Crichton said:
If you're mocking the beth fellows for not appreciating the differing quest options, dialog or support for different character types of FO1+2, that's perfectly reasonable. If, on the other hand, you're complaining that adding direct control of the vault dweller (i.e. twitch gameplay) would ruin the "gameplay" of Fallout, then yes, you are a hypocrite because Fallout 1, Fallout 2 (and for that matter Arcanum) have no gameplay.
Which is bizarre 'cause I'm pretty sure I had total direct control over the guy in Fallout and Arcanum. I told them where to walk and they walked there. I told them what weapon to use and they used it. I told them who to shoot at and they shot at those people. I even told them what part of the body to shoot at and they'd aim at those parts. Whether they hit or miss is handled by the game itself, like in any other game (ones with multiple units even). I decided what they should say, I decided what they should wear. That sounds like direct, almost complete and total control to me.
Crichton said:
Indirect control over one unit =/= Gameplay
Oh good. Fallout has direct control over one unit so it seems to fall out of scope of your asinine equation.
Crichton said:
Else I'd have to include Diablo and it's ilk, MMOs and NWN as having gameplay.
Which is hilarious because you've got direct control over those guys too. Last I checked the Diablo good guy didn't go running around killing things by himself. Though with that said, what about RTS games? I mean, if you think there's no direct control over the guy in Fallout then you can't really think there's direct control over the units in an RTS. I just tell them where to go (like Fallout) and they shoot of their own accord for the most part. They even choose their own targets! OMG, no gameplay!
Crichton said:
I have no problem with a game not having gameplay if it has other things to compensate, storytelling, choices and consequences, multiple character types et al. (Arcanum beats out all other RPGs on my list despite having no gameplay) But all of those things are content not gameplay.
You're right. Gameplay is how you interact with the content. And if there's content and a method that allows you to interact with that content, SHAZZAM! There's gameplay in them there games. I've got no idea what drug induced crusade you're on but your definition of "gameplay" doens't match anything anyone else in the world has ever used.
Crichton said:
Content can ask questions, but there are no wrong answers (or shouldn't be, if the player is allowed to choose between playing a wizard and playing a fighter each should have it's points, neither should be 'wrong' the way choosing any weapon but a longsword is 'wrong' in most RPGs).
The sort of questions gameplay asks can (and should) have multiple answers but these right answers have to be difficult to decide on or implement or those questions have no teeth.
What, you mean like a branching dialogue tree in Arcanum? Many of which have several different outcomes which can be difficult to choose from.
Crichton said:
In an action game, it's easy to decide what to do but difficult to implement the decision in time, in any other game, the gameplay has to come from it being difficult to decide on actions because implementing them is trivial. It never has been and never will be difficult to decide what action to take with a single unit in isolation which is why you can't ever have real gameplay with a single maneuvre unit.
So there's no gameplay in Doom then? I mean, a single unit in isolation, without any real decisions to make. You've said yourself that weapons are "content", not gameplay, therefore choosing them is trivial and has nothing to do with gameplay. Doom involves a single unit, not multiple, therefore under your daft definition, it fails to have any gameplay in that aspect either. And it's not really all that difficult to implement any decisions in time. You just pull the trigger and run around. No gameplay there, no sirree!
Crichton said:
This doesn't mean that having multiple independent units will always lead to gameplay (see dungeon siege), but it's a requirement, without it there's nothing. Which is why I keep telling you to add multiple units to AoD, even if they have no content (i.e. they're nameless, faceless hired help), having six units to command will provide some gameplay to go with all that content you've worked so hard on.
Given the basis of your argument, I think adding in extra units would be pandering to an audience of mentally deficient retards which isn't what VD is aiming at.
Crichton said:
Playing a single character (having direct control of it) can make for a fine action game, but commanding one unit is no game at all no matter how you slice it up.
Doom, Wolfenstein, Tetris, Chess, Freecell every other game known to man... Are you really saying there's no gameplay in any of them, simple because there's only one character (or in some instances, no character!)? And then what about real-world games? Football, Rugby, Soccer? Are they all "not games" simply because you are only controlling your own actions?
I really have no idea how you've cooked up this bizarre definition of gameplay you're using but the one closest to what everyone else uses is quite simple: Gameplay is what the player does. Irrespective of how many characters you're controlling or how you control them. Gameplay is quite simply the stuff you have to do to play the game (hence play + game = gameplay). Gameplay is making decisions based on the information you have and implementing those decisions to achieve your objective. Whether that be clicking and dragging a card card on-screen to another pile, changing weapons, or giving armies orders from an overall "war room" interface, it's all gameplay.
Here's an interesting quote from the wikipedia article on gameplay:
- One criticism of the word gameplay is that it is a largely meaningless or empty term, superseded by other concepts established in the repertoire of perception, anthropology, and general diversified psychology.[original research?] The use of the term may be an indication that current game design theories remain primitive and underdeveloped noting that, for example, cinema does not require "movie-watch" nor novels "book-read" in order that these (non-interactive) media be described formally.
So saying a game doesn't have
any (versus having
bad) gameplay is like saying a movie is unwatchable or a book is unreadable (equivalent term for games being that the game is "unplayable"). Note that those terms are reserved for the very bad products that aren't worth the time and effort, not simply everything that fails to meet some bizarre criteria made up in your drug-hazed state.
I'm hoping that having a complete patch on the CD of MotB will work, but I'm not holding my breath.
