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

[Gangrelrumbler]

Before:

After:

???

You can still use keywords but the way you approach gameplay is completely different. In games like Fallout you don't really need to pay attention to the dialogue. Just read the lines you are given and click the lines that don't sound retarded or offensive. Everything you need to know will be recorded in your journal. You just need to consult it if it's not clear where to go next. In Ultima you actually need to focus on what people are saying and act on it.
Sure it the keyword dialogue might be just adding extra steps, but a lot of these QOL improvement just simplify player's thinking process when approaching the game.
-Automapping: you don't need to pay attention to your surroundings, just go everywhere to have the entire map revealed
-Highlighted interactables: don't even pay attestation to graphics, just click on shiny buttons
-Showing elemental resistances of enemies: don't think why your spells aren't working or dealing little damage, just use the spells game tells you are "strong"
-Quest compass: already beaten to death
-Monster levels/icon showing you that the monster is too strong: just run away from monsters that outlevel you and attack everything else
With all of these applied RPGs might stop feeling like an interactive adventure and instead become a series of encounters where you test your build against bots with some bullshit in between

JarlFrank (the bit about visual clarity(
I had same thoughts after playing Elex and comparing it to Gothic. When entering a room in Gothic you immediately knew if there is anything worth looting since most of the stuff was interactable and a room without objects to pick up would just be barren. In Elex graphical trash is everywhere. Boxes that cannot be opened, containers that can't be searched and items that cannot be picked-up that all look very similar to the actual in-game items. I found a shelf on which there were 2 duck tapes which I couldn't pick up despite the fact that duck tape is an in-game item used for crafting.

 

[JarlFrank]

Boxes that cannot be opened, containers that can't be searched and items that cannot be picked-up that all look very similar to the actual in-game items. I found a shelf on which there were 2 duck tapes which I couldn't pick up despite the fact that duck tape is an in-game item used for crafting.

I don't remember if Gothic 2 had any of that, but the recent total conversion mod Archolos has some objects that can't be picked up either despite being a pickupable item. Like a golden cup on an altar that can't be picked up even though you can pick up golden cups everywhere else. Many such cases throughout the game.

This is an issue that can easily be solved by just making all objects behave the same way, and I really have no idea why devs would do it like this instead.

 

[Faarbaute]

The problem is that games today are made for people that don't necessarily like playing games.

They don't care about swinging the swings, jumping the jumps and clicking the clicks. They want STORY or whatever their personal incentive for playing a game is.

Things like GPS, fast travel, CYOA prompts and making things easy in general, all seem like natural developments then when actually playing the game is seen as busywork or a means to an end and not the goal in and of itself.

Basically, It's the age of the Hamburger Helper.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You can still use keywords but the way you approach gameplay is completely different. In games like Fallout you don't really need to pay attention to the dialogue. Just read the lines you are given and click the lines that don't sound retarded or offensive. Everything you need to know will be recorded in your journal. You just need to consult it if it's not clear where to go next. In Ultima you actually need to focus on what people are saying and act on it.

False equivalency.
Dialogues in Ultima 5 were vastly simpler than Fallout's. You can probably fit the entire game's transcript on two A4 pages: https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_V_transcript
Doing a linecount on Fallout 2's dialogue -- excluding empty lines and not including anything like cut dialogue, UI dialogue files, etc., -- it comes out to 59,053 lines of dialogue.

Everything you need to know will be recorded in your journal. You just need to consult it if it's not clear where to go next.

...What?
Have you actually played Fallout or Fallout 2?
This is the massive info dump your journal gives you that you're suggesting:

Whoa. Ah, yes. Fix K9. That tells me exactly where to go.

-Highlighted interactables: don't even pay attestation to graphics, just click on shiny buttons

Pixel hunting is not good design, and RPGs are about the fusion of the player and the character. Highlighting(not necessarily highlighting in itself, but noticing) interactable objects is a reasonable way for the character to notice something of importance. IMO it should be more tied to perception(or its equivalent), much like how "secrets" are in quite a few cRPGs. The video in the OP shows an example of exactly this, a way for the player to notice something important.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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.

Do you have any idea how many people make the same exact argument except about combat?
I'm not being facetious. This was initially(AFAIK) proposed by Bioware writer Hamburger Helper: https://web.archive.org/web/2011032...ies.com/killer_women_jennifer_hepler?page=0,3

If you could tell developers of games to make sure to put one thing in games to appeal to a broader audience which includes women, what would that one thing be?

A fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to "button through" dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don't enjoy listening to dialogue and they don't want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you're a player who only enjoys the dialogue. In a game with sufficient story to be interesting without the fighting, there is no reason on earth that you can't have a little button at the corner of the screen that you can click to skip to the end of the fighting.

And quickly parroted by game journalists:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/escape-escape-embracing-skippable-combat
https://kotaku.com/worth-reading-games-should-let-you-skip-combat-1710909427
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8...ur-boring-combat-paper-mario-the-origami-king

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

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

That is beyond me as an Oregonian.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Do you have any idea how many people make the same exact argument except about combat?

Seems like your response is irrelevant

I don't want a fast forward button, I want developers to stop including bad adventure game style puzzles altogether, especially if I have to solve them by "guessing what the developer intended", as opposed to using my understanding of how the game world works.

My argument is

a) they aren't fun (admittedly this is subjective and some may like different kinds of games)
and
b) just guessing what the developer intended is so mechanically shallow that it barely counts as a game at all.

Contrast the kind of adventure game "puzzle" where you use arbitrary object A on arbitrary object B with a physics based game where you can actually experiment to figure out how the game works and develop an understanding of how to solve puzzles based on the rules of the game. You know how to manipulate the environment and the rules of the game to accomplish stuff, so it's not arbitrary when you are presented with challenges to overcome by doing just that.

Example: Deus Ex or Thief type "puzzles", vs dumb puzzles where you just click two objects together in typical RPGs

(Not saying every game needs to have Deus Ex type puzzles, just saying that if your game isn't capable of good puzzles, then skip them altogether and don't waste my time with bad puzzles.)

 

[JarlFrank]

Pixel hunting is not good design, and RPGs are about the fusion of the player and the character. Highlighting(not necessarily highlighting in itself, but noticing) interactable objects is a reasonable way for the character to notice something of importance. IMO it should be more tied to perception(or its equivalent), much like how "secrets" are in quite a few cRPGs. The video in the OP shows an example of exactly this, a way for the player to notice something important.

A great way to do this in an isometric game like Fallout or Baldur's Gate is to have perception checks run silently in the background when passing an object of interest, and then giving a simple line of text in the text box (one of Fallout's most underrated elements tbh) that points out what's special about that object if your character notices it.

It's a bit harder to do this way in a first person action RPG, but in such games you can rely more on visual and audio cues. Maybe a rattling vent just... you know... rattles, and you can see parts of it move that shouldn't be moving.

Both these approaches require the player to pay attention either to the text in the box or to the environment itself, without turning it into a frustrating pixel hunt.
Pixel hunts only happen when you fail to clue the player in properly.

And all artificial highlights of interactable objects are a crutch for designers who fail to provide natural signposting for their points of interest.

A designer who trusts the player to pay attention to the environment, and who knows how to guide players' attentions to objects in the environment, will do the following with our example of a rattling vent:
- add audio cues to the vent: actual audible rattling that's noticeable when you stand close to it
- add visual cues to the vent, like whatever is rattling inside messing with the shadows or something
- maybe have an NPC complain about the rattling in the vent
- add a silent skill check based on your character's perception and tell the player that his character notices something

Just adding a bright glowy spot to the vent that appears all the time, regardless of perception checks, is the lazy way out.
Making interaction with it consist of a simple click that offers you the solution right away in a text box, rather than allowing the player to use his skilldex Fallout style, or a verb + inventory item adventure game style, is also the lazy way out.

And players have so gotten used to the lazy way out that they've turned into retards who can't even fathom a game that doesn't artificially signpost everything.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

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.

I am not sure that it is only a problem of "noise" (or "visual noise") in modern games. I think it is more the lack of consistent rules and a general laziness in games design.

Consider for example Ultima Underworld. In UU every door you encounter is interactable, you can try to open it, unlock it or even bash it open. You can even throw objects at it. But the choice of the action to do on the door is natural. If the door is made with metal you can still bash it, but probably it will be not a good idea. If the door looks like it is made of rotten wood then maybe it will be easy to break. If you have a specific key (for example for the Armory), environmental clues and other hints direct you to the correct door (for example someone told you that the Armory is in the northeast wing of the castle, or you can see directly through an aperture that there are a lot of weapons in the room beyond the door). I don't see why modern games, with superior graphics capabilities, cannot do it in the same way.

What we get instead, in modern RPGs and games in general, are al lot of doors that exist only in the background but that you cannot interact with, except for a selected bunch related to the "quests". It is like they don't belong to the game. In this sense they are just noise: how to recognize the correct door to interact with? With quest compass, obviously, or with press awesome key to make you omniscient and highlight interactable objects.

I still remember when playing for the first time System Shock I discovered that you can remove the head from cadavers and bring it with you in your inventory. At the beginning I was puzzled why this kind of mechanic was implemented in the game. Much later, I found a closed door with a retina scan lock. Following some clear clues I identified the correct corpse, removed its head and used it to unlock the door. To note that, as far as I remember, there was only one retina scan lock in the game.

This is Looking Glass for you: since there was a puzzle (only one!) that required a head to open a door, they implemented a general mechanics consistently valid everywhere. For every corpse with a head you can take it and put in your inventory.

 

[J1M]

The problem with graphical fidelity or greater realism games (because readability of the game world declines in a visual soup) isn't so much a problem of photorealism, it's a problem to do with the fact that we normally pick out 3-dimensional objects by means of our eyes reckoning depth by co-ordinating their focus (I forget what the technical term is, but that's the idea). 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.

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, or even VR - 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). The other option for solving it is the "holotank" type of idea, where your eyes just do their normal job. Or of course some kind of direct interface, but that's still a long way off, and I'm not sure people will go for it anyway by the time it comes (as the "gee-whizz lemme have it" attitude to new and hi tech will have long disappeared from society by that time).

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.

Graphical fidelity problems are caused entirely by choices. Choices made by weak art directors who don't enjoy games.

 

[JarlFrank]

What we get instead, in modern RPGs and games in general, are al lot of doors that exist only in the background but that you cannot interact with, except for a selected bunch related to the "quests". It is like they don't belong to the game. In this sense they are just noise: how to recognize the correct door to interact with? With quest compass, obviously, or with press awesome key to make you omniscient and highlight interactable objects.

In Thief, there are plenty of doors you can't open in city missions... because the city areas are huge and level designers don't have time to build interiors for every single apartment.
But you can still see at a single glance whether a door is interactable or not: the non-interactive doors are just textures, the interactable ones are objects.

Simple. Consistent. Visually clear, even from a distance it's easy to spot.

In most modern games everything looks the same. Same level of detail, same style of modeling, texturing etc. You won't know if it's interactive until you touch it.

 

[J1M]

If you are sumulationist trying to convince people that your vision would result in games more enjoyable than flight simulators, it's probably best to be explicit about advocating for the laws of physics and probability found in movies, not real life.

 

[lukaszek]

In most modern games everything looks the same. Same level of detail, same style of modeling, texturing etc. You won't know if it's interactive until you touch it.

dunno... I feel like everything is about tomb raider and important ledges etc painted white

 

[JarlFrank]

In most modern games everything looks the same. Same level of detail, same style of modeling, texturing etc. You won't know if it's interactive until you touch it.

dunno... I feel like everything is about tomb raider and important ledges etc painted white

They have to do that because the visual designers failed at their job of visual readability.

White ledges are a crutch for hard to read visual design. They made a level where it's hard to see what can be grabbed and what can't; or they decided to arbitrarily make some objects not interactable, while others are, and they all look the same: so the ones that are interactive must be marked with artificial signs. And that half-assed duct tape solution leads to level designers just shitting on readable level design, because they don't have to do it. Just mark important things white.

 

[J1M]

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.

Do you have any idea how many people make the same exact argument except about combat?
I'm not being facetious. This was initially(AFAIK) proposed by Bioware writer Hamburger Helper: https://web.archive.org/web/20110321031657/http://www.killerbetties.com/killer_women_jennifer_hepler?page=0,3

If you could tell developers of games to make sure to put one thing in games to appeal to a broader audience which includes women, what would that one thing be?

A fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to "button through" dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don't enjoy listening to dialogue and they don't want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you're a player who only enjoys the dialogue. In a game with sufficient story to be interesting without the fighting, there is no reason on earth that you can't have a little button at the corner of the screen that you can click to skip to the end of the fighting.

And quickly parroted by game journalists:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/escape-escape-embracing-skippable-combat
https://kotaku.com/worth-reading-games-should-let-you-skip-combat-1710909427
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8...ur-boring-combat-paper-mario-the-origami-king

And implemented in Mass Effect 3.

 

[J1M]

In most modern games everything looks the same. Same level of detail, same style of modeling, texturing etc. You won't know if it's interactive until you touch it.

dunno... I feel like everything is about tomb raider and important ledges etc painted white

They have to do that because the visual designers failed at their job of visual readability.

White ledges are a crutch for hard to read visual design. They made a level where it's hard to see what can be grabbed and what can't; or they decided to arbitrarily make some objects not interactable, while others are, and they all look the same: so the ones that are interactive must be marked with artificial signs. And that half-assed duct tape solution leads to level designers just shitting on readable level design, because they don't have to do it. Just mark important things white.

The root cause is that they are not building environments, they are building hallways with half a dozen layers of make-up.

 

[agris]

Before:

After:

???

You can still use keywords but the way you approach gameplay is completely different. In games like Fallout you don't really need to pay attention to the dialogue. Just read the lines you are given and click the lines that don't sound retarded or offensive. Everything you need to know will be recorded in your journal.

This is 100% incorrect. Fallout doesn’t even have a journal, rather it has a status tab that provides you with 1-2 line summary statements of quest objectives with none of the detail you purport it to have.

You are very wrong.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

There needs to be a kind of indication like Rusty talks about. Often, especially in JRPGs, I've hit the wall being stuck somewhere in the game because nothing at all is communicated about what the fuck I have to do. Being lead by the hand and treated like a child is off-putting and immersion breaking, but so is throwing you out in the middle of a story somewhere with invisible walls and nothing to go on except by "you should have just known this device with this particular thing will trigger a cutscene that makes x place go y, duh. brainlet." So many times in Baldur's Gate I've thought "Why don't they just tell me this part? it wouldn't have held my hand even if they had," but I do generally agree that hand-holding is shit. If I'm expected to be completely in the dark, then I'll play Kenshi will everything and their mothers can beat me senseless, because at least, that's a direction more than anything.

 

[Faarbaute]

A favorite of mine is when the game openly derides the player for playing the game "wrong". Things like holding on to too many items, killing too many NPCs, lawn mowing areas for secrets and so on. But then, through design, also make it clear that, that is actually the correct way to go about things in the end. Because suddenly, you'll be expected to have kept that dirty hankerchief from act 1 or having attacked and killed that one random otherwise innocent NPC in true murderhobo fashion. The developers were just beeing petty, passive-aggressive, faggots, about it.

 

[JarlFrank]

There needs to be a kind of indication like Rusty talks about. Often, especially in JRPGs, I've hit the wall being stuck somewhere in the game because nothing at all is communicated about what the fuck I have to do. Being lead by the hand and treated like a child is off-putting and immersion breaking, but so is throwing you out in the middle of a story somewhere with invisible walls and nothing to go on except by "you should have just known this device with this particular thing will trigger a cutscene that makes x place go y, duh. brainlet." So many times in Baldur's Gate I've thought "Why don't they just tell me this part? it wouldn't have held my hand even if they had," but I do generally agree that hand-holding is shit. If I'm expected to be completely in the dark, then I'll play Kenshi will everything and their mothers can beat me senseless, because at least, that's a direction more than anything.

Those JRPGs suffer from the issue of inconsistent interactivity. They are usually very linear and only offer very specific solutions at very specific points of the map and story.
Contrast that with something like Fallout, or imsims like Ultima Underworld, Thief, Dishonored, etc. Or even a stealth adventure game like Hitman.

The difference is that in all those other games, you can spot at a single glance what's interactable and what isn't. Everything follows consistent rules. There are no invisible walls. There are no triggered cutscenes. There are often multiple solutions to every problem. The mission structure is goal-based rather than having to follow very specific steps that can't be deviated from. Hitman is a great example: all you are given at the beginning of a mission is the goal to kill a couple of characters. How you do that is up to you. Sniper rifle kill from a long distance, poison, make it look like an accident, follow one of several scripted story events, or just brute force run in and shoot everyone. The game gives you a score at the end based on your performance, but other than that it doesn't care how you achieve the goal.

That kind of design philosophy prevents you from ever getting stuck because there's always an alternate solution, and the player can play in his own preferred style.

Highly linear games that allow only ONE solution and don't even give you any hints on how to achieve it can barely even be called RPGs.

 

[agris]

Those JRPGs suffer from the issue of inconsistent interactivity. They are usually very linear and only offer very specific solutions at very specific points of the map and story.

This is one of the things that really bothered me about the Witcher 3, and makes me question the judgment of those that present it as anything other than a brain dead aRPG. Mechanics like the lantern to reveal hidden passages, or speak to the dead, really offer some great tools for creative problem solving and quest resolution.

Instead, they're reduced to "press X to reveal hidden passage/talk to the dead" and only used in very scripted, limited narrative situations where they are *required* to proceed.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

Inconsistency in video games should be regarded as a major sin of the medium yet the fact it is not boggles my mind. Relying upon sudden arbitrary changes in your game as a way to make it more "difficult" or even to extend game length should be considered a crutch only used by amateur game devs.

 

[U-8D8]

Mechanics like the lantern to reveal hidden passages, or speak to the dead, really offer some great tools for creative problem solving and quest resolution.

Instead, they're reduced to "press X to reveal hidden passage/talk to the dead" and only used in very scripted, limited narrative situations where they are *required* to proceed.

What's sad is that the Witcher 3 squanders a lot of its potential by having that same approach for sidequests. They created a good amount of monsters to hunt with a reasonably detailed bestiary and even gave the creatures relatively unique tracks. All so you can use "Clue Vision" to highlight anything important in red so you can click on it and get Geralt to tell you that it's a werebub or something. When I look back at what I predominantly spent my time on, it's not killing monsters, it's not having interesting conversations with NPCs, it's following red highlights so Geralt can spout some exposition and I can actually kill something. The whole thing is uninvolving, and what's worse is with a bit of restraint it could be great.

Imagine finding a creature's tracks and comparing them to ones from your bestiary or monster-related books in order to narrow down what you're hunting. Actually making the player cross-reference the clues they find with what they know about monsters in order to identify the creature and properly fight it. Like the potion system, it would reward the player for acting like a Witcher and do a far better job of putting you in Geralt's shoes than hours of cutscenes could. After a while, they might even be able to intuit what creature they're fighting without even having to look it up simply by drawing from their experience. That'd be the best system you could put into a Witcher game, and if one had it, I'd even accept a Bethesda-style radiant quest system if it was sophisticated enough.

Instead, the player is relegated to watching an NPC, (slowly) figure it out. You're just an observer aside from the thin veneer of gameplay pushing W and clicking provides. It's borderline worse than a quest marker pointing outright to the objective because in reality, it is exactly that only with some padding to make the player think they did something.

 

[Stavrophore]

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?

This. Sadly it's impossible, so we will have to always be at the mercy of the developer chosen POIs.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Everytime I see your avatar my mind sees this

Spoiler