Lessons of Torment...

Don't you think it would be more interesting if, to pick some names at random, pissing off Ignus was a requirement for getting Vhailor later on? The way it's done in Torment is that pissing off "Vhailor" simply results in a negative outcome, end of story. It's this type of design that encourages saving before every dialogue and trying out all the options to see how they pan out.

As to missing out on quests and replayability: the *right* way to design it is the way it was done in Gothic 2 -- choices you consciously made determined your path through the game, excluding some branches of the story. You get to actively think about what way you want to go, your choices have logical consequences, and there's great replay value. Missing out on a major (if unbelievably annoying) area and one of the most interesting characters (not to mention a humongous XP reward) simply because you didn't notice a trinket at a curio shop is just bad game design.

 

In general, I agree that it'd be better if quests were more interrelated. But I think that reloading the game after a dialogue is only appropriate if e.g. you wanted to say "Yes" and due to a bug your character said "No", not if you just missed the only dialogue option to give a tangible reward.

I agree Gothic 2 was a very good game in this aspect. But I think that unfortunately sometimes the choices you make are unconscious while sometimes they shouldn't be. I'm talking about e.g. the fact that if you don't join the mercenaries you don't get the option to open the castle gates and let the Orcs swarm the paladins. (You can't steal the key.) OK, it's not a "reasonable" choice for a mage or of course a paladin, but the option should be there. By choosing the faction you miss quite an interesting quest possibility.
I may of course be mistaken as I didn't check it thoroughly. Gothic 2 is still a great game with lots of fun small quests with choices & consequences on a local scale.

 

I suppose there is a precedent, with movie remakes that is. Still, the remake is rarely as good as the original, warts and all.

Rather than a remake, I'd play a whole new game that's as exciting and innovative in the storytelling department, but has a UI that doesn't get in the way, and combat that's fun rather than tedious. I bet someone could do that e.g. with the NWN engine. What pissed me off about that particular game was that the technical underpinnings for a really good CRPG were all there, but the story and characters played like it was written by a monkey with with a nail through his head. (Speaking of, anyone know of any mods/expansions that actually try to make a game worth playing with that particular engine?)

 

You can bind shortcuts to do things - for example pickpoeckets and lockpicking chests.

 

So Elwro you want the developers to implent quest leading to "reload" dead ends?

That option is not there because it leads to a "game over", I know some like to play a retarded but if you joined the mages or the paladins its clear WHY the option to destroy the Paladins is not a option.

Sandbox games require what Saywer said and considering the amount of ... idiots I seen playing TES games were "roleplaying" tends to end up being a L33t mass murder I rather the limitations of staying in character are better that removing those limitations.

 

Well, if you make too many choices win/win you end up damaging the game element of RPG. Games are about winning and losing outcomes - delivering gameplay in the form of dialogue doesn't change that. Interesting win/interesting lose is a Herculean effort, I think, if you mean for people to find the loss compelling enough to survive the save/reload system. I remember Wing Commander I had separately branching winning and losing scenarios (and realistically enough, the losing scenarios were much harder, although that's obviously terrible from a game point of view) but I know I only played the "bad" scenarios by skipping directly to them with cheats, as something I did only when I had thoroughly mastered the winning branch. The much more linear Wing Commander II had no branching, and you were simply told to do a mission over if you failed (even if you would have survived, unlike WC I). I remember Chris Roberts flatly saying in some interview that almost no players followed through with a losing branch in WCI, so they decided to cut their work in half instead.

Edit - I think you should talk about stuff like the Modron Cube separately, because it's actually a totally different dynamic from the reload-on-loss issue. The Modron Cube complaint is just a question of amount - how much content should you hide, and how well? The reload-on-loss problem is foundational.

 

But but but... those are consequences of gameplay. Those make the replay value meaningful. Hell, did you know you can go back to the morgue after you learn how to speak to the dead, and talk to all the zombies, and get dialogue-based rewards for discovering one of your old allies? OMG! You might miss it! Who goes back there? Why would they do that?

It's a reward for being curious. Not everyone is meant to get it. I like that stuff. I like that I missed out on Ignus. The first time I played and I pissed of the Paranoid Incarnation, I left the game like that -- I let that be the ending of my game. TNO was beat. Repeatedly. End of his story. Then I started anew.

Anyway, I hope I'm misunderstanding you. It sounds a lot like you want Oblivion, getting everything your first time through, and without negative side-effects.

-Tony

 

What? No. For example, it's obvious that opening the castle should e.g. enable you to join the Mercenaries.

 

What UIs are you comparing PS:T's to? Compared to other IE games, it's not bad, and I feel it holds up fairly well against other RPGs. It's not extremely handy or anything, but it's certainly not something that ever stopped me, or got me thinking about it being annoying or anything. It worked, as far as I'm concerned.


As for irrepairably pissing off Vhailor, eh? How is that a bad thing? I did that on my second playthrough, when I asked him to judge my companions. It didn't pan out very well, and I had to whack him, but I sure as hell didn't reload in feverish angst over what might have been. I felt the situation played out quite naturally to be honest, he didn't like the rest of my party, and so he had to go.

Not that I wouldn't like hidden connections between NPCs if they made sense, and I'm all for early actions having ramifications towards the end and non-immidiate consequences and all that, but the way it's presented in PS:T feels natural, so I never really missed 'em.


And finally, what game doesn't reward saving before critical situations? Of course you'll get the best results if you keep reloading to take the most powergamingly correct route. If you are in fact not compelled to save before dialogue in other RPGs, then it's likely because you know the game is so ridiculously shallow, that no matter what you say, you'll reach the same outcome anyway.

Saving before dialogue is no different than saving before randomized chests, before big fights, before entering certain randomized areas etc. Constant reloading to get the "proper" result is the gamer's flaw, not the game's.

 

You are misunderstanding me. I certainly don't want to get everything the first time through, and without negative side-effects. My point is that "negative" consequences could make for interesting game play too: at least in my PnP campaign, many of the most interesting episodes have happened when my players have totally fucked up and had to really work to deal with the consequences of the fuckup. This sort of dynamic is rare as hen's teeth in CRPG's, and certainly wasn't present in Torment.

As I said elsewhere, IMO the closest thing to "consequences done right" that I've come across is Gothic 2. I played that game through three times, just so I could experience each of the three factions -- and the experience was different enough to be meaningful each of the three times.

So what I would like to see is interesting consequences for failure: something other than just not getting the candy. For example, unintentionally pissing off someone in one dialogue could get one of his enemies to approach you later and open up a different story line. The closest I got to this feeling in Torment was the second encounter with Trias -- I had Vhailor with me at the time, which had consequences I did not expect. (I traded in Nordom for him.)

In a framework like this, "hidden" side-quests make a lot more sense too: if I know there's more to discover in a game (e.g. by having to pick a side and go with it, thereby forfeiting the possibility to experience the others sides), I'm more likely to replay and come across that hidden stuff. But if I play through and am left with the feeling that I've pretty much experienced all there is to experience in the game, I'm much less likely to go back.

What's more, there should be at least hints of the existence of the hidden stuff: references in dialogues or other such stuff. There was nothing of the sort for the Modron cube: either you stumbled on it in the curio shop, or you didn't (or, in my case, a friend who had played it through told me where to look for it -- just like an in-game character could have).

 

No, it sould not.

Only AFTER you join one of the 3 factions can you reach the castle "faction hopping" is a signal of poor roleplaying, only the new TES generation wants that kind of "freedom".

There are CONSEQUENCES with the actions you made, if you decided to join a faction its intended the nameless hero did so in good faith, not "I join then just to stab then in the back".

 

Ah, but it isn't. In *every* game, computer, PnP, or sports, the underlying psychological dynamic is to reinforce some kind of (ultimately pointless) behaviour by rewarding some things and punishing others. If the game reinforces behaviour that's exciting and fun, we experience it as "good gameplay." If it reinforces behaviour that's tedious and boring, we call it "poor gameplay."

Therefore, if the game design strongly reinforces constant reloading (a tedious and boring behaviour if there ever was one), that's certainly a flaw in the game design, not the player.

 

So, Drakron, you're saying that the gate guard should carry the key if I'm a mercenary, but should hide it if I'm a paladin because yes, after you side with Lord Hagen the idea that every paladin's life is sacred is firmly engraved in your brain and you'd never do anything to harm them.
TES generation wants to be able to be the head of all guilds in a given game; I'm just pointing that, if the programmers have already put the "open castle" option in the game they should enable it for paladins because it makes sense. After you join the paladin faction, you can gradually get the notion that the way they treat you (during the Dragon Hunt etc) and other people shows they are just pompous bastards who don't deserve much. And you start to wish you hadn't joined their faction... The TES generation would say "lol I maxxed out guild #3 let's move on to guild #4", I'm saying "Things that happened in the game made my character change his mind", which of course should have proper consequences.

 

But I think the point is that for the rest of us Planescape does not "strongly reinforce constant reloading".

 

OK. I guess then my response would be that it hardly sounds like a criticism of Planescape: Torment. As you say, it's rare in CRPGs, and as such, it's not a PS:T-specific problem.

I had no issue with the way the PS:T consequences were delivered. In fact, I felt that the game was excellent from that perspective. Combat? Meh. Too wordy in some spots? Granted. Hampered by the Infinity Engine? Sure. But quests, consequences, storyline? Loved that.

As a sidenote, for those talking about re-doing PS:T as a NWN module, there is some hope for that. NWN2 has a new feature. I can't remember what it's called in the video I saw, but something like "campaigns" and "episodes." Basically, it gave you a fast, easy way to hook modules together, pass variables, continue storylines, etc. You can do that with NWN, but it requires more work. I was working on a module at one point, and I couldn't figure out how one particular set of modules had done it. I finally realized that they just imported the character and assumed the storyline had played out as expected, then continued from that point. But in NWN 2, you'll be able to pass a cluster of data to the next module, so that you can carry on reliably and easily.

Which leads me to PS:T. Someone could implement only the morgue. Leaving the morgue would be the endgame. Then, someone could implement the lower ward, and only the lower ward, completely independently. As long as they were hooked together as episodes, the player would find the game to be fairly seamless. This allows many people to implement many small pieces, so that no single person feels overloaded with a huge project. And it allows them to stay independent, so that you don't need a ton of coordination. And it allows you to pass variables, so that branches in storyline can be maintained. For example, if I were to implement the morgue, I'd check for a "has_speaks_with_dead" flag, which my own module would never implement. But someone would pass that in from their module to mine, and I would know at that point to unlock dialogue options with the zombies & Xachariah.

-T

 

Correct. I only brought it up because PS:T does solve the #1 reason for constant reloading in-game, and in a brilliant way at that -- namely, dying. It's a shame they didn't make it (reinforcing play-through rather than reload) a design parameter for the entire game: I have a feeling it could have been done for about the same amount of work that went into the game as it is now. That's why I called it a missed opportunity.

The idea of a fan-made remake of PS:T sounds interesting: I'd certainly play it if someone made it. However, I'm too old and too employed to participate in making fan-made stuff -- I'm more interested in figuring out ways to make indie CRPG's commercially viable.

 

BTW, something seems to be still wrong with the City of Doors Initiative website that seemed promising some time ago. No update for months...

 

Elwro -- I agree that it would be cool if you could do that, with appropriate consequences. However, I think you may be underestimating the amount of work involved: it would require handling an entire new branch in the storyline, or possibly several branches.

Situation: I just betrayed the Paladins. What happens now?

(1) I want to join the Mercs. How? There was a quite an interesting set of quests involved in joining the Mercs: it wouldn't make sense if they just accepted me without asking at that point, but obviously the same quests wouldn't do. So that means writing out a whole new branch in the game.

(2) I want to play it alone, unaffiliated with any faction. Fine, but that means figuring out quest triggers for everything that's left in the game -- triggers that would otherwise have been handled by your faction members.

Sometimes you just have to do stuff like that to keep the project from spinning out of control. Real life (and PnP sessions) can branch off infinitely, but computer games can't, due to inherent limitations of the engine and the people making it.

 

It should be noted that the games that handle "acceptable failure" the best are typically heavily dynamic. It's much more of an acceptable event to lose a soldier in X-Com than a merc in JA2, because the X-Com soldiers are dynamically generated but JA2 mercs are unique and finite. You can lose a sub-existential war in Civilization without feeling like you're missing something.

Quality dialogue and dynamic generation are pretty well mutually exclusive, though. The other alternative is Nethack-style S&Q, in which occasional failure becomes a bitter pill that you have to swallow because "going back to your last save" implies too much work. I know I've put a damn wand of cancellation into my loaded bag of holding, probably the most catastrophic nonfatal failure you can make in Nethack, and come back from it, while doing that sort of thing in a save/reload game would have prompted an instant reload.

 

That's the thing: I'd really like to see a game one day that had the freedom from metagame considerations (especially save/load) of Nethack, without having to start over and over again for years before managing to finish. (Yes, I've ascended without cheating; twice in fact.)

 

As stated it would mess the story progression as each of the factions have iniciation quests.

The issue is developers have a idea of how things work and how things progress ... any RPG player have to know what are the carrots-on-the-stick and what he is limited to do.

The same happens in tabletop PnP playing, if a player wants to be a blackguard he might run into the issue that the rest of the players and the DM will not allow him to do so, when a DM declares they are going to run a module they know they cannot just midway ignore or go against the "carrot-on-the-stick" since that will destroy the adventure and force the DM to come up with a new one.

cRPGs act in the same way, the only diference is they are more absolute in what you can and cannot do.

 

You're nuts. I agree with the person who commented that it seems you want to play Oblivion. "Not browsing around the Curiosity Shop with enough enthusiasm" is your problem, not the game's. Do you want the game to hold your hand and make sure you absolutely notice the cube and its effects? It wasn't necessary to completing the game, finding out about the cube should therefore be something that you had to figure out for yourself, eg being *rewarded for exploration*, which is an integral part of gameplay.

You seem to want the game to be more linear than it already is. Pissing off Vhailor and the Paranoid Incarnation? Surely you jest. This is something you *should* be able to do. This is one of the few instances when PS: T had genuine choices and consequences and you're essentially writing it off as "OMG it's too hard that I might actually be able to change stuff in the game." Why should every player mistake have an easy solution from the game that makes it irrelevant if you had played right? Why should every consequence of an action be a win for the player? At some point, you have to accept responsibility for making obvious mistakes (eg not exploring, talking smack to Vhailor).

Missing that chick is, again, your fault, not the game's. It's not as if she was difficult to find, either. If this were a typical console RPG that you've probably been playing, maybe you would have been forced at one point to talk to her and had no choice in the matter. If that's the kind of gameplay you want, that's fine. But don't criticize it as a weakness of PS: T just because it doesn't treat you as a kid. In PS: T, you are rewarded for exploration. Like in Pharod's city where you can ask the myopic woman to cut you up, discovering that something was lodged in your intestines.

If your examples are the ones above, I have to disagree. In CRPGs, we often want choices and consequences in our quests. Rather than complaining about a lack of choices and consequences, you seem actually to be complaining about their existence. In lots of well-regarded CRPGs, it is possible to fail, and that is part of the experience. Getting Vhailor to join your party is less satisfying when it is inevitable. And who knows? Some players might not even want him to join. (I didn't, which it why I intentionally pissed him off). Knowing you can piss him off or that you can even have him unmake himself adds dimension to the game.

Hardly apologetics. I simply refuted your points and now you don't have the guts to continue on an argument you lost. Fine. Since apparently reading is too hard for you, the simple summary of my argument earlier is that your rubbish regarding the UI in reference to console RPGs is out of context because the gameplay differences are immense. If the gameplay is more complicated, you cannot expect the UI to be as simple. And judging from this thread, you're pretty much the only person who actually found the UI problematic.

Run off with your copy of Oblivion back to console land so you can blame your own mistakes on a game's design rather than yourself.

 

Why, thank you for knowing better than I do what I want to play. I gave Oblivion a very serious try, and gave up. It's boring and pointless.

Do you always think in binary terms? There's a huge area between "holding your hand" and "leaving you in the dark." For example, a conversation somewhere could've mentioned a rumor of a Modron artifact that was supposedly up for sale somewhere. A good game design *must* give the player cues about stuff that's there -- even better if some of the cues are actually references to things that exist in the back story but not in the actual game.

The fanboy raises its head again. Listen to yourself, man -- you sound exactly like the mindless ESF drones defending every damn fool thing in Oblivion, cuz it's the greatest game evah.

Are you intentionally misreading me, or are you just fucking stupid?

I never argued that pissing of Vhailor or the Paranoid Incarnation should be something that you should not be able to do. My whole point is that the consequence of pissing them off should be something more interesting than not getting the candy. Do I need a hammer to get this into your thick skull?

(snip yet more mindless fanboy-dom)

 

T"he same happens in tabletop PnP playing, if a player wants to be a blackguard he might run into the issue that the rest of the players and the DM will not allow him to do so, when a DM declares they are going to run a module they know they cannot just midway ignore or go against the "carrot-on-the-stick" since that will destroy the adventure and force the DM to come up with a new one."

I cry for the DM in that situation... not. It's a poor DM that controls players like they're simply puppets. PnP should nowhere near be as limited a s CRPG. That DM in your situation doesn't seem to understand what the job of DM should be

 

Why do you need a rumor? You had to go to the curiosity shop at some point for several items related to the main quest. It was impossible to miss the modron cube unless you simply didn't want to buy it. You could even ask the shop owner for a description of the cube. What more did you want?

Listen to yourself-- you can't make any sort of argument without dismissing legitimate counterpoints as "fanboyism." Are you really this blind to logic? Explain how my point is fanboyism. What part of it do you disagree with? PS: T rewards you for trying out things and exploring the world on your own. Nothing wrong with that.

Random profanity from someone who lacks reading comprehension makes him look soooo smart in contrast to me.

Better save the hammer for yourself. My whole point is that meaningful consequences necessarily include negative outcomes. It is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect that pissing off Vhailor would result in something beyond him just plain pounding the crap out of you.

Do you have any logical arguments at all or are you really new to RPGs? I'm no more a fanboy than you are an idiot (or so I hope) for criticizing PS: T. I am simply pointing out that some of your complaints are illegitimate. What do you consider "fanboyism?" I've clearly elucidated my arguments point by point and until recently was replying in a civil manner.

And you still have yet to explain your reference to console RPGs in regards to UI.