DraQ
Arcane
Except it's very, very true.Grunker said:
If one solution has exactly no advantages over the other, but does have many drawbacks, then it's clearly, unambiguously inferior. Plain and simple.
Want me to elucidate?
I can:
First, BG had very weak exploration, or, more strongly it had *no* exploration.
Why?
Because you can only have actual exploration, when exhaustive search is not an option for some reason. In BG, mind-numbing act of exhaustively combing map after map is all there is to "exploration" unless you count cursor scan minigame.
To put an actual exploration in game you need to make exhaustive search unfeasible and force player to use his brain rather than mechanically repeating the "search map" ritual:
1) by making the world space too large to comb
2) by making the world change dynamically and forcing player to track potentially desirable stuff fast enough (it's difficult and of limited utility, though, so it's more of a curiosity listed for the sake of completeness as it can't provide all exploration in game)
3) by forcing player to take creative routes
4) by obfuscating relative location or even playing outright nasty tricks with geometry
5) by otherwise enlarging search space compared to world space.
1) and 2) make actually finding stuff difficult, while 3) focuses on messing with finding ways to get to stuff you've found. 4) concentrates on helping player get lost, while 5) may mean a number of different things, most obvious of which is hiding stuff and making it difficult to find regardless of distance.
In overhead game with fixed zoom level only the first two points are possible, while FPP game can implement all of them with ease:
3) generally implies having to take non obvious routes, but this requires blocking off obvious ones and making traversing the gameworld harder - it usually involves making some routes one way only, and most common example (both in games and IRL) is using gravity and z-axis to do that, which is pretty much impossible in 2d overhead game.
4) relies on not having accurate and reliable map of the surroundings - which obviously excludes games with overhead view where the view itself is *the* map - clear overview of your surroundings is actually detrimental to exploration. In FPP multi-level 3D environments may force player to think even if he has minimap at his disposal.
The most natural way to enlarge search space in 5) is by introducing another variable, like z-axis (again) and then facing to the equation and by putting a lot of detail into the scene. Fine details are used both as clue and as obstruction, requiring player to think about what they are looking for and breaking up FoV. In a game where you're looking at zoomed out overhead bitmaps, trying to implement 5) is a lost cause, since you get 360 degree vision and details, if you're lucky may be as fine as a wall or doorway. In FPP details can be almost arbitrarily fine, and exhaustive scan of full sphere around you every step would take much longer than player can afford, forcing some actual brain use.
Since FPP can do all five and overhead at most two, FPP is clearly superior in this aspect.
BG obviously doesn't implement the second idea and fails horribly at the first one by making each location an obviously bounded, fairly small rectangle. The world map is similarly bounded and made up of small number of locations, so there is no exploration involved, just exhaustive search, map after map. Attempts at hiding stuff in BG only lead to mouse scanning, as there is simply no way to hide stuff in this perspective other than by making it fully invisible.
So, where exactly is this exploration in BG?
This.Wyrmlord said:
Which is something completely and utterly absent from BG - in addition to failing at the 'G' part of exploration by failing to actually involve the player it fails at 'RP' part as well by not involving characters.Grunker said:
Exploration is simply not included in BG.
Ideally, a *Role Playing* *Game* should involve both characters and player in as much gameplay elements as possible and make both player and character abilities indispensable and incapable of overriding each other.
This also applies to exploration - there is nothing preventing player from having to poke his nose in every corner and character perception affecting what can be found from being applied simultaneously. Hidden details may be given threshold determining minimum character perception score at which they are rendered, same with sounds, text feedback and so on.
Ever played Amnesia? Just replace hallucinations with fine details and sanity score with one describing perception. You can even code mechanics detecting when an object is hidden without need for manual scripting - preferably reusing portions of general stealth mechanics as applied to characters.
