Octopus Overlords

Worth asking twice.

Sudy wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 3:08 am Another player standing "inside" of me in an MMOG without player collision. I understand and endorse the reasoning behind not having play collision, but having a single spawn has always destroyed my immersion. I'm careful not to clip into other players when standing in front of the bank/mailbox/etc. Stay out of my personal space!

I still remember when trolls in WoW would deliberately park their largest mounts on top of the mailbox so that other players couldn't get to it.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 12:41 pm

Sudy wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 3:08 am Another player standing "inside" of me in an MMOG without player collision. I understand and endorse the reasoning behind not having play collision, but having a single spawn has always destroyed my immersion. I'm careful not to clip into other players when standing in front of the bank/mailbox/etc. Stay out of my personal space!

I still remember when trolls in WoW would deliberately park their largest mounts on top of the mailbox so that other players couldn't get to it.

Or over the bobber of people fishing.

TheMix wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 2:11 pm

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 12:41 pm I still remember when trolls in WoW would deliberately park their largest mounts on top of the mailbox so that other players couldn't get to it.

Or over the bobber of people fishing.

Oh they still very much do.

TheMix wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 2:11 pm

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 12:41 pm

Sudy wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 3:08 am Another player standing "inside" of me in an MMOG without player collision. I understand and endorse the reasoning behind not having play collision, but having a single spawn has always destroyed my immersion. I'm careful not to clip into other players when standing in front of the bank/mailbox/etc. Stay out of my personal space!

I still remember when trolls in WoW would deliberately park their largest mounts on top of the mailbox so that other players couldn't get to it.

Or over the bobber of people fishing.

While flagged for PvP.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 7:19 pm

You're of an age where you probably played Berzerk in an arcade? That's the OG "twin stick" shooter. One hand controls movement, one hand controls 360 degree shooting.

uh... not at all a 'twin stick' shooter. one joystick with a fire button [/pedant]




Robotron: 2084 and Black Widow were the first well-known ones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin-stick_shooter

I quit playing the Minutemen in Fallout 4 because of Preston Garvey. I'll rescue them in Concord and never talk to them again.

Unexplained settings options with esoteric names.

Tooltips and notifications that cover shit I need to see.

When an RPG lets me design an old character but then I discover their voice is young, and they're referred to as youthful in the plot.

(Dragon Age Origins us a great example of that.)

I have always wished that RPGs would give the player a 'cheat sheet' of assumptions the game makes about your character before character creation, including things like intelligence, social status, age, motivation, etc. I have gone and asked for them on various forums a few times over the years.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 1:35 am (Dragon Age Origins us a great example of that.)

I have always wished that RPGs would give the player a 'cheat sheet' of assumptions the game makes about your character before character creation, including things like intelligence, social status, age, motivation, etc. I have gone and asked for them on various forums a few times over the years.

To give an example of what I'm talking about for a cheat sheet:

For Fallout 4:

~You are start out as a person living before the war
~You are a former soldier
~You are married, and recently became a parent for the first time
~Depending on your choices, you may become a leader, and you may do a great deal of building
~Many of the choices are morally/ethically complex 'tough choices', making it tough to play a purely good character
~One DLC (Nuka World) really only works for morally gray/raider type characters.

For Baldur's Gate:
~You are the adopted child of a scholar/wizard
~You are barely 20
~The place your mother came from is pre-defined by your race choice
~Very little else is known about your history prior to being adopted, and you were only a few months old at the time
~You grew up in a library (although you had access to other characters for training, enough to justify most classes)

Sometimes they do exactly that, but then don't factor it into the gameplay at all. They let you give the character a selection of backstories, but then the overall NPC interactions won't reflect it at all aside from a one-word reference to being a soldier or what not.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:46 pm Sometimes they do exactly that, but then don't factor it into the gameplay at all. They let you give the character a selection of backstories

I just want to clarify on BH's behalf. (and Lordy™, let him correct me if I'm wrong)

He wasn't speaking to an ignored player's choice of backstory. He is saying that if the game already kinda has a backstory for your character - let us know beforehand so that we can imagine and create that character too.

Pretty much. Some games make assumptions about your character that are reflected in the plot, choices, and dialogue. The problem comes when you make a character that doesn't fit those assumptions (because they weren't communicated to you.)

I mentioned Dragon Age: Origins as an example what the original post discussed. The first time I played, I created a grizzled, older warrior. I then clicked 'play' and was introduced to my father who was obviously considerably younger than I was. It was so off-putting that I restarted. FO4 does the same thing - your dad is going to be in his late 40s (guess) no matter what age you are. The NPCs call you 'the kid' all the time. If you make a 60-year-old character, it's going to feel off.

The first time I played Fallout: New Vegas I made a 'white hat' gunslinger, always doing the right thing. It was absolutely awful, as the game didn't really support that attitude, and it made every quest remarkably unsatisfying. I restarted with more of a morally gray character (who still tried to do the right thing), and it was ten times better.

Unagi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:52 pm I just want to clarify on BH's behalf. (and Lordy™, let him correct me if I'm wrong)

I would never!

Unagi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:52 pm

Rumpy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:46 pm Sometimes they do exactly that, but then don't factor it into the gameplay at all. They let you give the character a selection of backstories

I just want to clarify on BH's behalf. (and Lordy™, let him correct me if I'm wrong)

He wasn't speaking to an ignored player's choice of backstory. He is saying that if the game already kinda has a backstory for your character - let us know beforehand so that we can imagine and create that character too.

Yeah, I know. But I was adding onto the general idea because of what the post reminded me of I think it falls into the same category.

Just thought of a new one. I'm playing Figment, which is a pretty great game. So, nothing on the game itself. But I'm playing the game in the evenings at a regular volume which isn''t too loud and people have started going to sleep, and I'm at a point where I just want to exit the game. But as I'm exiting, I'm bombarded by an extremely loud and obnoxious trailer for an upcoming game that isn't skippable. At this point, my hand quickly moves to hit the exit game button and I can't hit it quickly enough.

A related to that... extra-loud logo / intro. The game itself isn't that loud once I turned the volume down, but that doesn't control the intro / logo. It's like that legendary THX sequence before movies.

I don't have to worry about noises disturbing people but I like using headphones anyways. Everything sounds so much better.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 3:20 pm A related to that... extra-loud logo / intro. The game itself isn't that loud once I turned the volume down, but that doesn't control the intro / logo. It's like that legendary THX sequence before movies.

You take that back! Borderlands 2 is still one of my absolute favorite intros ever. I used to let the intro play sometimes, just to enjoy it.

dbt1949 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 3:32 pm I don't have to worry about noises disturbing people but I like using headphones anyways. Everything sounds so much better.

Normally I do, but it depends on the game. For instance, the game itself has a rather nice soundtrack that isn't too loud, and the difference between the in-game volume and the trailer is massive. It's almost like "Normal volume here but WILL WAKE UP YOUR FAMILY NEXT!!" I think it does a poor job of respective the player's environment.

TheMix wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 8:50 pm You take that back! Borderlands 2 is still one of my absolute favorite intros ever. I used to let the intro play sometimes, just to enjoy it.

I was talking about BL3, where the volume on the Gearbox logo/kid saying "GEARBOX!" was far, far louder than any other sound in the game. If you had your settings and headphone volume so that the game sounded normal, the intro would blow your eardrums out. It was so loud that they actually had to release a patch to reduce the volume, and it still ended up being louder than anything else.

Yeah, that'd definitely be obnoxious. I have to wonder, if people even test these things in quiet environments. Even considering headphones, they don't seem to respectful to the player.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:59 pm Yeah, that'd definitely be obnoxious. I have to wonder, if people even test these things in quiet environments. Even considering headphones, they don't seem to respectful to the player.

Considering they made a gun that yells constantly even if you mute the sound and a character that is purposely designed to be as annoying as possible I half suspect that may have been intentional.

That'd probably be a surefire way to get me to not play the game then.

To be fair, that gun was a singular joke, not a design philosophy.

I hate fighting spiders and swarms of bugs in RPGs. The spiders because of their webs that slow you down or root you. While it's just not satisfying to attack swarms of insects; I feel like I'm whiffing... there's nothing to connect with. And in some games like FO76 their corpses are impossible to find to loot.

Edit: Five seconds after I posted this, I found a treasure goblin in a Diablo 4 dungeon but the spiders kept rooting me and he almost got away. So glad I caught him, he dropped three legendaries!

1. My big one is enemy respawns that don't make logical sense. Like if you 100% clear an area, leave for a minute, come back and it's full again. If they respawn by walking in off the map I'm ok with it but just popping in annoys me to hell.
Abd it's not just in FPSs. I've seen it in some overheard building games like if you build a big fence or wall around an area and then after a while enemies spawn inside the area without destroying the border.
I want to have a sense of accomplishment. I cleared this area and made it safe if you want back in you have to work for it bad guys.
Make it an option in case some people just want endless fighting and never want to see an empty map.

2. No save anywhere option. Sometimes I have things to do. Sometimes I can't continue for medical reasons. Let us save anywhere we want to. Those that don't want to just don't gave to.

3. Unskipable cutscenes. ESPECIALLY ones I've already seen, but really all of them.

4. Unskipable tutorials.

That's it off the top of my head

Level scaling in cRPGS. Hate it, takes all feeling of accomplishment. Why should I develop my character, if it is just making enemies stronger?

Adeptus wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 6:50 am Level scaling in cRPGS. Hate it, takes all feeling of accomplishment. Why should I develop my character, if it is just making enemies stronger?

Welcome to our forums, such as they are. it's good to see new blood.

Thank You very much!

Adeptus wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 6:50 am Level scaling in cRPGS. Hate it, takes all feeling of accomplishment. Why should I develop my character, if it is just making enemies stronger?

And yet, one of my big turn-offs is open world games where doing more than the minimum breaks the balance because you outlevel everything, turning it into a dull, zero-effort cakewalk. Borderlands 1 and Witcher 3 were particularly bad in this area.

Level scaling is the usual counter to that, but as you said - it eliminates the value of leveling.

I've seen two approaches that work better, but they're harder to implement.

One is mixed level scaling. Imagine a fantasy RPG where the goblins match your level up to 5, the the orcs scale with you up to level 20, the orc bosses up to 35, etc. That means that you get stronger than the generic foes, little by little, but there are still dangerous foes around. Especially if the scaling enemies also have a minimum level (like the orc bosses scale to 35, but are a minimum of level 15), such that there are some things way too strong for you early on.

The other is to reduce the impact of leveling on power. Either reduce the curve, or make leveling more about options. A level 5 character has 3 weapon skills to choose from, while a level 40 character has 12 weapon skills, plus some utility/quality-of-life perks. But at the same time, the level 40 isn't that much stronger than the level 5 (IE - the fight that takes 20 hits at level 5 takes 12 hits at level 40 - not 1.)

Also , welcome to OO.

The worst level-scaling I've experienced was in AC: Odyssey. And yes, it totally eliminates the value in leveling. The kind that completely takes the wind out of your sails. I had to give up on the Between Two Worlds storyline because of it. Even setting the level-scaling to the lowest seemed to not have any effect when fighting those damned bosses. And while I understand wanting challenge, it's beyond ridiculous that these are so hard.

Oblivion was terrible. Not only did it mean that high level wildlife was tougher than low-level monsters, not only did it mean that you never got stronger, it was also tied to the loot and the types of enemies, which meant that if you did a really long dungeon, you could skip completely past a 'phase' of loot or creatures and never see them in the game.

Deep Rock Galactic is a good example of 'options rather than power' progression system. The more you progress, the more options for dealing with problems you get, and the more nuanced the combat becomes, but you never really gain that much raw power. A level 1 and a level 25 can work together with no problem, and without one feeling totally outclassed. Admittedly, it isn't an RPG that progresses from beginning to end, but the concept holds.

As much as I hate to admit it, Fallout 76 is much the same (just far less balanced and polished.)