Pyrian on 5/7/2015 at 23:57
Your basic problem is that you think you're playing something like Deus Ex and you're not. Stealth in FO3 is mostly about stats, not player skill, and it's not really setup for non-lethal play.
Yakoob on 6/7/2015 at 01:02
Heywood called it.
Quote Posted by Pyrian
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?
And where do you expect to find items like food containers and booze bottles if not in piles of stuff or shelves? Should all other shelves be empty then?
With increasing level of detail and areas that requires a lot of "junk" (i.e. a post-apocalyptic derelict store or a falling apart underwater city where actual people live), plot items can become increasingly difficult to distinguish from the noise. You can't put every single misc item in clearly marked spots without looking forced, and I'd rather avoid rubbing myself around every little trash pile or piece of furniture spamming the pickup key. I hated pixel hunt point&clicks back in the day and I still hate them now.
Tony_Tarantula on 6/7/2015 at 01:47
Quote Posted by DaBeast
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.
A golden age of lazy development isn't the same thing as a golden age of development.
I was implying that a lot of the first-gen console games were amazing examples of developers and publishers making extremely lazy design decisions and then blaming it on the audience.
Tony_Tarantula on 6/7/2015 at 01:52
Quote Posted by nicked
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."
Sounds about right. The ultimate example of this is Mass Effect 2 and 3; games in which a large chunk of the game's dialogue consisted of pandering to the narcissism of gamers via reverential conversations about everything the player did in the first games. It was a stark contrast to the first game where most characters acted relatively normal towards him.
Again, much better done by Witcher 3. Every so often you run into a character who recognizes Geralt but very little of it is narcissistic pandering. Such encounters are almost exclusively references to things that happened in the book, and the ones that don't are helped by the distinction between the player and Geralt
Pyrian on 6/7/2015 at 04:18
Quote Posted by Yakoob
And where do you expect to find items like food containers and booze bottles if not in piles of stuff or shelves?
In a refrigerator, pantry, or cabinet, in the kitchen. Y'know - where normal people actually keep food and drink. You might even consider a bowl of fruit on the table or counter. If you want to go crazy with it. Aside from a few snacks by workstations, people do not, as a general rule, keep food and drink mixed in with piles of other stuff.
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Should all other shelves be empty then?
With increasing level of detail and areas that requires a lot of "junk"...
Are you aware you just answered your own question?
Quote Posted by Yakoob
You can't put every single misc item in clearly marked spots without looking forced...
Au contraire - the refusal to put things in logical places makes game worlds seem forced. Also, you don't need to put "every single" item in logical places, but then, an occasional item hidden out of place doesn't require loot glint. The reason loot glint exists is because
entire worlds consist of valuable items stashed in piles of trash and junk.
Quote Posted by Yakoob
...I'd rather avoid rubbing myself around every little trash pile or piece of furniture spamming the pickup key.
Indeed. But my solution is substantially better than loot glint in accomplishing this.
Jason Moyer on 6/7/2015 at 04:36
Bethesda games seem to do fine without loot glint, despite each iteration of their tech having more and more incidental detail. Then again, they also tend to heavily signpost item locations and put things where you'd expect to find them (unless they're, say, intentionally hidden under a pillow or something, although that's a fairly logical place to find a valuable item anyway).
Yakoob on 7/7/2015 at 17:32
Quote Posted by Pyrian
In a refrigerator, pantry, or cabinet, in the kitchen.
Yea, and you know what I have in my refrigerator, pantry and cabinets? Lots of other items! And it does not make sense to make everything pick-upable and cluttering the inventory.
Personally, I'd rather not have to hover my crosshair over every single bottle, can, cup, box etc. spamming "use" to see if it can be picked up. Just tell me which can, it's not that big of an immersion breaker.
Unless you suggest to have an empty fridge with only one bottle that can be picked up, which I think is no less silly. Whether it's better than loot glint or not is up for personal preference.
On a side note, in my game, I went for a middle ground approach - pickupable items do glow, but only when you get close and look in their general vicinity. So you're not presented with a room full of glowy bits upon entrance, you still have to do exploring and looking in nooks and crannies, but you don't have to spam use on every single item to see if they can be grabbed or not.
froghawk on 7/7/2015 at 18:26
Certainly none that I can think of after having sunk 100s of hours into them...
Anyway, Yakoob, I think your middle of the road solution is great. Combine that with Pyrian's solution and I think that's optimal.
Ostriig on 7/7/2015 at 18:56
Quote Posted by Abysmal
Can anyone tell me if Bethesda games...
Yeah, I think pretty much anyone who's played their games can tell you that...
Quote:
have any incredibly memorable moments, like [...]
... no, they do not.
Don't get me wrong, I love their games and have spent way too much time in them, but writing characters, plots and moments hasn't so far been their thing. I've played Oblivion, Fallout 3 (minus DLCs) and Skyrim, and the only time I can think of that they seemed to be trying to do something more story-driven was Dawnguard.
I thought it was a good, albeit shy attempt, but I seem to remember most fans being less enthused with the result.
As for movement and stuff, yeah, that's a big shortcoming of them carrying forward with a lot of their old tech. Sometimes I think they just have a lot of the same staff in their QA department, 'cause there's ancient stuff there that I just don't understand how it doesn't get fixed between new titles. For example, you can't jump onto something that you're brushing against, you gotta take a step back and
then jump onto it. Loads of fun when I was desperately trying to jump over the link between two train cars with a Supermutant Behemoth bearing down on me. if memory serves, that sort of thing's been the case since Oblivion at least.
Anyway, I'm curious to see Fallout 4. Howard was saying that they do want to make it be "a really good" shooter as well, so we could hope they've had a stab at revamping their controls and such. And who knows, just maybe the addition of PC voice acting means they're paying more attention to character writing as well, but that's a really long shot.
