Decline Designers grabbing you by the hand and leading you isn't very fun

[purupuru]

nothing you have posted has anything to do with the topic, take your tranny cope elsewhere please

Ah, yes sure, please stop talking about what's actually in the game (because rusty knows nothing about those), but keep circle-jerking about trannies and whatnot.
You know your point would actually make a lot more sense if you use New Vegas or TOW as the example, where the checks are static instead of D20, and failing a check does not lead to severe punishment (or in certain cases instant death). And, you know, you actually played those games.

see, your entire argument(and why you're seething) is I picked your tranny simulator game. "please oh please pick anything else!"
and it being random or static has nothing to do with the thread, you are again not understanding what we are discussing at all because you immediately became angry that I picked your trannysim as an example of terrible design

Being static or D20 has everything to do with it.
For a static check, if you fail it you either used the wrong skill or your skill is not high enough (and for Fallout games the actual skills used for environment checks are fairly limited, mostly just repair, science and lockpick). For a D20 check there is now also the big uncertainty that comes with the dice roll. On lower levels the dice actually has more impact than your skill levels. So you choose a skill, use it, and fails, you simply don't know if you used the wrong skill, or if your skill is not high enough to pass even on a 20, or if you got unlucky. Now failing the check also fatigues your whole party so you don't want to fail the check, what you gonna do, reload a quicksave? I thought rusty hated that.
Also if you actually played wotr you will notice that there are many checks with hidden DC as well. For example the check to summon the Vrock in market square (optional boss with early +2 mithral shield), the check to cleanse the artifact in the ghoul room in Gray Garrison (lots of xp and corruption cleansing). Those are all in chapter 1 so you should know if you played even a little bit of the game.
This is rpgcodex and I fully expect its residents to shit on all games, especially a game like WOTR which features trannies and gays and whatnot, but I do think it's a shameful thing to talk about games you didn't play and pretend you know better about it than people who actually played it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

nothing you have posted has anything to do with the topic, take your tranny cope elsewhere please

Ah, yes sure, please stop talking about what's actually in the game (because rusty knows nothing about those), but keep circle-jerking about trannies and whatnot.
You know your point would actually make a lot more sense if you use New Vegas or TOW as the example, where the checks are static instead of D20, and failing a check does not lead to severe punishment (or in certain cases instant death). And, you know, you actually played those games.

see, your entire argument(and why you're seething) is I picked your tranny simulator game. "please oh please pick anything else!"
and it being random or static has nothing to do with the thread, you are again not understanding what we are discussing at all because you immediately became angry that I picked your trannysim as an example of terrible design

Being static or D20 has everything to do with it.
For a static check, if you fail it you either used the wrong skill or your skill is not high enough (and for Fallout games the actual skills used for environment checks are fairly limited, mostly just repair, science and lockpick). For a D20 check there is now also the big uncertainty that comes with the dice roll. On lower levels the dice actually has more impact than your skill levels. So you choose a skill, use it, and fails, you simply don't know if you used the wrong skill, or if your skill is not high enough to pass even on a 20, or if you got unlucky. Now failing the check also fatigues your whole party so you don't want to fail the check, what you gonna do, reload a quicksave? I thought rusty hated that.
Also if you actually played wotr you will notice that there are many checks with hidden DC as well. For example the check to summon the Vrock in market square (optional boss with early +2 mithral shield), the check to cleanse the artifact in the ghoul room in Gray Garrison (lots of xp and corruption cleansing). Those are all in chapter 1 so you should know if you played even a little bit of the game.
This is rpgcodex and I fully expect its residents to shit on all games, especially a game like WOTR which features trannies and gays and whatnot, but I do think it's a shameful thing to talk about games you didn't play and pretend you know better about it than people who actually played it.

nope, you don't get it

 

[gurugeorge]

After lurking for a year and reading a lot of threads like this in the RPG subforum, I have a sneaking suspicion that some people here really just want immersive simulation games.

Will people here stop pretending that they care about PnP RPG rules in their roleplaying videogames if, in the near future, technology can provide a detailed simulation where every aspect of the player character is simulated and you can interact with any object or solve puzzles/problems in a realistic way? Will the need for abstraction in roleplaying videogames end with that?

I think there's really a sort of push and pull between the poles of abstraction and simulation. You definitely need both, but in what proportion seems to partly define the genre.

The pull of simulation is that the rules of ordinary reality are familiar, you don't need a manual ("if I stack the boxes I can climb there"). Furthermore, in reality your controls over your inputs and outputs (means of affecting reality, sensing it and then manipulating it) are familiarly part of you and require no learning - which is why more and more realism are wanted (although the output side lags a bit - a mouse and keyboard are hardly as refined a way of interacting with reality as an entire sensory surface, two visual receptors, multiple appendages, opposing thumbs, an agile body, plus the other senses like hearing, smell and taste). Also it's fun to play in a world that's like our world in many respects but has some counter-factual aspects to it (like magic or rayguns or alien princesses in need of rescue).

The pull of abstraction is that with some simplification of reality's rules, and even making up some rules of your own, you can pitch the difficulty of something just right so that you can regularly get dopamine hits from beating game-logical problems that just match your brain's capacity, in manageable chunks of leisure time. (With abstraction there's two sides to it, there's playing with abstractions of reality and playing with ad hoc abstractions.)

 

[ElectricOtter]

new week new tired crusty rant on "this game from yesteryear sux" xd

retard with poe avvy gonna tell u all bout QUALITY ok xd

 

[Efe]

How to identify and repair a broken vent in Fallout 2:

How to ... do whatever the designer wants you to do ... in 1 click in wotr:
there's a hovering icon tells you the exact DC of the check and the skill used. You click the icon. Yay.

yea they do some bad practices. the entire interaction/examination icon system is flawed, best seen in puzzles where you cant be sure which tile you are clicking on at a glance.
also for entire game they show you hand icons for interactables but for dragon claw you click an inspection icon and it changes into a hand without any effects and is very easy to miss if you dont know what to look for.

 

[Atlantico]

except WotR isn't a small scale immersive adventure like Fallout but a grand campaign of interplanar warfare where you command thousands of people across huge swaths of land over many months of in-game time... so there's a different level of granular detail to be expected. it leans more into the strategy and management aspect of RPGs rather than the exploration.

Except Fallout 2 isn't a game made by trannies for trannies with a shitty engine full of memory leaks trying to be a loading screen simulator.

So it's not a game for you, trannie.

 

[Digimon]

Designers grabbing you by the hand and leading you isn't very fun

I agree.

It’s much better when the designers try to grab your balls and threaten to crush them instead.

 

[†††]

It’s much better when the designers try to grab your balls and threaten to crush them instead.

 

[Old Hans]

games that tell the player what to do can barely even be considered RPGs, they are CYOAs.

what if cyoa got dice rolls?

Fighting Fantasy is so good ESPECIALLY when Russ Nicholson is doing the artwork

 

[RNGsus]

*repair check: failed*
sorry looks like your character can't open vents, try again next game

Why'd you roll a fat slag thats never dusted her vents before?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

games that tell the player what to do can barely even be considered RPGs, they are CYOAs.

what if cyoa got dice rolls?

Fighting Fantasy is so good ESPECIALLY when Russ Nicholson is doing the artwork

Some people hate his art esp in the Fiend Folio. I found it charming, better than the 2e MC2 with toothie slugs, leprechauns, etc. god awful.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

How to identify and repair a broken vent in Fallout 2:

https://streamable.com/1xa6c1
Rattling points your eye towards the object. Examine object, read examination, think about a solution -- repair seems like a good choice. Manually use the Repair skill on the object.

How to ... do whatever the designer wants you to do ... in 1 click in wotr:

there's a hovering icon tells you the exact DC of the check and the skill used. You click the icon. Yay.

It's streamlining and it sucks.

 

[Faarbaute]

Think of it as a quality of life feature - soon you won't even have to play games anymore.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Before:

After:

 

[InSight]

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-you-isnt-very-fun.141873/page-2#post-7736320
Exemplary post due to examples for comparison.

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That option to selectively focus on distance is missing when you're parsing a 2-d surface that's merely representing a 3-d world, and it isn't solved by pseudo 3-d in 2-d solutions

One should have mentioned the very computer/smartphone screen as example for instant clarification for many. A flat surface that arranges 2 dimensional images/shapes to appear as 3 dimensional one.

//////////////////////////////

In 2-d terms the world is hugely messy, even messier than highly photorealitic games, yet we navigate it just fine and can spot relevant objects well into the distance, and it's because of this factor.

A counter argument.
2-d is not messy for it allows an easier pattern recognition. The visual pattern are in plain-view/unobstructed/not hidden. Pattern recognition as the ability to figure/detect a lion in a bush based on observing yellow color(fur of the lion) or filling the gaps in shapes like triangle despite some curves/lines/details being obscured in the eye's vision, line of sight.

Assuming photorealitic games specify but not limiting 3d portrayed/graphic games; These visual can provide over-abundance/overwhelm one's mind with patterns both clear and unclear, plain and hidden(in full or in part) which makes them messier thus harder to discern compared to simple, low color variety 2d graphics.

Assuming they(3d photo-realistic) take more energy, more measurements, more memory capacity, sorting visual conflicts and thus more time to process, short out and until the minds does, they are messier for most.
Consider/Factor/imagine middle of jungle/forest environment with no roads/pointers.

Some area's in Kingdom Come Deliverance would have been provided as example as photo-realistic game which messes with one's mind, navigation based on experience (with low graphic settings).

If navigation is fine, its due to pattern recognition and memory(as the in-game sense of direction) or other biological,Yahuha/YHWH/יהוה given/designed system which supplement/support it.
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although it's possible that VR might be able to solve it (Carmack reckoned it's the hardest problem but that VR might be able to solve it).

Since the eyes seems to measure the light distance, how light is coordinated inside the eyeball for the exact distance for light/eye-cone's filling and due how error/mismatch in it leads/stimulate/develop eye elongation, the stretching of the eye-ball into egg shape and beyond, caused by wearing glasses made to see distance better in a close distance situation, its unlikely VR would manage to solve this
It is a biological problem.

A none-eyed vision, one that originated in the visual cortex or/as in dreams, would be a better solution to overcome such problem if the means/technology was available.

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It's also part of the reason some people get dizzy or nauseous even with something like Doom - their visual system is "expecting" to track 3-d objects in depth as it normally does, but it's baulked of its function, which sets off alarm bells in the brain.

That option to selectively focus on distance is missing when you're parsing a 2-d surface that's merely representing a 3-d world

Eye-focus is triggered, designed/made to trigger based on distance.
Was there ever a complain of dizziness or nauseous (excluding insufficient FPS) from console players?
An example of environment where there is more than 1 meter (or at least hands length) between the players eyes(sitting on coach) and screen(TV) , which should prevent issues with focus.
Putting the screen further from the eyes, is perhaps the required solution.

//////////////////////////////////
Post factoring/considering:
Eye biology
Distance(of screen) for eye coordination
Visual pattern recognition

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Before:

After:

???

 

[gurugeorge]

2-d is not messy for it allows an easier pattern recognition. The visual pattern are in plain-view/unobstructed/not hidden. Pattern recognition as the ability to figure/detect a lion in a bush based on observing yellow color(fur of the lion) or filling the gaps in shapes like triangle despite some curves/lines/details being obscured in the eye's vision, line of sight.

Yeah but you see I don't think that's how our visual system works, it doesn't work merely by reckoning figure from ground on a 2-d plane but also in a 3-d space, because the information from selective focus on distance is integrated with the edge detection and the other 2-d related stuff. IOW the "given" for us always involves some feeling for depth in the z-axis, and of objects that are rounded in the z-axis, so to speak. The integration of the two sources of information has been done for us upstream, and we just get a 3-d impression of the world, blam.

I was just talking about philosophy to someone, and I'm reminded of the old British empiricist or Idealist idea, which was kind of similar (that the figure-ground separation is done merely by means of edge detection, colour differences, etc). It's also how AI seems to identify things a lot of the time - although I'm sure they must have worked on stuff taking into account what I'm talking about, by now).

What I'm talking about is, for example, if you focus first on a smudge on the window and then focus on a church spire in the distance right behind the smudge. That sort of selective focusing in the z-axis is going on all the time, back and forth, along with the x/y saccading (the sampling of small 2-d patches of colour and motion in the world by each eye, which is darting up and down, side to side, but also co-ordinating both to selectively focus on distance, constantly).

Once you have that integration, then even in a "soup"-like visual field, it would be easier to pick out the brown box from the brown background. But lack of it is what makes a 2-d surface representing a 3-d space, have to use more "cartoon-like" imagery with some sort of colour coding (e.g. boxes with blue stripes have meds in them). If you had the z-axis focusing capability, you could single out more "boring-looking," or realistic-looking med containers more easily, you wouldn't need to have them be huge and paint enormous blue stripes on them or whatever. But you don't, because your eyes are focused mainly on a flat surface, so the ENTIRETY of the burden on pattern recognition is put on the 2-d parsing system (edge/motion and colour detection) without any information about the z-axis in and of itself, so the visuals can't afford to be as fully realistic (in the photorealistic sense) as they could be.

I mean, even now, the photorealistic aspect of graphics is close enough, and sophisticated enough to do full realism, but to do so fully would make gameplay harder and more confusing.

*****

And on top of that there's a problem analogous to the Uncanny Valley problem - not just with the texturing of surface, but also with this thing. The more realistic the scene looks, the more realistic your brain wants it to be, the more it's expecting to be able to figure out z-axis information, and when it can't, there's something frustrating and unsatisfying about the experience.

 

[gurugeorge]

I should say in relation to the above that that's one of the things that Cyberpunk 2077 nailed very well - it's got a fine balance in its clutter, between things that look realistic and ordinary, and things that your brain is meant to leap to as "to be investigated" (typical container types, etc.). Maybe the best done in a game yet (I thought that when I played Outer Worlds recently - the clutter has the necessary pattern recognition stuff for gameplay's sake, but because it veers too much towards the cartoon-like, you don't really get much of an illusion of visual realism, whereas you do with CP2077).

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Before:

After:

???

That is not Fallout 2, where the keyword system disappeared precisely because it was so underused in the previous game. Fallout puzzles were clearly designed around streamlined dialogue trees, which means no more implicit or environmental clues without the correct answer popping up as a dialogue option, a more linear quest structure, and more passive NPC interactions.

But at least it didn't scare casual players.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Before:

After:

???

That is not Fallout 2, wyerr the keyword system disappeared precisely because it was so underused in the previous game. Fallout puzzles were clearly designed around streamlined dialogue trees, which means no more implicit or environmental clues without the correct answer popping up as a dialogue option, a more linear quest structure, and more passive NPC interactions.

But at least it didn't scare casual players.

at least it understood more than 4 letters

 

[FreeKaner]

The problem with open-ended script interaction design that is supposed to clue you to be solved in rather than just be interacted as a CYOA is that you are not only trying to guess what the puzzle is but also what the designer intended. In other words, you are also solving designer intent. In an actual PNP you can negotiate with the DM, who can guess your intent or lay out a puzzle for you to clearly try to solve which is not possible in the pre-packaged experience of video games. While I also enjoy puzzles, even shit puzzles like the ones in WOTR, the result is that more people are frustrated because they are either not capable of the cognitive function to guess the developer intent or even begin to understand they have to. This is why so many people complain about puzzles in WOTR, because it doesn't make sense to them to think about what the dev intended.

When you play fallout and an interaction pops out that hints that something more might be behind that interaction, you are immediately thinking that the devs probably intended for player to interact with this somehow. You are then taken to think that it's a vent, so repair skill makes most sense to use here. This is not true in most modern games, for one there is way too much noise. Devs have to automatically mark the interactable with an icon of some sort, which they would then have to clarify as a solvable. One solution to this is of course reducing noise but lean game development escapes devs in general, especially in RPGs bloat seems to be the order of the day. Another easy solution would be to just use another icon for "freeform interactable" but then we are back to square one as seeing one of those would have a pavlovian response to using skill checks on it so might as well just use the appropriate check automatically and if you are going to use appropriate check automatically you might as well not have the separate icon thus self-defeating.

This also ties to another mistake RPGs make regarding skill checks, succeeding a skill checks in general tend to mean succeeding at game objective. While succeeding a skill check should actually mean succeeding at whatever you are attempting to do, which may or may not have helped you in reaching the game objective. In a freeform interactable it essentially comes down to guessing the correct skill check and succeeding it, while doing wrong check and succeeding or failing at it or even failing at the correct check could have results so there would be less guessing developer intent and more just interacting with the game as developers laid out. However devs currently fail at even utilizing failed skill checks in pre-designated CYOAs and I can only think of one example where any devs made use of this in recent games.

 

[JarlFrank]

While I also enjoy puzzles, even shit puzzles like the ones in WOTR, the result is that more people are frustrated because they are either not capable of the cognitive function to guess the developer intent or even begin to understand they have to. This is why so many people complain about puzzles in WOTR, because it doesn't make sense to them to think about what the dev intended.

When you play fallout and an interaction pops out that hints that something more might be behind that interaction, you are immediately thinking that the devs probably intended for player to interact with this somehow. You are then taken to think that it's a vent, so repair skill makes most sense to use here. This is not true in most modern games, for one there is way too much noise. Devs have to automatically mark the interactable with an icon of some sort, which they would then have to clarify as a solvable.

Another solution might be to just ignore dumbfucks and make games for people who do have the cognitive function to put 2 + 2 together.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Or even simpler, limit it to stuff that's not required to actually beat the game. The kind of people who would complain about that are probably the same kind of people who wouldn't be doing any form of optional content(of any degree) to begin with.

 

[Curratum]

The truth is, the best option is somewhere between the unbridled tryhard autism of games like Fallout 1/2 and the unashamed, bold-faced autism of dumbing everything down to modern-day gameplay levels.

I am not sure what the exact recipe is. If I had it, I would be making games that everyone in the world loves and buys, from the most autistic codexers, to the most casual of console players.

 

[PorkaMorka]

The problem with open-ended script interaction design that is supposed to clue you to be solved in rather than just be interacted as a CYOA is that you are not only trying to guess what the puzzle is but also what the designer intended. In other words, you are also solving designer intent. In an actual PNP you can negotiate with the DM, who can guess your intent or lay out a puzzle for you to clearly try to solve which is not possible in the pre-packaged experience of video games. While I also enjoy puzzles, even shit puzzles like the ones in WOTR, the result is that more people are frustrated because they are either not capable of the cognitive function to guess the developer intent or even begin to understand they have to. This is why so many people complain about puzzles in WOTR, because it doesn't make sense to them to think about what the dev intended.

Is guessing the developer's intention actually fun though?

I don't think so, there is a reason I never liked those point and click adventure games.

At times the developer's idea of how to solve a problem will be very different from how you'd think it should be solved, you'll have to try a bunch of different solutions and eventually stumble on the one you're allowed to use through trial and error.

That's not a very fun or deep game, a lot of the time the overall experience would be improved by getting rid of it.