nicked on 2/7/2015 at 09:35
There it is - everyone around here gets so happy about that game Thief eadly shadows.
Yakoob on 2/7/2015 at 21:58
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
A little over 10 years ago, *everyone* at TTLG was bitching about head bobbing and body awareness. It's weird how we've essentially gone in the opposite direction now.
I was one of the guys disappointed in Bioshock for all the dumbing down and consolitis.
Recently I played BS:I DLCs for the first time and abused the crap out of quest markers and loot glint cause I just couldn't be bothered hunting for all the stuff.
Oi, i'm getting old.
Pyrian on 2/7/2015 at 22:34
Why do we need loot glint? So we can find the loot more easily! Why can't we find the loot easily? Because it's hidden away in piles of junk and random unintuitive locations! Why is it hidden away? So we can have the gameplay of finding it!
Seriously, if you're thinking of putting loot glint in your game, why don't you simply instead place loot where it would be expected to be found? Medical supplies in wall boxes with red crosses on them. Hardware supplies in toolboxes. Money in safes. Food in pantries. Weapons in racks. And so on...
zajazd on 3/7/2015 at 07:54
I'm guessing Abysmal is playing with keyboard and mouse? When Fallout 3 came out I hated it for the clunky controls, combat and animations, I couldn't bear it for more than an hour, but in 2011 I partly converted to consoles and since then been playing with a controller on PC and Fallout 3/New Vegas are way better that way. The combat is still crap though and I played in god mode.
Tony_Tarantula on 3/7/2015 at 09:48
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Why do we need loot glint? So we can find the loot more easily! Why can't we find the loot easily? Because it's hidden away in piles of junk and random unintuitive locations! Why is it hidden away? So we can have the gameplay of finding it!
Seriously, if you're thinking of putting loot glint in your game, why don't you simply instead place loot where it would be expected to be found? Medical supplies in wall boxes with red crosses on them. Hardware supplies in toolboxes. Money in safes. Food in pantries. Weapons in racks. And so on...
You mean like games did before the golden age of lazy development that kicked off when the first XBox got popular?
faetal on 3/7/2015 at 10:30
Back in the days before focus groups were brought in to decide which features were needed.
heywood on 3/7/2015 at 11:59
Back in the day, loot was easier to spot because the graphics weren't so detailed and the levels weren't filled out with extraneous non-loot items. Lazy level designers could get away with randomly dropping loot around in places where real people wouldn't leave it, and it would still be visible to players. Wish every level designer would read Pyrian's post and then play games like Deus Ex and its sequels where it was mostly implemented that way.
Pyrian on 3/7/2015 at 15:54
Quote Posted by heywood
Wish every level designer would read Pyrian's post...
Why thankee sir. :cheeky:
Quote Posted by heywood
...and then play games like Deus Ex and its sequels where it was mostly implemented that way.
Heh. DX:HR and DX:TF have some of the most egregious loot highlighting of any game. I suppose at least with various cyber games you can assume that a vision pre-processor is doing the highlighting.
DaBeast on 4/7/2015 at 19:09
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
You mean like games did before the golden age of lazy development that kicked off when the first XBox got popular?
I really liked Paul Barnett's thoughts on Golden Age of videogames (
https://youtu.be/F60zR7y6xzY?t=15m) clicky (I've linked at the specific part, but it's an interesting panel discussion too, I'd recommend watching it all some time).
The gist would be that what everyone considers to be the golden age of gaming is always a personal thing that really only applies to them and people of their generation. Even then it can vary wildly as not everyone used the same platform or enjoyed the same genere.
As for Bethesda. Poor character animation and shallow Voice Acting pool is definitely characteristic of their products, and yet they manage to make games with great atmosphere and immersion that's actually fun to play, kind of; which really is their trademark.
I've seen people complain about writing in games a lot, but really what are they comparing it to? Honestly, what is their point of reference? I mean, sure, it isn't War & Peace, but it's far from awful.
It's like people don't remember how awful the writing in games used to be.
nicked on 4/7/2015 at 19:39
Only issue I take with Bethesda games, at least the ones I've played, is the tendency for the entire world to revolve around me. It cheapens the whole world when you get the impression nothing would ever happen without the player's intervention. That's not a problem that's exclusive to Bethesda though. It's why you should be wary about previews throwing around phrases like "your actions will have real consequences". Usually translates to "No-one in the world is capable of making a decision for themselves and will wait patiently for the player to tell them what to do."
