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I've had up to here with invisible walls

Lol trains are broken in this game.

Invisible walls aside, one problem I do have with WD, which has been the same in GTAs too, is not knowing what obstacles I can drive my car through, and what will just stop me like a brick wall. Many fences I can just crash through, but then I find another that I can't. Same goes for power posts around the city.
 
Another pet peeve in Watchdogs is seeing limbs clip through walls etc...
It might be next gen graphics but it's firmly old gen physics.
 
I really expected this to be a thread about Halo. The killzones/invisible walls in Halo Reach and 4 destroyed the fun of exploring those massive landscapes. I miss the good old days.
 
Most of the complaints in that video are very petty tbh. I could pick apart any game at that level and make it look like the game was terrible.

Anyways, invisible walls suck but game developers need something to keep the player within the bounds. Normal walls and such are nice but can't always apply logically to the setting. Personally I prefer them over Bungie's "soft bounds" that they implemented though with the newer Halo games, because at least if you can get past invisible walls then you're free to explore without a timer.
 
This was a thing that really made me cringe while playing Dark Souls. The world is built around the illusion of being completely interconnected, so that you can spot most of the areas before getting access to them.
There was this area (in New Londo Ruins if I remember correctly), where a tiny ledge was preventing me to access the new area. Loved the game but damn if that wasn't some ancient design creeping on the game so refreshingly new. I mean, I literally just destroyed a giant fire-breathing dragon and I can't climb a two step fence?!
 
cyberheater said:
Another pet peeve in Watchdogs is seeing limbs clip through walls etc...
It might be next gen graphics but it's firmly old gen physics.
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There's a limit to collisions before you really start to hurt performance .. You won't see that really change for a long time.
 
sjay1994 said:
But thats not funny, and watch dogs is the in thing to hate on.

Honestly, never understood why the GTA or most R* games are so acclaimed. Sure their games are well detailed and all... but their actual games play like hot garbage, and their mission design is atrocious.
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you aint lying
 
LurkerPrime said:
Not the same problem, but this video highlights what you're asking about. It's from the RPS review of the game.
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Haha, oh wow. Because obviously if they let the player go in through the other door it wouldn't have worked with the cutscene.

In 2000 Deus Ex allowed players who were so inclined to stack boxes to circumvent obstacles. It also allowed them to do this. In 2014 Watch_Dogs can't allow its player to enter a building through any other door than the one true door.
 
That video. I don't know what to say... Just imagine if the game was released as planned on November 2013... nope nope NOPE.

Also, at the video "Everything is splitting itself like carrots in Cooking Mama" and omfg it's true!

:S
 
I liked that Oblivion and latter games had a message pop up when you got to the invisible wall telling you "You cannot go that way. Please turn back."
 
I'm a general fan of "open world," sandbox style games, and I'm pretty tolerant of the "jank" that usually comes with it, but this looks pretty bad.
 
Zombie James said:
Was watching this Watch Dogs video and right at the beginning (between :05 and :25) is something that makes me rage just a little bit inside. Garbage like this shouldn't be happening in games anymore. Sure, you take a large open world like Skyrim and you're kind of forced to put boundaries somewhere (unless you want to get into procedurally generated terrain, but that's another topic), but this Watch Dogs example is illogical and idiotic. All it does is frustrate players who think just a tiny bit outside of the weak "PRESS 'X' BUTTON TO DO ACTION" game design box. Stop it.
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Better than those fucking cliffs in ACIII.
 
Metroid Prime 3 has some very annoying invisible walls off the platforms of Elyssia to prevent Screw Attacking to different parts of the stage.

But that's still nowhere near as bad as Metroid Other M, which throws invisible walls in the middle of rooms.
 
LurkerPrime said:
Re: the bolded. Yes, it is good design.

Those artists are called level and/or environment designers and its their job to make areas that are a) functional, b) fun and c) logical. They are the ones that create levels designed specifically for the gameplay mechanics within their game. Without these artists, games would not be any fun to play.
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Obviously, but your talking far beyond my statement which is directly referring to invisible walls. Being fun has little to do with how you hide the end of an area. It is something that needs to be done, and has no fantastic way of being done. You can make some assets to block a gap, but you have still just blocked a gap. Now the area is smaller, or the player sees the obvious block. You can leave it visually open but give the player no reason to go there, but then you have the invisible walls for those that do check it out. Or you can kill the player for taking a look.

These are not good solutions, because all of them have faults that are noticeable to the player. Spending money and time on making new things just to hide other things is not good design. It is arguably worse than having invisible walls.
 
This was probably a low priority bug on somebody's JIRA list that they set to WNF (Will Not Fix) since they probably ran out of time to figure out an elegant solution to that area & it's probably a very isolated instance to repro. Like that's a very specific case to expose, rather than it being a global problem.

Those kind of bugs usually always get buried to the bottom of the list due to low severity, I doubt it was purposely intentional. Personally I've never worked on a game that has ever had enough polish time, it doesn't exist :P

That being said, yeah invisible walls suck in any game, super immersion-breaking.
 
Tripon said:
I thought this was about Game trailers old podcast....

Edit: yeah invisible walls are annoying, there needs to be some sort of indicator of where the boundaries are.
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Me too, lol. Yeah I don't like invisible walls. There should always be something in the way to create the illusion that they aren't there.
 
Invisible walls don't bother me as much. I'd rather have the designers focus on important things rather than on some pointless background element.

With that said, some of the bugs in that video are pretty laughable. "True Next Gen" eh...
 
Goldenroad said:
why do people want to get into areas of games where there is no content?
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Because it's an open world game, and people want to be able to go wherever they want in the game and play it there own way.

Also have not bought Watch Dogs but god damn that video haha
 
So is it true that hacking is pretty useless? I thought that was the whole hook.

I've already seen that messing up street lights doesn't cause the massive pile ups like the E3 demo.
 
Zombie James said:
Was watching this Watch Dogs video and right at the beginning (between :05 and :25) is something that makes me rage just a little bit inside. Garbage like this shouldn't be happening in games anymore. Sure, you take a large open world like Skyrim and you're kind of forced to put boundaries somewhere (unless you want to get into procedurally generated terrain, but that's another topic), but this Watch Dogs example is illogical and idiotic. All it does is frustrate players who think just a tiny bit outside of the weak "PRESS 'X' BUTTON TO DO ACTION" game design box. Stop it.
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The only other solution is infinite pits ala Dark Souls. So either way you're going to be limited. Granted invisible walls for things like gates are lazy, though these exist in a lot of games (Skyrim being a key example). I'm also not a big fan of procedural generation. There's a lot to be said for making a limited number of dungeons by hand instead of mega-dungeons that are entirely barren (see the Persona series...)
 
Glad I decided to save my money, honestly. The only real open world sandbox game I want to play, is Triad Wars.... the sequel to Sleeping Dogs.
 
Haha, that video is hilarious. Watch_dogs is not quite living up to its hype, it seems.

...

But yeah, "vanilla" invisible walls are bad design, no two ways about it.

I loathe the kind of invisible wall where you die instantly or simply cannot progress any further. There are other ways to reach the same end, for example: Have NPCs start shooting at you so you take gradual damage, or have some sort of Monster swoop in to eat you... or bolders, avalanches, fire, zombies,... there is always a more natural way to implement the same kind of border. Give me a reason why I'm not allowed there. Don't pop up a window or stop my character from moving. That's just damn lazy design.
 
why street lights brake into small pieces when they fall down. Looks so silly. Destruction in general looks very silly tbh.
 
sjay1994 said:
It is already in the AC universe. Watch dogs, Farcry, AC and splinter cell all happen in the same world. The assassins creed games are published by abstergo entertainment in the games world. You can find some people who worked for abstergo in watch dogs, as well as survey a dad watching his kid play AC: revelations and nitpicking it annoying his kid.
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Die Ubiverse is real
 
It's not the end of the world, but invisible walls do break immersion. At the very least, lampshade some in-game explanation for why you can't go any further. Like in Wind Waker, where the ship takes control if you try to go off the edge of the map and chides you for going too far off-course. Or in the Assassin's Creed games, where the whole thing is a computer simulation and the simulation starts to tear if you go to the edge of the map.
 
This is preferable to all the terrible invisible walls all over open world games now.

gta3_you_werent_supposed_to02.jpg
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Also, this is why I love Morrowind so much, been playing Skyrim for the first time recently and some of the invisible walls in that game are just disheartening for an Elder Scrolls title.
 
The Lamonster said:
I also hate invisible walls. It's a cheat. Be more creative.

Even an island like SR3 and GTA is more creative than ridiculous invisible walls.
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Even an island will eventually encounter an invisible wall lol - the only way around it is if you make it infinitely loop if you walk past a certain point, but walking backwards takes you back to a spot "in the game".
 
Invisible walls are right up there with painted on doors and unclimbable ladders. Feels like a Looney Tunes set in some games.

*runs to door*

*splat*

55992-cat-paw-under-door-sproing-gif-F2Xh.gif


Lemmie in devs!
 
The funniest example of devs trying to hide Invisible Walls must be Hitman: Absolution. One of the levels features a neverending train that blocks your path and conveniently only passes by when you walk up to the railway crossing.
 
That video is hilarious. Also the argument for internal consistency resonates with me. Can't have your game breaking your own established rules after all.
 
In Serious Sam this rule applies:
If you can get there, you can walk there.
That's something I really about the first and second encounter, invisible wall bullshit doesn't exist, eventhough the maps are usually open arenas.
 
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