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I have no patience for RPGs anymore

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I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that the AI field is not as devoid of meaningful advances as you seem to think.

Maybe it's not, but as someone who doesn't work in that field, I reserve the right to be skeptical about its advances based on decades of unjustified hype, both within and outside of video games. Games that are lauded for having brilliant AI are either just silly, like Black and White with its pet simulator, or have a very simple world for the AI to process, like AI War or Galactic Civs. When someone actually makes the kind of AI you are talking about in a game with a complex world and interactions, then I'll believe it. Until then, I am not holding my breath.

In case it wasn't obvious from what I've already said (e.g., "and in fact I am betting on that in my own development work"), I've already been "going forth". So yes, we will eventually see whether I can make these ideas work, at least well enough to make a game people might like to play because of its AI rather than despite it's total or near-total absence in anything other than tactical combat. (I am being careful to not be "all or nothing" in my development - if I can only get some lesser version of the AI working in a reasonable time - say within the next year or two, then that's what I'll do. As long as it can provide a living world that is noticeably better than what we have now, I think there will be an audience for it.)

Best of luck, cause I am pretty sure everyone wants to see it. But I am guessing the odds might be against you.

Don't be daft. You're the one that suggested Dwarf Fortress in the first place. You didn't suggest Dwarf Fortress at some future date, or after some specified feature is completed (which would have been admitting that your suggestion is really just vaporware for now - Dwarf Fortress may exist but the "answer" you are talking about does not). If you had been forthright in the fact that such "answer" is about "Vaporware Dwarf Fortress" rather than being about "Dwarf Fortress", I obviously would not have bothered pointing out the limitations of "Dwarf Fortress" (just as I have not bothered to point out the limitations of "Ultima Ratio Regum" as suggested by pakoito, because pakoito had the common sense and courtesy to suggest "the 1.0 of Ultima Ratio Regum in 2020" and not just "Ultima Ratio Regum").
I mean, if you were going to suggest a game based merely on promises made...
Why would anyone suggest anything other than Grimoire? :troll:

DF is no way vaporware. It is already the most complex game every made, and has tons of content and systems in it. However, it IS also very early in development in terms of its development cycle, and those statements are in no way contradictory. You were complaining before about static pre-made adventures, and I told you that DF being a completely procedural game is the answer to that, which it is. But then you also complained about lack of overarching storylines, and I said that those are being added, and it's a work in progress.
 

shihonage

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Yeah these are the problems. It gets complicated pretty soon. That's why I originally only thought of a small scope, rather linear game. Basically the same environment for each but choices that matter. An abstract way to visualize this, is for example a 2-way-gameplay: one time you are the good character and must save the world, on another playthrough you choose to be the bad character and must invade the lands with dark armies, burn and kill everyone. So the same location but played from different persepctives. Of course also with different scripted events, so it is enjoyable.

Game developers already approached this via "factions", but the problem with these are, that the choices and factions hardly change anything in the gameplay. You still need to finish off each quest of the main storyline. You still need to work off all the tedious bits and bytes, no matter what you choose. That's not right. It's like the factions don't really matter at all. They have no influence on gameplay, except maybe a different ending screen. It should be more like the Stanley-Parable, where a different choice really leads to a different outcome. Every path should be a different experience.

Well, if we're solving the "small dev" problem, then yes, this is the solution. As long as it's merely a small game, as opposed to being "episodic", it doesn't have to be linear. It just has to have a small, fixed world, but with a ton of player freedom - not in regards to where you "WALK", but what you DO.

This of course opens the question... how many people would be interested in playing a 4-hour game MORE THAN ONCE, even if it DOES have VASTLY different outcomes?

Would putting such a game on early access actually work? "Ok, with this patch we added more potential destinies, so now it will last for 6 hours, with a lot more outcomes... and at earlier stages you can alter things you couldn't before... but your old savegames won't work anymore... you have to start from scratch..."

... cuz I don't imagine how keeping savegame compatibility would be a time-feasible task... and it would prevent players from experiencing a lot of "new" content, because on temporal scale it will be happening "earlier"...

Lately I wonder about this topic out of pure self-interest...
 

M0RBUS

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This of course opens the question... how many people would be interested in playing a 4-hour game MORE THAN ONCE, even if it DOES have VASTLY different outcomes?
I feel it's all a matter of presentation.

If you brand it as a sandbox rather than a full on RPG, people will look at it differently. NEO Scavenger walks that line and works pretty well (though, to be fair, being a rogue-like has a lot to do with how many times people start a new game).

But I've always thought The Sims was a better ROLEPLAYING game than many RPGs and I stand by that assessment. And, by all measurements, sandbox games can and ARE very popular. Minecraft and The Sims notwithstanding, there's plenty of successful games out there from many different genres that owe their success to sandbox aspects they implement.

But then again, what do I know. The market is fickle, and the hardcore cRPG market is as fickle as any other. There's no "oh, the cRPG community will stick together and support the good indie cRPGs!"
 
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I seriously dont have any more patience for this stuff. I think the classical RPG format is loaded with boring shit thats just there out of tradition sake. Things like map-traversing in turtle steps are the most offensive one, but really, any map traversing at all is boring, except if its solely for exploration purposes. But for strolling through my own base ?

You will enjoy Age of Decadence then. The game has almost no filler and allows the player to “teleport” between places, at least in some few occasions. Obviously, a lot of players complained about this feature, saying that this breaks immersion, but the game does not make this mandatory. The player always has the traditional option to walk from point A to point B.
 
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I don't know whether to hug this guy or to hate him. I've had times in RPGs or games like this where I got bored or irritated because of traveling or something, but the vast majority of time I've enjoyed the games I play, even if they have slow travel or lots of searching for things. Sometimes I think the searching or traveling is good and sometimes I think it's bad. I think I lean towards slower pacing, but not always. I think my complaints are usually targetted at the content of what I"m doing, not necessarily on the speed of what I"m doing. So if traveling is slow I want to see lots of things and there to be lots of activity. Just speeding it up all the time misses the point that travel doesn't have to be boring if the world you're traveling in is interesting.

REgarding timeliness, I completely understand why people might want a game which gives a larger sense of progression in smaller windows of time. Not everybody has hours to play games--or read their manuals. An active person is lucky to have 3 solid hours and lucky even moreso if they're not being pulled away from the computer every X minutes.

EDIT: I also want to add I tend to be a completionist, or at least I tend to stay in areas longer than others. Why? Maybe my memory is bad. Or maybe I get nostalgia easy. I get attached to places. Sometimes I give lots of meaning to small things. It's really exciting when I learn something new about a place because it adds to the other things which're already established. Somtimes it's purely sentimental in nature, so it buidls up emotions. Other times it's optimal in nature, making me a better player. It's immensely satisfying when I learn these things. It's hard to get across the impact it has on me. The game becomes like a lover.

I think peopel who like games to be fast either have better memory and so absorb everything faster or they just don't get attached to things like I do or time is just much more valuable to them since it's in short supply. Maye I'm easily pleased. Just give me a skinner box and add a few interesting things to keep me entertained and I'll spin the wheel and suck the niipple forever.
 
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Azarkon

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Playing against the AI is never going to be that exciting even when the AI plays at a world champion level see: Chess. We have the ability to create AIs that beat the shit out of humans in a lot of games, but people just don't want to play vs. them. They'd rather troll humans online. There was a project a while back about building a Starcraft AI that, playing against humans online, with no cheating, is able to reach a higher level of play than 80-90% of the population. That's pretty cool but do you see people playing against Starcraft bots all day? Nope.

The competitive aspect of gaming is primarily a social interaction. Playing against the AI feels cheap even when the AI >>> you because the AI isn't a social being - it doesn't think the way we do. Now, it's fun at times for a group of people to play vs. an AI to see who gets the furthest. But that competition is again about the social interaction between humans, rather than between human and AI. To this end, I think people who put their faith in smart AI opponents/rivals being the solution to game design issues are putting their eggs in the wrong basket.

Now, I do believe AI has a large role to play in the future of gaming, but I lean towards believable AI and generative AI, rather than adversarial AI.

Believable AI: leads to less scripted NPC interactions, and therefore deeper immersion within the game world. Imagine having a NPC that doesn't repeat the same 3-4 lines whenever they run out of scripted lines to say.

Generative AI: leads to cheaper content development. Imagine being able to generate art & sound assets, actual content, etc. automatically, instead of having to hire a billion artists and voice actors. Imagine freeing developers from the tedious work of game development and having them concentrate on the meat.

I rather developers look into these forms of AI than the classic "player vs. AI" scenarios.
 
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Playing against the AI is never going to be that exciting even when the AI plays at a world champion level see: Chess. We have the ability to create AIs that beat the shit out of humans in a lot of games, but people just don't want to play vs. them. They'd rather troll humans online. There was a project a while back about building a Starcraft AI that, playing against humans online, with no cheating, is able to reach a higher level of play than 80-90% of the population. That's pretty cool but do you see people playing against Starcraft bots all day? Nope.

The competitive aspect of gaming is primarily a social interaction. Playing against the AI feels cheap even when the AI >>> you because the AI isn't a social being - it doesn't think the way we do. Now, it's fun at times for a group of people to play vs. an AI to see who gets the furthest. But that competition is again about the social interaction between humans, rather than between human and AI. To this end, I think people who put their faith in smart AI opponents/rivals being the solution to game design issues are putting their eggs in the wrong basket.

Now, I do believe AI has a large role to play in the future of gaming, but I lean towards believable AI and generative AI, rather than adversarial AI.

Believable AI: leads to less scripted NPC interactions, and therefore deeper immersion within the game world. Imagine having a NPC that doesn't repeat the same 3-4 lines whenever they run out of scripted lines to say.

Generative AI: leads to cheaper content development. Imagine being able to generate art & sound assets, actual content, etc. automatically, instead of having to hire a billion artists and voice actors. Imagine freeing developers from the tedious work of game development and having them concentrate on the meat.

I rather developers look into these forms of AI than the classic "player vs. AI" scenarios.
Maybe what you mean is "personalized" AI: AI which mimics humans on ALL levels, not just strategical/tactical. But I fail to see how humans would put much stock into it. You say the fun factor comes from the social aspect of competing with other players, but how woudl that change if AI was better at mimicing our habits and quircks--which apparently make us worth competing aginst? We'd still know the AI isn't human, so that'd probably greatly reduce the fun factor of competing against it.

Another thing is even though AI's are better at Chess than humans, perhaps something in the way Chess plays (or feels) makes players prefer human opponents instead? Maybe if the game was richer in other ways the players might not necessarily need other humans to play against? And perhaps other games which have highly effective AI's suffer from the same problem: teh game isn't appealing until they start playing against other players. So the problem isn't the presence (or lack of) other humans to compete against or good AI's, but the problem is rooted in the game itself. Solve it and other humans aren't neded.

I do largely agree with you, at least in terms of competitive gaming. It's competitive BECAUSE it's against other players. Beating another human at a game has special meaning. AI isn't human so doesn't qualify.
 
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granit

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Ha ha ha you fool play Morrowind. Dive for pearls. Then get your acrobads up and fist of furry! But this may be lost on the likes of you.
 

Alfons

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As much as I love Underrail the movement speed drives me fucking insane.

Something that bothers me about TB games in general is that almost none of them include the option to speed it up, something that was present in Fallout 2. I would prefer that they would expand on that idea even more and add the option to skip animations entirely.
 

Branm

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I can relate...Older I get the less patience I have. People mentioned Underrail and that is literally the only RPG in a long long time that I actually played a lot....Well 85 hours which for me is a ton for an incomplete game. More importantly its the only recent game which I actually completed all the available content.


WL2 I got into Cali and got bored. Pillars i managed to get to elf town before getting bored....D:OS I only made it to the first town before i made my mind up that the game just isn't for me (hated the writing and pathetic attempts at humor)

Actually looking at my most played games....most of them are strategy of one form or another....

Seems i spend most of my time on 4X

Recently Dominions @157 hrs and Distant Worlds (with extended universe) at 140 hrs
 
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shihonage

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It's not about being older. It's because when something is innovative and fresh, we're willing to put up with its flaws. The problem is, there's nothing new coming out of the industry, no real "wow" moments, just templates of the same code, arranged in slightly different patterns, paired with generic art styles.

You kill things because it's far easier to switch them off than interact with them. You build cities and in the end you end up with... well.. larger cities. You fly planes and ride cars, but all within a hard cage of conventional, accepted, limitations.

Safe. Generic. Stupid.

Imagine a game that actually plays like nothing you've ever played before. Imagine going "wow, how did they do that?". Remember having that feeling from decades ago, the feeling of magic and wonder, when you couldn't exactly pinpoint the limitations of what you can and can't do?

Age is not the problem. The industry is the problem. And the industry is the problem because the audience is undiscerning and dumb. And the audience is undiscerning and dumb because current young people lend 99% of their brain from Google Cloud. Something like that.
 

Alfons

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shihonage that's not entirely accurate. I think age has a lot to do with it, maybe not so much age but experience. I'm sure people still have those "wow, how did they do that?" even with shit like COD, it all depends on what you played before it. It's just that after you've been around for a while you start to forget that you were amazed by shit that probably wasn't that spectacular. For example, I played Dark Messiah before I played any Thief games and I thought the rope bow was the most brilliant shit I've ever seen, little did I know that that idea was around for years already. If some 13 year old picks up the latest COD or battlefield as his first FPS and thinks it's the most brilliant thing ever made I wouldn't call him a dumbass for it.
 

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shihonage that's not entirely accurate. I think age has a lot to do with it, maybe not so much age but experience. I'm sure people still have those "wow, how did they do that?" even with shit like COD, it all depends on what you played before it. It's just that after you've been around for a while you start to forget that you were amazed by shit that probably wasn't that spectacular. For example, I played Dark Messiah before I played any Thief games and I thought the rope bow was the most brilliant shit I've ever seen, little did I know that that idea was around for years already.

That's exactly what I said.

When games like Contra appeared in the arcades, there were 40-something-year-olds wasting their salaries on it there, and their age did nothing to stop them. The NOVELTY of the experience is what drew them in. The magic.

As long as we get more genuinely NEW experiences, instead of rehashes of old ideas and algorithms, this feeling can be recaptured again, in infinite succession.

If some 13 year old picks up the latest COD or battlefield as his first FPS and thinks it's the most brilliant thing ever made I wouldn't call him a dumbass for it.

Do 13-year-olds overpower us in money-spending ability? I don't think so. From what I observe, 99% of "mature" adults have seen and played the same shit a thousand times, and are yet eager to buy exactly the same shit again. That's the sad story.


Imagine Bethesda releasing Oblivion to the critically-thinking population, and it completely bombs because people can see beyond the bump mapping that the king has no clothes. Skyrim would never see the time of day. Personnel would be vetted and fired. Fallout 3 would be a far deeper game because of Oblivion's failure and universal panning.

Imagine id releasing Doom 3 and going bankrupt. Imagine Dragon Age coming out and being blasted for having your first quest be about asking permission slips to go clear a dungeon of spiders... after a retarded dream sequence written on a napkin. Imagine Mass Effect never making it into a series because it is critiqued for the most generic sci-fi ever, false advertising about C&C and dialogue never matching what you want to say.

Companies make what is being bought. They would be forced to adapt. We might've gotten a stalemate in graphics, but vast advances in gameplay mechanics that are unfathomable to us today.

It would be a better world.
 

Gnidrologist

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Didn't read this thread beyond OP, but i have to admit - i loove fast travel. It could be spiced up with random encounters like it was in fallouts instead of being safe teleportation spell, but going and going and going to the same space you have already been, no matter if isometric or 3D is just a fucking chore. I hate backtracking, which is why i absolutely love dungeons in Skyrim as they always have the exit after the final boss fight. It's not realistic, but it's very good design decision. Rare thing to say about TES game.
 
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Oddly, I am relating to this thread recently. I don't know if it is RPGs containing more filler, and more generic concepts; age and experience; or just plain old burnout. I have not found anything that has humored me for the last six months. I am guessing both age and burnout play a role in this.
 

Trip

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Well, people here, most of whom are experienced players, tend to be more involved in interesting systems than anything else; it's something one can fiddle with for days on end. UU has that, hence the love. Personally, I lose patience with a game VERY quickly if the writing is dull and flavorless. (Unless it's meant to be purely functional and second-fiddle-like, in which case I tune it out quickly and get with the systems.)

Ideally, a game that keeps me entertained would be something with good writing that, however, doesn't put me purely in the reader's seat too much of the time (I could just pick up a book, y'know), and with systems that tie back to world-and-story-building. (Even combat could be tied back to these.)
 
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theSavant

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The always accelerating spirit of time, daily sorrows, and therefore lack of patience contribute a lot of not being able to enjoy a game anymore. Instead it should go fast, with instant action or gratification. It's not only happening on RPGs but other gametypes as well. However RPGs suffer most, because they take a lot of time to get going. I have lately found myself enjoying simple FPS or short RTS skirmish sessions more, than "wasting time" in an RPG. For example I'd like to replay DAO, but can't get myself to do it. Instead I'd rather play Crysis again or play 20 times Age of Empires 1 in a row - taking up at least as much time as replaying DAO, but it gets going much faster.
 

Monkeysattva

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I mean, games are not for older people. I just want to get my fix of a kindergarten fantasy world now. Who even plays games seriously when you're over thirty? It's completely normal. The whole concept of "decline," even though it's justified, is essentially juvenile. And it's not even that you get more "serious," its simply the fact that you've SEEN the shit before. Why the f*ck would I play pillars of eternity when it basically the same experience as Baldur's Gate, which I've played to death, for FIFTEEN YEARS. It's like a marriage. At one point you stop wanting to fuck them and would just like a nice sandwich. If they release a game that makes you a sandwich and doesn't talk then I would buy it.
 

naossano

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IMO, it is a bit early to tell that.

Video games in general, are young. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that they were spread in the 1980s, only 35 years ago.
The plateforms to play those games weren't widespread in the beginning. It took sometime to make "everyone" owning a computer/console.
The people born before the 1980s were used to not have those stuff and wouldn't mind getting rid of them.
But the people who always had them as part of their life are currently younger than 35 years and a bunch of them are still gamers. (although, with less time available)
We don't know if they will keep playing after 35 years, simply because we don't have any past reference. Those would be the first one to reach that age after being born at that time.
Same as we don't know if the people currently born with a smartphone in their bed will keep using them (or their future equivalent) in the years to come.

The close reference that come to my mind is Television. Did people who were born in the 50s at the arrival of Television, stopped watching it after they reached 35 years ?

PS: As a side note, not related to the technology. There were always some mainstream and some more involving works, regardless if it is about video-games, movies, books etc... At the other hand, not always you had good involving work, or bad mainstream. It is not impossible to have a good mainstream, that appeal to a wider audience, without considering that audience as complete moron, and it is not impossible to have some work that intend to be smart, but end up failing to reach it goal, by mistake, lack of skill, lack of ressource, or creator autism. Although i get that you can't have everything in mainstream work, it sadden me that you often have the opposition between mainstream and quality. Doing a mainstream work isn't an excuse to avoid any bit of quality.
 
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Humppaleka

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Subject propably discussed to death, but let's see... After I got into university I really have not had time for computer games similarly as in high school. Life happens and gets in the way of my vidya games.

But! I started Might & Magic I for example over a year ago (iirc), and as I rarely am in the mood for it or I don't have time for it I may play it a few times a month only. It's on my "work" computer too, I mostly use my home PC for gaming. Everytime I fire the game up with Grid Cartographer to the side I wind up getting completely immersed in mapping the world, reading guides (yes I don't have infinite amounts of time to find out what am I supposed to do in this game) and finding awesome things by accident.

It'll propably take another year to finish the game though. :P
 

Monkeysattva

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I mean, videogames are different then television. I get your point, but the medium is much more constrained. A piece of fiction can be different from another piece of fiction, but a videogame can only be distinguished either by narrative or gameplay, and the narrative is defined by gameplay. You can watch a documentary on tv, or watch drivel like Big Bang theory. There is no videogame equivalent of a documentary. Neither is there a videogame equivalent of serious artistic fiction. Which is both good and bad. I would NEVER want videogames to stop being simply GAMES, which is what the SJW scum want. Even if I stop playing them.
 

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I mean, videogames are different then television. I get your point, but the medium is much more constrained. A piece of fiction can be different from another piece of fiction, but a videogame can only be distinguished either by narrative or gameplay, and the narrative is defined by gameplay. You can watch a documentary on tv, or watch drivel like Big Bang theory. There is no videogame equivalent of a documentary. Neither is there a videogame equivalent of serious artistic fiction. Which is both good and bad. I would NEVER want videogames to stop being simply GAMES, which is what the SJW scum want. Even if I stop playing them.

I highlighted the stupid parts, one after another, until the entire post was highlighted... :negative:

2whia6w.jpg
 

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