CCCToad on 10/6/2011 at 05:56
Quote Posted by Koki
Yeah, but they have a shitload of chest-high walls everywhere, so you just crouch.
No, you made
my point. Of that list only SIN is a run & gun game(Half Life had no lean). The rest are either RPG, stealth, sandbox or sim wanabees.
Doesn't change the point that you have to bob up and down behind cover instead of being able to fire around it. Its just shitty level design to compensate.
And really, forget about the "run and gun" label. Its something I never mentioned in any of my arguments, and you arguing over "run and gun" games is simply a spotlight fallacy. I never restricted my objections to run and gun games. Its those that are the least affected by regenerating health because the regen health makes the game even more run and gunnish. The games most fagged up by it are the ones which are a little more involved and complex.....games where regenerating health has no place being but it is there anyway because all the "cool" games have it.
I recently played through Far Cry. While visually stunning, I found it inferior from a gameplay perspective for one reason: regenerating health. That in and of itself isn't the worst thing ever, but what makes it worse is how the level design compensates. The original Far Cry had a finite number of enemies in the area. By careful observation, stealth, and use of binos, you could generally come up with a plan to slowly take down whatever encampment you were up against. There is no such planning possible in Crysis. When you cause an alert a dozen or more enemies will spawn out of nowhere. There's no point in planning a guns blazing approach because you don't know where the dozen extras will appear from, and stealth is often useless because the last or second to last guy will spot you and twenty more guys suddenly appear.
Short version: Crysis is worse than Far Cry because the levels were designed for regenerating health.
Sulphur on 10/6/2011 at 06:34
The 'level design' has nothing to do with alert spawns. Crysis and Far Cry had extremely similar level design - they're both in the frigging jungle for chrissake.
Koki on 10/6/2011 at 07:26
Quote Posted by CCCToad
Short version: Crysis is worse than Far Cry because the levels were designed for regenerating health.
My brain just exploded, good job
CCCToad on 10/6/2011 at 08:53
"Level Design" is something that goes far beyond the 3D models that make up the gameplay space. There's sound, lighting, AI placement, scripting, etc. In this case its the scripting that is the problem, because it compensates for your regenerating health by regenerating bad guys.
Saying that the level design is the same because the architecture (or "outdoor-itecture") is similar is just stupid. So now Dark Messiah of Might and Magic has the same level design as Thief because they both have a medieval fantasy city setting?
Sulphur on 10/6/2011 at 08:54
Oh, just get out.
CCCToad on 10/6/2011 at 09:14
Kind of funny how everyone is jumping on the "OMG TOAD SO DUMB....HERP DERP" bandwagon, but do you really know why or is it just to be cool like everyone else?
For all the derision, nobody has stood up and told me that I'm wrong and that dozens of enemies spawning out of thin air is a gameplay improvement.
Sulphur on 10/6/2011 at 09:30
I'm not aiming to swing with the hip crowd.
You do, however, have some mindbogglingly dumb opinions, and I'm not afraid to call them out when I see them; this also goes for just about everybody else. Your conflating of level design with gameplay mechanics that work independently of level layouts is borderline moronic, and I'd rather not lead into a discussion where you retroactively revise what you meant by the term.
This is nothing to say of your other opinion, contrary to which where there are games that don't have regenerating health but have alert spawns and play fantastically, like MGS and Splinter Cell, but I'd rather not have this discussion with you because of the aforementioned things in the previous paragraph.
CCCToad on 10/6/2011 at 10:10
In this case, it actually is a case of level design rather than gameplay mechanics. Auto-Respawn in Crysis happens due to the scripting of the level and placement of "spawn points" around key locations. There are a number of fights (both setpieces and a few small "checkpoint" encounters) where these spawn points haven't been placed.
This is opposed to SIN: Episodes, where enemies can respawn anywhere on the level and do so automatically to adjust to player skill. That one is a game mechanic because it operates separate from the scripts active in the level.
And the difference between MGS and Splinter Cell is that those alert spawns pump out a smaller number of enemies as punishment for violating stealth. The ones in Crysis swarm by the dozens because if they didn't, the players rapidly regenerating health would make the game easier than Mario's autoplay mode. Having to cope with an additional squad searching for you because you got caught? Entertaining. Dozens of bad guys that keep spawning from houses you've already cleared? Not fun at all.
Sulphur on 10/6/2011 at 10:17
And Crysis's spawns aren't a punishment for violating stealth? Come off it, for fuck's sake.
Also, 'smaller numbers': some of MGS's alert modes kept generating infinite baddies until you hid or escape the area. And as for your script argument, good lord. It isn't even the point. Far Cry <-> Crysis as far as level design is concerned. Spawn points/no spawn points != level design, the choice to have alert spawns or not is a goddamn gameplay device. Cf. System Shock 2, Bioshock, every other game ever made with this.
CCCToad on 10/6/2011 at 11:34
No, its a level design choice in Crysis because they aren't a constant factor. The first encounters lack infinite respawns, as do the non-boss fight alien encounters.
While it is also a punishment against stealth, it is so much more than that. In Far Cry an alert would summon enemies who
already existed on the map to come check out the disturbance. That wouldn't be an effective punishment in Crysis because of the regenerating health. Adequately punishing the player in that game requires that you be swarmed by dozens of enemies, which also has the effect breaking stealth by making it impossible to recover from a single goof.
And, again, while System Shock 2 and Bioshock both have respawning enemies, neither uses overwhelming numbers as a counterbalance to regenerating health. In every example you've posited the bad guys generally show up ia few (no more than 3-4 ) at a time so gameplay never degenerates into this
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