Underrail [PRE-RELEASE THREAD, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[buzz]

But can you pick a waifu?

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

So stay patient, dudes.

Way more concerned with the game getting polished than I am getting an earlier release. Take yr time!


...but not too much time!

 

[Styg]

But can you pick a waifu?

Of course. It's in the kitchen menu.

j/k

 

[Immortal]

Most of the stuff you can get for the house is just for show, but there is some useful equipment as well.

This is a really bad way to do Player Housing..

 

[Blaine]

This is a really bad way to do Player Housing..

Why's that?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Also, we implemented player housing.

 

[Immortal]

This is a really bad way to do Player Housing..

Why's that?

It offers an illusionary money sink with no benefit. A player would probably think (hope) that upgrading their home might secretly lead to some feedback from the game. Maybe people visit your home, or try to rob it, or if people do visit - the new upgrades / furniture serves some purpose.

Otherwise it's just window dressing without meaning. On paper it sounds good, "maybe some player out there will want to have a pretty home that they can walk around in". However, in practise if the upgraded home serves no purpose, offers no feedback loop from the game it will just be a huge disappointment for players.

If you want a static player house for loot storage, don't offer the false hope of an upgrade path. (Example: Shadow Run)

Prime Example:
Pillars of Eternity. Most people who loved PoE all universally had a beef with the lackluster implementation of the Player Garrison. Now when you think about the fact that the upgrade path of the Player Garrison actually -did- have benefits which made upgrading worthwhile beyond purely aesthetics.. imagine a player house where it really is just 0 benefit.

 

[Blaine]

Some players just enjoy decorating a space for their character, with or without expectation of further reward.

This is considered a form of LARPing, and harping on it is usually good for a few Codex brownie points, but you're describing only those who feel as you do: that if there's no gameplay benefit or upgrade, then there's no point.

Truth is, there's no point to playing computer games at all except to be entertained, and if someone is entertained by putting imaginary decorations in an imaginary house, then for them it's as beneficial as it needs to be. I would also argue that player housing can add to the atmosphere of a game, which, although it's intangible and is rather subjective when compared to +10 damage or +20 Stealth, is a thing that exists.

 

[Zdzisiu]

"Destructable rocks can now also be destroyed with a jackhammer"

Aww yees, destroy all of the rocks!

 

[Sykar]

Wow that looks amazing!

 

[Sykar]

Most of the stuff you can get for the house is just for show, but there is some useful equipment as well.

This is a really bad way to do Player Housing..

There is nothing wrong with some LARPing.

 

[Immortal]

Some players just enjoy decorating a space for their character, with or without expectation of further reward.

This is considered a form of LARPing, and harping on it is good for a few Codex brownie points, but you're describing only those who feel as you do: If there's no gameplay benefit or upgrade, there's no point.

I was careful to pick my words. When I said "Gameplay Benefit" I don't mean necessarily a Min Max power increase to your character. A benefit can also be purely aesthetic as long as it's feedback from the game acknowledging something you have done.

Example:
Let's say you have some kind of meeting in your player home, Normally you all just stand around in a corner with your team talking. If you had upgraded the home, maybe during dialogue one of your team members walks behind the counter and makes a drink.
(This likely doesn't apply to Underrail and isn't feasible given the amount of work it requires.. which is why tacking on player housing for the lulz is a bad idea IMO)

None of this furniture is likely interactable. Do you really think a player is going to walk around their house.. close their eyes and pretend they are making drinks or looking at the computer screen.

I said very clearly that this idea sounds good on paper stating your exact argument. It doesn't work though. Even worse, it offers a false sense of hope that maybe there is something at the end of the yellow brick road, only to realize that you were supposed to be enjoying it for it's own sake.

If you disagree, fine - but please understand the argument I am making.

Most of the stuff you can get for the house is just for show, but there is some useful equipment as well.

This is a really bad way to do Player Housing..

There is nothing wrong with some LARPing.

Do people really like walking around their player home and just pretending they are making drinks / looking at computer screens / sleeping with 0 feedback from the game?

At least in LARPing you are around friends and your actions have feedback from other people. This player home is literally just you walking around a static level..

If this is actually enjoyable, I have a great idea for a game.

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

It's a bit of an overstatement, and some, to call a useless bit of sideline decoration - a bauble, effectively - a very bad way to do player housing. It's also something of a dramatic understatement to call Pillars of Eternity's stronghold merely lacklustre on the very same topic.

One is (presumably) a cutesy little side activity that does little more than provide a money sink in trade for a bit of trophy decorating, something to screenshot and show off .. and, perhaps, even provides some utility via crafting, storage, whatnot. Overall useless, but inoffensively so. Sitting on the sidelines, easy to ignore. And it's a room. An apartment. So painfully ordinary that it's reasonable, surely, that anyone would have one sooner or later.

The other is provided via a mandatory quest that thrusts the location onto the player, and then engulfs them with the idea that it's quite the important location to their character, never mind its being a KEEP in a setting where these things are .. well, surely very important to have. It presents the idea of peasants paying taxes, important people coming to visit and/or hideaway, raids, and even thrusts onto the player a heavy secondary quest with a dramatic dungeon, and emphasis that failing to take care of it will result in a spillage of monsters taking it over again 'n' ruining it all. Never in the actual game's timeline, mind, and that danger somehow doesn't spill into the surrounding lands. Even contained within itself, there's no reason to care about looking after the place - you have peasants, but they're never met and have no interests, no qualms. You hire guards for raids that do no damage. You can do nothing with the visitors. Nothing, even, with your own prisoners. It breaks lore. It breaks setting. It breaks characterisation. And one could go on for an entire thread for all the more it does wrong.

Yes. Quite the overstatement into understatement indeed. PoE would have benefited a lot more from having a small, useless, side ornament of a house.

Edit; It would be nice to have a base of operations with actual impact, sure, but a lot people like baubles (Skyrim!). Better with or without? Eh. Silly to suggest it's a grave misshappening, however.

 

[Sykar]

Do people really like walking around their player home and just pretending they are making drinks / looking at computer screens / sleeping with 0 feedback from the game?

At least in LARPing you are around friends and your actions have feedback from other people. This player home is literally just you walking around a static level..

If this is actually enjoyable, I have a great idea for a game.

I already do that from time to time in the starting apartment. I also use it as a central point for keeping my crafting materials, surplus/spare weapons and ammunition. I seriously cannot believe that people complain about extra flair options, if you do not like it ignore it, it is not forced upon you.

 

[Immortal]

One is (presumably) a cutesy little side activity that does little more than provide a money sink in trade for a bit of trophy decorating.

I think your lumping too many ideas into one category. "Benefit" is very loosely defined.

For example, Trophy display is completely based around Game Feedback based on actions of the player and I 100% support it. If this house allowed you to display baubles or items as a means of achievement for things you have done in the game, rewarding player agency, I 100% support this.

I think a much more powerful implementation (for the same amount of work)

Would be to create a player house that upgrades with trophies or rooms as you progress through the game or complete quests a certain way. Make the upgrades happen organically as you do things and let the player house be a record of things you have done, instead of a pointless gold sink.

Do people really like walking around their player home and just pretending they are making drinks / looking at computer screens / sleeping with 0 feedback from the game?

At least in LARPing you are around friends and your actions have feedback from other people. This player home is literally just you walking around a static level..

If this is actually enjoyable, I have a great idea for a game.

I already do that from time to time in the starting apartment. I also use it as a central point for keeping my crafting materials, surplus/spare weapons and ammunition. I seriously cannot believe that people complain about extra flair options, if you do not like it ignore it, it is not forced upon you.

• Your missing the point.
• Critique of a badly implemented idea is not whining entitlement.
  
• This is a discussion forum, if you want to be a fanboy white knight then just put me on ignore.

 

[Sykar]

1.) No, I do not
2.) Bad critique is bad critique
3.) This is a discussion forum. If you do not like my opposing opinion then put me on ignore

 

[Immortal]

3.) This is a discussion forum. If you do not like my opposing opinion then put me on ignore

Raging Fanboy Erections don't constitute Opinions.

 

[Sykar]

3.) This is a discussion forum. If you do not like my opposing opinion then put me on ignore

Raging Fanboy Boners don't constitute Opinions.

Raging teenage entitlement does not constitute opinions.

We can play this game all day long, you trying to discredit my opinion with silly rhetoric and me just using them against you in the same manner.

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

One is (presumably) a cutesy little side activity that does little more than provide a money sink in trade for a bit of trophy decorating.

I think your lumping too many ideas into one category. "Benefit" is very loosely designed.

For example, Trophy display is completely based around Game Feedback based on actions of the player and I 100% support it. If this house allowed you to display baubles or items as a means of achievement for things you have done in the game, rewarding player agency, I 100% support this.

I think a much more powerful implementation (for the same amount of work)

Would be to create a player house that upgrades with trophies or rooms as you progress through the game or complete quests a certain way. Make the upgrades happen organically as you do things and let the player house be a record of things you have done, instead of a pointless gold sink.

This really brings it down to little more of an argument of "what's the best way to get some decorative clutter?" Being able to buy useless tat is, in its own way, the same level of achievement as being given that clutter, passively, for general progress. The former's just more opt-in and, arguably, rewards player agency better - it's more of a personal taste, thing, as to whether you want the same type of clutter across each different character's progress (EG A melee character might not want a gun trophy that comes as per Quest XYZ, or something).

That said, it's personal preference et al. You seem to be questioning whether people really like to waste time buying and placing clutter around? The answer is absolutely. There's a reason player housing keeps cropping up, even useless as it often is; there's a pleasure hit to be had from having your own space to pointlessly fancy up and, really, it's generally the same pleasure whether those rewards come 'for free' (aka, by raw progress) or through buying them in-game. Having the money in the first place is an achievement in itself (it's in-game earned, anyway, so it's tied to the same progress measurement, essentially). Neither route is bad implementation. Rarely interesting, sure, but not bad. That word belongs for the Pillars of Eternities out there.

Edit; I think I said the same thing three times. Whatever, brain. Off to get caffeine it is.

 

[Immortal]

3.) This is a discussion forum. If you do not like my opposing opinion then put me on ignore

Raging Fanboy Boners don't constitute Opinions.

you trying to discredit my opinion with silly rhetoric and me just using them against you in the same manner.

I don't see what your point is other then "Don't complain about this feature".
You aren't explaining how I am wrong or countering anything I say. Just stating that you are in disbelief I would even critique this in the first place. The only loose argument you have made is that you enjoy static upgrades because you like to "Live Action Roleplay" in a video game.. But you could do this in any game.

You seem to be questioning whether people really like to waste time buying and placing clutter around? The answer is absolutely. There's a reason player housing keeps cropping up, even useless as it often is; there's a pleasure hit to be had from having your own space to pointlessly fancy up

Can you provide an example?

Criteria:

• Player Housing Was Implemented With Purely Aesthetic Upgrading
• Was a Single Player Only Game (Removing Feedback from other players)
  
• The Objects you upgraded had 0 interaction and were literally just bitmap images on the screen.
• You were doing a "Upgrade X Room" style of upgrading - You can't exercise creativity in where the items go
• Most Importantly: This had huge amounts of positive feedback from players

This really brings it down to little more of an argument of "what's the best way to get some decorative clutter?" Being able to buy useless tat is, in its own way, the same level of achievement as being given that clutter, passively, for general progress. The former's just more opt-in and, arguably, rewards player agency better - it's more of a personal taste, thing

I would argue this is a larger argument then you are saying it is. A game is all about enabling player agency and reacting to it. When you make a game that doesn't satisfy this requirement you get the infamous labelled "art games" that are just walking simulators where you see stuff happen.

 

[Sykar]

I don't see what your point is other then "Don't complain about this feature".
You aren't explaining how I am wrong or countering anything I say. Just stating that you are in disbelief I would even critique this in the first place. The only loose argument you have made is that you enjoy static upgrades because you like to "Live Action Roleplay" in a video game.. But you could do this in any game.

That's because it is nothing but assertion which I can put shortly as: Cause it doesn't do something awesome in terms of gameplay it sucks.

Where is your argument again? All you did is voicing an opinion, and I voiced a differing one. There were no arguments whatsoever either way so far. You do not like that it is basically just fluff. I on the other hand like to have the option even if I might not even indulge in it. Furthermore we have little information on it so already complaining about it is pointless.

But you know what I like even more? That the full game gets released soon. Since they will work on it even after release from what I could gather they might improve it later depending on feedback.

 

[Immortal]

Where is your argument again?

I usually give the benefit of the doubt because of the large amount of diversity on this forum. I know english isn't the first language of most people so sometimes context gets lost in translation..
But at this point you're either trolling or an extremely ignorant Fanboy who has mastered selective reading as a skill.

 

[Sykar]

Where is your argument again?

I usually give the benefit of the doubt because of the large amount of diversity on this forum. I know english isn't the first language of most people so sometimes context gets lost in translation..
But at this point you're either trolling or an extremely ignorant Fanboy who has mastered selective reading as a skill.

So you really have no point besides that you do not like it because it has no gameplay benefit. Thanks for proving me right.

"Otherwise it's just window dressing without meaning. On paper it sounds good, "maybe some player out there will want to have a pretty home that they can walk around in". However, in practise if the upgraded home serves no purpose, offers no feedback loop from the game it will just be a huge disappointment for players."

That is essentially your "argument" based on what you believe people will experience. In reality it is just projection.

I also love how you try so hard to put the "fanboy" stamp on me simply because I disagree with your opinion.

 

[darthaegis]

(bug report) Hey Styg I just loaded my save where I

Spoiler

had just gotten the quest to retrieve the Faceless' strange object (for JKK), and I just went to talk to Gunnar Edstrom and the option "I have returned from the research facility" appeared, and I was pretty much able to skip that quest. I've reloaded the save and I'm going now to the Coretech facility, will report any quest progression fuckups.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

If this is actually enjoyable, I have a great idea for a game.

Is it Fallout 3?