actually kind of like the idea of beth's games, because the beth "engine" (not like the tech but the gameplay base or whatever) in the right hands creates new vegas

but the witcha engine can't create that because it's so restricted in what you can do. you can't pull out your sword and murder random npcs, you can't stealth, you can't steal, you can't cast magic to do weird stuff, you can't have reputation with different factions, etc.

even if cdpr are great at writing and make really good games, i never got really invested in the roleplaying part of the game because of how special case everything was. like the story is very interesting and everything, but i'll never "roleplay" x kind of character because it's kind of all the same, you either free the troll or you kill it, but how you do that is always the same, you fight it until a dialogue screen shows up and you make a decision and you're locked out of any more interactions with it
Click to expand...
Don't worry, the troll's story doesn't end there. It never does, and that's what makes CDPR's questlines and consequences so good.

And re: engines... it's not about what they can accomplish, but what they do accomplish. The flexibility of Bethesda's engines is great for modding, which their games always need to fix their mistakes (and Bethesda has tried time and again to monetise) but it's held them back just as much, if not moreso compared to the competition. They've gone, what, four games now with the same shakey foundations?
Htown said:
Why, what's wrong with RPG Codex?
Click to expand...
It would take too many dice rolls to explain, so instead here's an image of cat Minsc and Boo.
tumblr_m9ykumt9ow1r04tjoo1_500.png
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V

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
Obsidian can do good writing but gameplay can be a bit hit or miss. The Witcher itself has good writing so I dont know what would Obsidian bring to the table on that series.
 
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