I can't into modern 3D

[JarlFrank]

In real life

Let me stop you right there.

If "because real life" is your argument, you have to agree that Thief would have been greatly improved by hunger and thirst mechanics. And a shoe tying minigame. Say that out loud and I'll go back and read the rest of your post.

Not every game needs to be an accurate simulation of everything. But Thief was improved by having most clutter items interactable - you can pick up worthless cutlery and throw it around to distract guards, for example!

(Also, I'm still waiting for a hardcore simulation RPG where you have to go to the toilet regularly or shit yourself during the dragon fight )

 

[Bad Sector]

Of course studiously ignoring an activity is working around it. Not only does it require my effort and attention to avoid and ignore irrelevant content,

Well, i guess at that point it becomes a matter of what you find interesting then and how much you can filter out uninteresting things. After all...

The Heart isn't irrelevant to Dishonored, though, as worldbuilding is a key pillar of the series.

...while i appreciate the worldbuilding in Dishonored, for me it isn't that interesting (and overall the writing isn't that great either, if anything it went downhill -IMO of course- after the first game, when they took everything more seriously in the DLCs). Instead...

The fact that you can choose not to use it doesn't distance it from what the games are about.

...for me the games aren't really about their worldbuilding (which i'm not even sure if it is consistent across the games) or stories but about the excellent level design and mechanics they have.

How is Dishonored 3 by the way? Strangely, I can't find the Codex thread.

It isn't Dishonored 3, it is Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, which follows (a year i think) after the second game and you play as Billie Lurk. Here is the codex thread. Gameplay-wise it is pretty much more of the same, though so far (i'm at level 3, there are 5 levels overall) there haven't been any big complex levels like the clockwork mansion. On the other hand some "puzzles" are harder in this game and require more exploration if you want to solve them. Also your powers are a bit different, e.g. instead of instant blink you can mark where you want to go and then teleport there - your mark also acting as a decoy, which is nice. Also you can "exit your body" for a few second to fly around the world, which can be used to find secrets or scout the area. Outside of bonecharms though, you do not decide what to power up, these powers come to you bit by bit.

Writing-wise it is functional, in that it gives you a reason to do whatever you do, but TBH i do not find any of the characters involved interesting (and there isn't anything like Emily's comically bloodthirsty comments in Dishonored 2 as you came across random objects :-P - again the writing taking itself too seriously when IMO it works better when it accepts the absurdity of its world).

 

[Zombra]

Not every game needs to be an accurate simulation of everything. But Thief was improved by having most clutter items interactable - you can pick up worthless cutlery and throw it around to distract guards, for example!

It's almost as if stealth and distraction mechanics are part of Thief's core gameplay loop.

Well, i guess at that point it becomes a matter of what you find interesting then and how much you can filter out uninteresting things.

We're getting very close to the point! This even draws us back to the point of the original post. I touched on this earlier. If the player has to "filter" out irrelevancies to get to the core gameplay, then the design is cluttered, unfocused, weak. Except for "hidden object games" and the like where it is core to the experience, a good game is not about the player's skill at ignoring garbage.

...while i appreciate the worldbuilding in Dishonored, for me it isn't that interesting (and overall the writing isn't that great either, if anything it went downhill -IMO of course- after the first game, when they took everything more seriously in the DLCs). Instead...
...for me the games aren't really about their worldbuilding (which i'm not even sure if it is consistent across the games) or stories but about the excellent level design and mechanics they have.

It's fine with me if you don't enjoy a key aspect of the game. However, whether or not you appreciate it, the Dishonored series is tightly designed, with a very definite scope and strong boundaries as to what is and isn't included.

It seems in general you are putting all the pressure on the player to "make do" with a game and find their own fun amongst the mess, and that it's presumed to be perfectly fine if the developers' design method is "throw a bunch of stuff against a wall and hope some of it sticks". I resist that suggestion.

 

[Bad Sector]

We're getting very close to the point! This even draws us back to the point of the original post. I touched on this earlier. If the player has to "filter" out irrelevancies to get to the core gameplay, then the design is cluttered, unfocused, weak.

I think our difference here is that you treat this filtering process as something that you actively have to do whereas i treat it as something done passively - i simply do not spend any "brain time" in ignoring stuff, i literally do not "mind" them. If something is actively taking my attention it isn't something i can ignore.

It's fine with me if you don't enjoy a key aspect of the game. However, whether or not you appreciate it, the Dishonored series is tightly designed, with a very definite scope and strong boundaries as to what is and isn't included.

Just to be clear, i do not ignore the writing or worldbuilding aspect of the game, i just do not find it as interesting as the gameplay mechanics, so i do not mind completely ignoring whatever the heart would say. I brought this up as an example of something the game didn't require from me to do, wasn't something i enjoyed, so i was able to simply ignore it.

Of course as i wrote in my original message, i made the assumption that you do not consider ignoring something as working around it - and the main reason i wrote that was because it did sound a bit like you did, but i wasn't sure. TBH it isn't something i can empathize with as i never had a problem ignoring non-mandatory elements i dislike in games. But i can see why you'd feel so strong about this if you couldn't simply ignore that stuff.

However, my issue really was...

It seems in general you are putting all the pressure on the player to "make do" with a game and find their own fun amongst the mess, and that it's presumed to be perfectly fine if the developers' design method is "throw a bunch of stuff against a wall and hope some of it sticks". I resist that suggestion.

...reading into what you wrote that developers should avoid experimenting with gameplay elements since those may turn out to not be that great (which sometimes can feel like "throwing a bunch of stuff at a wall to see what sticks") and *this* is something i'm against at - not because i like the mess itself, but because it implies a "do or do not, there is no try" mentality (again, my reading, i could be completely off and wrong about this). Many of my favorite RPGs are games like New Vegas, Morrowind, ELEX, Bloodlines, Arx Fatalis, etc that are in some aspects very broken and feel like their developers tried to bite off more than they could chew - but i like those enough and ignore their issues to the point that i have to actively remind myself whenever i see discussions about, say, New Vegas' brokenness, about how hard it can be to even get that thing running. At the same time one of my biggest disappointments lately was The Outer Words, a game that is super polished but also played it *too* safe - the developers didn't even try something different, making it feel mediocre (though FWIW i still had fun playing it... i just do not think i'll ever play it again, whereas i've lost count of the number of times i've replayed FNV - some years ago i even spent a few weeks at home doing nothing else except doing playthroughts of the game several times in succession).

Because of that i'd rather have "broken" games that try to do more things they "should" be able to do, than have polished gems that only do a few things well and end up feeling mediocre (to me). Sure, ideally they should be able to do a few things and excel at them, but at least personally i've never seen that outside very simple games (and hell, even something like Doom 1 has its stinker levels). Or at least i never found such games interesting myself anyway.

 

[Zombra]

Good post Bad Sector

I'm glad (not being sarcastic) that you're able to "hard disconnect" from distractions. It's not so easy for me - sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. I find in a lot of games I am annoyed every time I see a trash can because I know the developers expect me to dig in it to see if I find 2gp. Even if I never actually do it, it's distracting and hurts the experience to have it there at all.

If developers assume that "Well, anything players don't like, they can just ignore", I feel they are starting on the wrong foot, even if forgiving players like you are out there.

Regarding "broken games" and innovation, note that I am absolutely in favor of games trying new things. What is important to me is innovation with intention. "What if we add climbing mechanics to our stealth game" is a very different innovation than "Hey, I made balloons you can pop, let's put them in every room in our serious dark fantasy swordfighting RPG". If the climbing mechanics (or whatever) are overpowered and don't turn out that fun, it was still a good decision to try to extend the scope of the stealth systems in a meaningful, intentional way. Throwing in balloons "because balloons" is dumb and distracting - if balloon popping turns out fun it will be despite the developer's intention to make a good dark fantasy game, not because of it.

Obviously the above examples are loaded, but you see the point.

I like a lot of the games on your list too. I feel like most of them knew what they were trying to do and stuck to it. Again: intention is key.

To bring it back around again to the OP, a game's visuals should only be cluttered and confusing if the design intent includes clutter and confusion.

 

[Bad Sector]

I find in a lot of games I am annoyed every time I see a trash can because I know the developers expect me to dig in it to see if I find 2gp. Even if I never actually do it, it's distracting and hurts the experience to have it there at all.

I was about to say that the Dishonored games have several trashbins where you can find gold coins and other trinkets (and i do tend to dive into and collect them :-P), but then i realized that these - and the other trinkets scattered in the world - also serve the purpose of leading you through the world map so you get to learn the map's spaces, a knowledge that is the foundation of many of the game's loops (especially if you are taking a more stealthy approach). So i guess it applies to your bit about "intention" - and the trinkets aren't that many (to be mindlessly placed) in the first place anyway.

But this brought to my mind the box and barrel containers in Morrowind. I can't think of a gameplay purpose for them outside of providing some easy items to sell early in the game (or free ingredients, though that is a rare need and probably not very useful at the beginning of the game). I think they are just meant to be interactive backdrops, essentially providing consistency to the game world in that if you can open some containers then you should be able to open all containers - and it'd feel weird if only the containers you were "meant" (quest-wise) to interact with had items, so they have some useless items in there to provide an illusion of (in-world) purpose.

Which makes me wonder, since you brought the example of a trash can with potential 2gp in it being distracting, what do you think about Morrowind's box containers (e.g. in Balmora)?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Zombra]

What do you think about Morrowind's box containers (e.g. in Balmora)?

Been a long time since I played Morrowind, and that was before I became critical of game design

As you describe them, and I realize I may be walking right into your trap by admitting this, the crates sound benign enough and easy enough to ignore that I wouldn't about them. I understand why they were included - Morrowind came out during an era where "simluation power" was exploding, and designs were ambitious (and naive) enough to believe that the more stuff you can throw in, the better. Seen through the lens of its time, Morrowind gets a pass.

Dissected in the light of 2020, I see no value in the existence of these containers. Any verisimilitude gained by consistency is discarded when considering the only possible player behavior it enables: picking through boxes to look for discarded yet easily salable items. Are we to believe that Balmora citizens care so little about money, or so much about the unfortunate, that they put all their items outside for the homeless instead of walking 10 feet to the nearest vendor for hard cash? I'm looking for intention here and I don't see any. "Realism", not really; enhancing the setting, not really. Giving the player an exciting gameplay option? I don't see that either - dumpster diving doesn't seem consistent with the intended experience. Did I miss something? Maybe they get points for trying for some new kind of realism, but it wasn't done well. I'd be happier with them gone.

 

[Bad Sector]

As you describe them, and I realize I may be walking right into your trap by admitting this, the crates sound benign enough and easy enough to ignore that I wouldn't about them.

No attempt for trapping, i am just curious :-P.

Dissected in the light of 2020, I see no value in the existence of these containers. Any verisimilitude gained by consistency is discarded when considering the only possible player behavior it enables: picking through boxes to look for discarded yet easily salable items. Are we to believe that Balmora citizens care so little about money, or so much about the unfortunate, that they put all their items outside for the homeless instead of walking 10 feet to the nearest vendor for hard cash? I'm looking for intention here and I don't see any. "Realism", not really; enhancing the setting, not really. Giving the player an exciting gameplay option? I don't see that either - dumpster diving doesn't seem consistent with the intended experience. Did I miss something? Maybe they get points for trying for some new kind of realism, but it wasn't done well. I'd be happier with them gone.

Dumpster diving could be consistent with the idea of you being thrown penniless to an unknown island - you are trying to survive after all. And the items are easy to sell, but they are very cheap so they quickly become useless for selling (which is why i mentioned their use for the starting point). Also i think these are meant to be garbage and perhaps the developers didn't have enough time to make unique "garbage" items (though it doesn't explain why Oblivion does essentially the same thing) so they used the same items and containers that you'd find in smuggler caves (where having boxes with random stuff makes more sense).

But i think the main consistency comes not from what these particular containers provide, but from all containers behaving the same way regardless of them being important for some quest or not.

Do you think the game would be better (in current year light) if these containers were gone? And gone completely or gone only from places where there isn't much of a reason for them to exist (e.g. in smuggler caves, shops and storage areas). Or would you keep them as static scenery (ie. just the box/barrel/etc model) only only used interactive containers when a quest needed it? And if so, would you use a different model to signify that "this container is interactive"?

 

[DraQ]

The question is "should every game be a sandbox game". I propose that not every game should be a sandbox game. Just because the player can work around random extra garbage does not mean that adding random extra garbage to your design is always the right choice.

The concept you are looking for is not a sandbox game.

There are three kinds of games, usually referred to as narrativist, gamist and simulationist.
Narrativism may be left as-is, but the distinction between the remaining two is much more fundamental:

• The former is built around few lean, minimalistic systems that can be seen to produce gameplay exactly as designed.
• The latter is built around complexity of multitude of systems interacting in ways that cannot be predicted, whose correctness can only be guaranteed on the basis of individual systems behaving sensibly, but the end result may surprise devs as much as anyone else.

Now, the thing is that games like cRPGs, immersive sims, simulators and the like pretty much by definition cannot belong to the former category (other games like platformers, arena shooters, oldschool FPS games, or abstract strategic boardgames like Chess or Go make for good example of the former). Their underlying design is antithesis of lean and tightly controlled, it invites player to make something and make it work. This is inherently sandboxy even if the game itself isn't.

No, some of my most cherished games are Narrativist, but this is at best a network of railroads AKA CYOA with stats AKA I would rather make a book/movie but had to go into game industry - between that and interactivity resulting from complexity there shouldn't even be a contest.

And this interactivity can only be improved if you can stab someone in the eye with a pencil while attempting to escape, beat someone with a chair, gag them with a smelly sock or burn one of those damn wooden plates to make charcoal when in dire need to improvise something to draw some magic runes.
---------------------------------------------------
As for the cleaner, more focused design - what's next?
Cleaner location layouts? Cleaner quest design?
How does it end up as anything but a linear corridor with quest marker at the end when taken to a logical conclusion?

Long live fucking clutter!

For example, these days i am playing the Dishonored series (playing the third now).

Regarding Dishonored: I actually found clutter useful in that game. There is an item in there called spring razor which works as surface-attachable mine, which cuts whoever triggered it into pieces with whiplashing razor wire. So I used various pieces of clutter (sometimes even severed bodyparts) to bypass mechanical limitation and turn spring razors into grenades by attaching them to clutter, then throwing it.

You can also attach spring razors to live rats for homing missiles. Or guided ones if you possess the rat.

In real life, you can pick up anything you want and get a reward in the form of your senses telling you something about an item. You can break into a random apartment, look at every single item there, pick it up, do whatever you want. You can pick up a dirty sock from the corner of the room and raise it to your nose and your reward will be the alluring fragrance of a woman's foot sweat. You can pick up the worn flats in front of the bed, run your tongue across the insole and get the intoxicating aroma of female feet spreading across your taste buds. You can pick up the alarm clock and fumble with its dials until it rings. You can pick up the coffee mug and look at it and analyze the artwork of Arnold Schwarzenegger chewing raw coffee beans that is printed on its side. You can run your fingers across the wallpaper and feel every bump and irregularity.

But are you doing this IRL? Are you checking out every random object even though it holds little interest to you? No?

Then why are you doing it in games?

Ok, I am now seriously at a loss whether I should

or
that.

Good fucking job.

 

[Zombra]

Dumpster diving could be consistent with the idea of you being thrown penniless to an unknown island - you are trying to survive after all.

I feel like this is making excuses. I mean maybe the developers wanted to make you feel like a desperate bum. If that was the intention they failed. Instead they should have put in hunger mechanics or some such.

But i think the main consistency comes not from what these particular containers provide, but from all containers behaving the same way regardless of them being important for some quest or not.

In that case, they should have simply left them empty instead of putting in items that had no reason to be there. Instead perhaps they worked backwards from their conclusion and dissolved into nonsense:
* We want consistent properties for similar objects.
* We want openable containers with treasure the player can take.
* Therefore every container in the game should be openable.
* But that would mean thousands of empty containers, which seems dumb.
* Therefore containers should always have stuff in them.
* We can fill the containers with worthless trash the player can take.
* Perfect.

Not perfect.

Do you think the game would be better (in current year light) if these containers were gone? And gone completely or gone only from places where there isn't much of a reason for them to exist (e.g. in smuggler caves, shops and storage areas). Or would you keep them as static scenery (ie. just the box/barrel/etc model) only only used interactive containers when a quest needed it? And if so, would you use a different model to signify that "this container is interactive"?

Well, I'm not going to design the perfect game right now. If you want me to knee jerk, I would probably eliminate most "decorative" crates from the game. Crates are a video game trope we can live without, and I don't think they're at all required for believable environments. So yeah, I would trim it down to just a couple container types that were always interactive, and they would generally contain things relevant to the intended experience of being a cool treasure hunter/adventurer.

 

[DraQ]

Any verisimilitude gained by consistency is discarded when considering the only possible player behavior it enables: picking through boxes to look for discarded yet easily salable items. Are we to believe that Balmora citizens care so little about money, or so much about the unfortunate, that they put all their items outside for the homeless instead of walking 10 feet to the nearest vendor for hard cash?

And yet you seem to have the problem with containers rather than their contents AND economy system driving pathological behaviour.

Protip: If your player can profit from selling the spoils of their dumpster diving they will also end up hoovering and selling piles of low value trash they find on lowlifes and in dungeons.
Better have your intended gameplay fail loudly and early so that you know it needs fixing before release.

(And actually, the problem with Balmora crates was that they were accidentally left without ownership, unlike crates everywhere else)

I don't see that either - dumpster diving doesn't seem consistent with the intended experience. Did I miss something? Maybe they get points for trying for some new kind of realism, but it wasn't done well. I'd be happier with them gone.

Arcanum.
*break outs a lawnchair and a bag of popcorn*

 

[Zombra]

And yet you seem to have the problem with containers rather than their contents AND economy system driving pathological behaviour.

Eh, I do have issues with design informing player behavior, but that's not what I'm talking about today. In the context of this thread the problems are presentation and readability.

Better have your intended gameplay fail loudly and early so that you know it needs fixing before release.

Agree here

Actually, the problem with Balmora crates was that they were accidentally left without ownership, unlike crates everywhere else

I almost said something about that. If the aim was verisimilitude, why were all these crates sitting around that nobody owned, filled with stuff that nobody owned? Were they imported to make the town look lived in?

 

[Bad Sector]

I feel like this is making excuses. I mean maybe the developers wanted to make you feel like a desperate bum. If that was the intention they failed. Instead they should have put in hunger mechanics or some such.

Yeah, that was me trying to come up with an explanation here, i do not know if it was something the developers intended. The main reason it fails IMO is that the game's economy is mostly broken, unless you also headcanon that whatever you do takes place over a large span of time (which is something that is suggested in some of the conversations i think).

Instead perhaps they worked backwards from their conclusion and dissolved into nonsense:
* We want consistent properties for similar objects.
* We want openable containers with treasure the player can take.
* Therefore every container in the game should be openable.
* But that would mean thousands of empty containers, which seems dumb.
* Therefore containers should always have stuff in them.
* We can fill the containers with worthless trash the player can take.
* Perfect.

Not perfect.

Ok, honestly i do not follow why this is not perfect... to me these steps you mention make perfect sense and in fact it is something i'd see myself designing. Can you explain where it breaks down?

I would probably eliminate most "decorative" crates from the game. Crates are a video game trope we can live without, and I don't think they're at all required for believable environments. So yeah, I would trim it down to just a couple container types that were always interactive, and they would generally contain things relevant to the intended experience of being a cool treasure hunter/adventurer.

Wouldn't this make containers too predictable though? E.g. if there is a container, it is bound to have something interesting, so no chance of missing something. And if all containers can have items, why have containers in the first place instead of having interactive items that drop to your inventory (i mean, e.g. instead of opening a box to take out a dagger you'd "activate" the box will put the dagger in your inventory). Note that it isn't that i see no merit in this, if anything recently i was implementing containers and pick up items in a game for a game jam and i started wondering (a bit because i was frustrated from having to do all that extra work :-P) if there really is a point having containers and if i could streamline some ideas i had for container-based puzzles to something else (i eventually got bored though and haven't touched the game for a while, so never went around to answering that :-P).

(And actually, the problem with Balmora crates was that they were accidentally left without ownership, unlike crates everywhere else)

Actually yeah, it makes sense if these crates were meant to be owned by the people around the area and you'd get penalized for stealing from them.

 

[Zombra]

Ok, honestly i do not follow why this is not perfect... to me these steps you mention make perfect sense and in fact it is something i'd see myself designing. Can you explain where it breaks down?

The steps do indeed make perfect logical sense from premise to conclusion. The problem is that the conclusion, the design you end up with, is crap. It turns out that the initial premise isn't a great idea, because when implemented you get a cluttered game which sends the player boring or conflicting messages. Just because you start with a sound bite that seems cool doesn't mean it will work out for the best.

Link: Great article about a game that had one cool sounding idea that completely fucking ruined everything.

Wouldn't this make containers too predictable though? E.g. if there is a container, it is bound to have something interesting, so no chance of missing something.

Well. "Too predictable" for what? As the designer, it's my intention that when a player sees a container, they will want to get past any obstacles to reach it and get the loot inside. If my player does the work, gets to a box, and then finds only garbage in it, that player will no longer trust that treasure chests are worth getting to. I don't want that to happen. Maybe I'll have mimics or something, or an occasional scripted double cross to play on their expectations. ("Your treasure is in another castle.") But even these switcheroos will be dramatic and interesting, not just "oh look I fought the lich and got a dirty blanket".

Why have containers in the first place instead of having interactive items that drop to your inventory

First, I've already established that boxes are easy to recognize and will almost always have good stuff in them. So this is very readable. My game will certainly have a lot of noninteractive items, but this runs the risk of a player seeing something they don't recognize and assuming it's decorative. If it's in a box, they know to click on it.

But you know, let me take that back. If the game is sufficiently de-cluttered, the player will naturally want to click on everything lying around that looks the slightest bit cool. OK, I changed my mind. A dagger lying loose on the table is fine.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Bad Sector]

The steps do indeed make perfect logical sense from premise to conclusion. The problem is that the conclusion, the design you end up with, is crap.

I think we're reaching a point where it'll be a matter of differences in preferences, but still i do not get why it is crap - the goals are good (keep consistency), the steps to achieve these goals are good, but the end is crap?

(BTW, we're talking about something i personally i enjoy in games, but i am still curious about your thoughts, i'm not trying to convince you to like something)

Link: Great article about a game that had one cool sounding idea that completely fucking ruined everything.

Eh, i do not think this is a comparable example - from the moment it mentioned that they tried to shoehorn linear game elements to an open world design, it was clear that things wouldn't be good. If you start with the idea to make an open world game, this needs to be embraced at every level and at least from the descriptions in the article it sounds like they were trying to apply elements that existed in previous Silent Hill games in an open world setting with many of those ideas not fitting it - and some of their solutions weren't that great ideas by themselves either.

The steps you mentioned above however were all good ideas in themselves and logically followed the previous one - there isn't really a reason not to do any of these steps, which cannot be said for the solutions mentioned in the article.

(note BTW that i haven't played Silent Hill Downpour, i'm only relying on the description given in the article)

Well. "Too predictable" for what? As the designer, it's my intention that when a player sees a container, they will want to get past any obstacles to reach it and get the loot inside.

Too predictable in the sense that if you enter a room or area you know that the interesting bit is in the container and there is no reason to search the rest of the room/area for interesting items - essentially removing a significant element from a game (e.g. in the Dishonored series - i keep bringing that up because i'm playing it right now and i consider it a strong game mechanically - a large part of what you do is rummage through rooms and areas to find stuff, be it due to a (side)quest, to find bonus items like bonecharms, find resources like ammo and health/food, find additional information like maps or even just to read notes and books).

Note that this isn't necessarily a negative thing (2D JRPGs do exactly what you describe very often with chests always giving you something nice in return and whenever you enter a screen with a chest, it often becomes a short term goal), but it is something that can affect other elements of the game (like the part about leading you to learning the world space i mentioned previously). Of course this largely depends on the style of game, but i do not think it is something that can be considered as a universally bad idea.

Though of course, to bring it back to the original topic, having boxes be the only interesting bit in a scene does make a game much more readable :-P

 

[Zombra]

I think we're reaching a point where it'll be a matter of differences in preferences, but still i do not get why it is crap - the goals are good (keep consistency), the steps to achieve these goals are good, but the end is crap?

I think so. Agreed that there may be an element of personal preference involved, but to my eyes ending up with "Therefore, everywhere you look in our game world, there will be a crate filled with garbage" means somewhere along the way you screwed up. Imagine that on the feature list.

Eh, i do not think this is a comparable example

Sorry, not intended as an exact parallel. I just thought the article was interesting and it does illustrate that sounds good on paper isn't the same as actually good.

Too predictable in the sense that if you enter a room or area you know that the interesting bit is in the container and there is no reason to search the rest of the room/area for interesting items - essentially removing a significant element from a game (e.g. in the Dishonored series - i keep bringing that up because i'm playing it right now and i consider it a strong game mechanically - a large part of what you do is rummage

I'm happy for my players to be interested in their environment, but "rummaging" is not on my feature list either. For me, treasure is a reward for overcoming the fabulous and interesting challenges along the way. Opening 30 boxes to find the one not filled with garbage is not a challenge I find interesting.

Though of course, to bring it back to the original topic, having boxes be the only interesting bit in a scene does make a game much more readable :-P

Haha. It's never my intention to make boxes the only interesting thing. They're a rare treat and reward, not the gameplay itself.

 

[Bad Sector]

I'm happy for my players to be interested in their environment, but "rummaging" is not on my feature list either. For me, treasure is a reward for overcoming the fabulous and interesting challenges along the way. Opening 30 boxes to find the one not filled with garbage is not a challenge I find interesting.

Yeah, i think this is where the personal differences apply: i do like the process of looking through stuff and exploring every corner of a map (though this is mainly for smaller maps - usually in level or hub based games - because they have a high density of interesting items and i do not find the process that interesting in seamless open world games because... well, they have a lot of empty spaces with nothing interesting). I am one of those who like keycard hunting in classic FPS games, for example. And i just spent two hours today in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider searching a three story building (with several rooms and lots of places to hide stuff) for a key for an optional area. So yeah, i guess you get the idea .

(i guess that goes back to my childhood outside of games - there wasn't a single drawer or cupboard i'd leave unopened and searched thoroughly at my parent and grandparent homes :-P)

 

[DraQ]

If you want me to knee jerk, I would probably eliminate most "decorative" crates from the game. Crates are a video game trope we can live without, and I don't think they're at all required for believable environments.

Even if said environment is docks or warehouse?
Besides, as much as they are overused (though mostly in fps games) crates serve useful gameplay purposes:

• If movable they can be used to construct makeshift staircases or barricades.
• They can be used to break line of sight and facilitate stealth.
• If mechanics allows you can put stuff in them rather than just taking it out - stuff might be contraband or dead/unconscious bodies.
• If movable they can be dropped, thrown or used to weigh something down.

Besides looking for gameplay purposes of stuff is ass backwards approach when it comes to RPGs and leads to CYOA at best if applied.
You are lucky if you are able to tell if something cannot serve a purpose in your game (for example you probably don't need a shitting system), otherwise it's a "here is world, here is mechanics, here are goals" kind of affair.

So yeah, I would trim it down to just a couple container types that were always interactive, and they would generally contain things relevant to the intended experience of being a cool treasure hunter/adventurer.

Also only put in vents that do contain headcrabs.

The steps do indeed make perfect logical sense from premise to conclusion. The problem is that the conclusion, the design you end up with, is crap. It turns out that the initial premise isn't a great idea, because when implemented you get a cluttered game which sends the player boring or conflicting messages.

It only sends conflicting messages when you break the contract of your universe making sense.

For example if you face massive stack of barrels filled with pickled fucking fish, you can be reasonably assured that every single one of those contains pickled fucking fish and you shouldn't really inspect the contents of any single one of them unless you are specifically looking for pickled fucking fish.
It's only when the game randomly puts gauntlets of fucking awesome or greater wand of even greater fireballs in one of those barrels for no adequate reason (or any unconditionally worthwhile loot at all) where you start sifting through those barrel and mashing that button like well trained lever-rat.

Player should always have a plausible reason to expect that particular container will contain something valuable if they are to expect that. If one of you pickled fucking fish barrels actually contains those gauntlets of fucking awesome and aforementioned greater wang wand of greater fireballs, it should be because someone put them inside there and it should be possible for player to actually find the information that this happened and which barrel it was before they roll up their sleeves and start pickled fucking fish barrel diving. Anything else is degenerate design only a rung above abysmal "wave your cursor over the entire screen for epic items" of Baldur's Gate.

Well. "Too predictable" for what? As the designer, it's my intention that when a player sees a container, they will want to get past any obstacles to reach it and get the loot inside.

Why?
It's only because they are conditioned that every container might have loot inside.

Why not let player *parse* their environment and make a decision whether or not it is reasonable to expect that container to contain phat lewt? Of course for that to work the environment needs to make sense rather than phat lewt being there just because lucky charm ability procced on one of the PCs.

Fucking dirty wirehead rats and their skinner boxes.

First, I've already established that boxes are easy to recognize and will almost always have good stuff in them. So this is very readable. My game will certainly have a lot of noninteractive items, but this runs the risk of a player seeing something they don't recognize and assuming it's decorative. If it's in a box, they know to click on it.

But you know, let me take that back. If the game is sufficiently de-cluttered, the player will naturally want to click on everything lying around that looks the slightest bit cool. OK, I changed my mind. A dagger lying loose on the table is fine.

Shit design is shit design is shit design. Let's declutter our games to the point where no parsing is needed on part of the player - everything is neatly tokenized and all you ever do is following the colorful pizza slice to phat lewt.
Maybe put giant, glowing exclamation marks over your boxes too just so that player won't accidentally miss them?

I'd also add invisible walls to prevent them from proceeding until they have clicked the box just to be on the safe side.

 

[Zombra]

DraQ, I appreciate your distinction between "gamist" games and "simulationist" games, but simulationist games are not the only kind of good game. Also, even simulationist games can be focused and uncluttered.

 

[JarlFrank]

What DraQ said. That's where I wanted to go with my "IRL, do you pick up every useless shred of trash you find?" post. And if you counter that with "But if you want games to be like IRL you'd also want a shitting system" you don't understand the core of the argument.

Some games are simulationist by nature. Simulationism means shit should work the way you expect it to work according to the established rules of the gameworld. And even the weirdest gameworld, like Planescape, would have boxes that behave like IRL boxes. They're hollow inside and used to put stuff in. Therefore, when you encounter a box in a simulationist game, you should expect it to be openable and contain stuff.

Whether it contains stuff of interest to you as a player is a matter of context. Boxes stored in a pharmacy? Yeah, they might contain useful stimpacks to use for healing. You're gonna open these and check what's inside.
Boxes stored in a restaurant? They probably contain food and drink, and if the game has a hunger system you might wanna grab a few things to bite.
Boxes stored in a factory warehouse? You can be 99% sure that they don't contain anything of interest to your character because most of the stuff in there will be industrial goods used by the factory workers to create whatever products the factory is producing.

Same with exploring random people's apartments. Yeah, sure, you could sift through every compartment in Sally's pantry, but you're not gonna find anything other than packages of quinoa and smoked horse salami (Sally has peculiar tastes). If you wanna nab her wallet, you're better off looking in her bedroom. Generally, people don't store valuables in the kitchen or the pantry, so why should you expect to find valuables in the kitchen cupboards of random NPC #13424?

Morrowind is a game that does this mostly right. Wardrobe in random NPC #4342's bedroom? Shirt, pants, shoes. What else did you fucking expect? Baskets in the kitchen? Eggs and meat. Again, what did you fucking expect? Chest at the end of a bandit-infested dungeon - 100 gold pieces and an enchanted axe. Cool. Makes some sense for this stuff to be there, too. And all those barrels in the very same dungeon that contain nothing but food? Well, obviously those guys also need food, and the barrels look different from the chest, so it's easy to discern the unique chest containing unique loot from the dozen generic barrels containing generic food. Nothing in the game ever creates the expectation that you might find something of value in those barrels.

Chests at the end of a dungeon only having 50 gold and an apple is an issue of level design. Likewise random boxes that contain magic items. Neither should happen in a game with proper design. As a general rule, dungeon chest contents should be hand placed and not randomized. Common containers like wardrobes should be stocked with various specific lists. Wardrobe list: shirts, pants, skirts, dresses, jackets etc. Sock drawer list: socks and stockings. Kitchen list: cutlery, mugs, pots, etc. Bathroom: soap, shampoo, makeup, toilet paper, etc. You can quickly place a container, assign a type to it, and it's done.

But what's the benefit of that when the player doesn't have a reason to ever check these containers out? Easy. It's more immersive, allows for emergent gameplay and allows for deeper characterizations of important NPCs.
Wanna show that Kathy really likes to eat venison? You don't have to give her dialog topics where she randomly raves about how much she likes venison, you just stock her freezer with tons of venison cuts. Wanna show that Peter is a sci-fi nerd? Stock his library with sci-fi books and place a few sci-fi action figures on his desk. Etc etc. This is called environmental storytelling, and the more interactive your environments are, the more effective this technique becomes.
How does this lead to emergent gameplay? Well, as DraQ already mentioned, when a container allows the player to take things out, it can also allow the player to put things in (which the TES games do). Killed someone and need to hide the corpse? Find a large enough container and you're done. Have to assassinate Kathy? Sneak into her kitchen and put some poison on all the venison in her freezer. Next time she eats, she dies.

The benefit of having more working cogs in the system that can be applied generically to all objects of a certain type is that you can create ad-hoc quest solutions without having to specifically code them.
If containers can hold items, and NPCs take items from containers, and NPCs have lunch every day at 12, and the lunch they have doesn't spawn from nowhere but is taken from containers, it means that an assassination mission can easily be solved by poisoning the contents of an NPC's pantry. The devs won't have to script anything for this to work. It just works. Because systems.
Remember how Fallout's pickpocketing system allowed you to place ticking time bombs in NPC's inventory to blow them up? I don't even know if this was intended by the developers - it's an emergent gameplay element that emerged from the systems of "pickpocket allows you to either take stuff from NPC inventory or plant stuff in NPC inventory" and "when you set an explosive charge with a timer, it will explode after the set time".

In a game that doesn't code such things systemically but has a special script to make such things work only in the contect of a specific quest, you can't experiment as much, and you have to work within the constraints of the dev's imagination. If the dev thought of "Hey let's make dropping a live grenade down Kathy's cleavage one option for solving the assassination quest" then you can do it. If they didn't think of it, you can't. Plenty of games allow you to perform certain actions only under certain circumstances, because there are no underlying systems for these actions, only pre-determined scripts during certain quests. If you turn as many forms of interaction as possible into systems, you allow the player to find his own solutions independent of whether you thought of scripting them or not.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I'm not walking down the street trying to figure out which walls can be blown down by a grenade and which can't

I do.

 

[Zombra]

To bring it back around again to the OP, a game's visuals should only be cluttered and confusing if the design intent includes clutter and confusion.

DraQ JarlFrank Forgive me for quoting myself, but I want to draw attention to this point.

I usually prefer "gamist" games to simulations, but I appreciate the qualities of simulations.

In effect, you are both advocating for games which do have clutter and confusion as part of their design intent. Here are a million systems, objects, locations; now figure out how you want to use/navigate them to complete objectives (if any). I agree with you that when this is the intent of a design, clutter and confusion lead to interesting challenges and rewarding payoffs for the creative player.

The thread started because of visually cluttered, confusing games which are that way apparently not by design but due to simple thoughtlessness, or a misguided assumption that more is always better. I hope we can all agree that a thoughtless design is a bad design.

 

[V_K]

The thread started because of visually cluttered, confusing games which are that way apparently not by design but due to simple thoughtlessness, or a misguided assumption that more is always better. I hope we can all agree that a thoughtless design is a bad design.

Well, technically, the two games I mention in the OP - Seven and Prey - do belong to the simulationist camp. And personally, I don't mind the game simulating useless trash - because keeping a consistent level of simulation doesn't mean you can't build your scenes in such a way that makes useless trash unobtrusive. As I've already said in respose to DraQ - simulate background noise how much you want, but let it fade into the background. But contemporary environmental """artists""" apparently can't sleep at night if they don't make every single coffee cup pop as much as possible - with bloom, and flares, and reflections, and bright colors, and high contrast shadows, and whatever else. Sure, it looks good on screenshots. But navigating this stuff is a nightmare.
The other thing with simulationist approach - which I'm genuinely all for, otherwise I wouldn't be trying to play immersive sims - is how much of this stuff is actually useful. Sure you can throw a wooden plate in Skyrim to keep attention away from your location - but how many times in the game do you actually need that? Yes, in theory, simulated systems allow for a wider variety of approaches - but that doesn't mean you can just throw a bunch of simulated trash in and call it a day. You still have to design your levels in a way that would incentivize the player to tap into that variety.