Innovation in RPG genre

[BING XI LAO]

Did they base Durance on a photo of Sam Hyde?

 

[Johnny Biggums]

"But a good looking and immersive UI takes effort!"

Okay, welcome to decline, enjoy your stay

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I know, I would be a minority, but I actually like M&M 6 portraits. Not all, but majority. In fact, I am playing World of Enroth with them right now. You people call them "abominations" - I call them looking like average looking people. Either you living in bunker and never saw any other human being or in my region people are very ugly. Dunno what else to say.

 

[gurugeorge]

I know, I would be a minority, but I actually like M&M 6 portraits. Not all, but majority. In fact, I am playing World of Enroth with them right now. You people call them "abominations" - I call them looking like average looking people. Either you living in bunker and never saw any other human being or in my region are very ugly. Dunno what else to say.

Funnily enough, I was thinking about my comment just there, and it occurred to me that the one game I've seen where the "touched-up photograph" approach works is in Atom.

Maybe that's because a succession of bizarre and dodgy-looking winos is exactly what you'd expect from a Russian post-apocalyptic scenario

I jest, I jest ...

 

[Butter]

I know, I would be a minority, but I actually like M&M 6 portraits. Not all, but majority. In fact, I am playing World of Enroth with them right now. You people call them "abominations" - I call them looking like average looking people. Either you living in bunker and never saw any other human being or in my region people are very ugly. Dunno what else to say.

The whole art style of MM6 was a huge decline from Xeen, and that includes going from expressive cartoons to Johnny Depp and Lucy Lawless.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Funnily enough, I was thinking about my comment just there, and it occurred to me that the one game I've seen where the "touched-up photograph" approach works is in Atom.

Maybe that's because a succession of bizarre and dodgy-looking winos is exactly what you'd expect from a Russian post-apocalyptic scenario

I jest, I jest ...

Interesting enough, for me Atom approach didn't worked, but not because of a realistic portraits. I did not like it, because devs took almost all portraits from USSR era actors (some are pictures from the very movies ffs) and randomly gave these portraits to npcs all over the world. Btw I am familiar with the region (where game took place) and real place looks nothing like in-game region.
Western equivalent of Atom, would be game set in Utah where all population consist from Hollywood actors with different names, they also live in the buildings of the same architecture as Canadians dwell up in the North and populace talks with Australian accent. Ah, and cities shown would be with completely fictional names with no correlation with reality, just because.

MM6's inclusion of several actor portraits looks like innocent child in comparison.

I guess it's partially depends on how recognizable actors/personalities for you. Less familiar - less "wtf" feeling about this.

Butter we talking about 6-7-8 portraits, earlier games is a different discussion.

 

[gurugeorge]

Funnily enough, I was thinking about my comment just there, and it occurred to me that the one game I've seen where the "touched-up photograph" approach works is in Atom.

Maybe that's because a succession of bizarre and dodgy-looking winos is exactly what you'd expect from a Russian post-apocalyptic scenario

I jest, I jest ...

Interesting enough, for me Atom approach didn't worked, but not because of a realistic portraits. I did not like it, because devs took almost all portraits from USSR era actors (some are pictures from the very movies ffs) and randomly gave these portraits to npcs all over the world. Btw I am familiar with the region (where game took place) and real place looks nothing like in-game region.
Western equivalent of Atom, would be game set in Utah where all population consist from Hollywood actors with different names, they also live in the buildings of the same architecture as Canadians dwell up in the North and populace talks with Australian accent. Ah, and cities shown would be with completely fictional names with no correlation with reality, just because.

MM6's inclusion of several actor portraits looks like innocent child in comparison.

I guess it's partially depends on how recognizable actors/personalities for you. Less familiar - less "wtf" feeling about this.

Butter we talking about 6-7-8 portraits, earlier games is a different discussion.

So there you go, both Soviet-era and modern-day US actors look like a variety of pissed-off looking drunks with their psychological problems etched into their faces :D

 

[Darth Canoli]

M&M 3-8 portraits genius was having them react to taking hits and having a different grin for every debuff.
Of course 3-5 portraits are superior even if i liked a couple of portraits from 6-8.

ATOM portraits are alright, it works well for NPC but i wish the PC selection was a bit more extensive.

 

[bandersnatch]

5 minutes in photoshop makes this. Yeah, it looks shit - but you get the idea.

A good graphic designer could make something really beautiful and atmospheric. But what we get is sterile interface elements that look like they belong to a mobile phone's operating system.

Yes I think that goes in a better direction, but a problem still is these modern interfaces are really just a few sparse rectangle (polygon) elements that get re-positioned based on the screen resolution. You can try to spread them out, or slap them all to one side of the screen, but you can't really have a holistic screen interface design and theme (borders, etc..) like the old games did. You will end up just moving the few rectangles around.

As game resolutions gets bigger, the interfaces will continue to get more sparse as well. There was a sweet spot with the old games where the screen res was just big enough to fit everything, so you could make every pixel count and create some really incredible interfaces. Now we have the opposite problem, you have too much real estate and not enough interface to display. Sure you can fill it in with repeating minimalist borders that somehow try connect the few rectangles, but I don't think that will replace what we are lamenting here.

Lets face it, unless someone is making a game for a much lower resolution it's going to be hard to fill up a modern game resolution with the fancy interfaces of olde.

 

[Vormulak]

The ui should be a minimalistic and give as little information as is necessary to successfully complete the game so as to create challenge and make it easier to immerse oneself.

 

[Cryomancer]

See how many people are against weather having a effect on PF:WoTR. Having the weather actually impacting the gameplay is often resisted by people. IMO unless you are playing as a silver/white draconic sorcerer, winter witch, etc; you should take penalties during a hailstorm.

 

[gurugeorge]

See how many people are against weather having a effect on PF:WoTR. Having the weather actually impacting the gameplay is often resisted by people. IMO unless you are playing as a silver/white draconic sorcerer, winter witch, etc; you should take penalties during a hailstorm.

I like the idea of weather having an effect in principle, but I found it annoying in PF:K because there wasn't any special animation for "trudging through the rain" - it was just a slow-down of the animation.

Compare with POE2:D, which had special animation for "trudging through mud or whatever." That's the sort of thing you need to make environmental effects seem real and not just an annoyance.

It's just a psychological trick really, but if you're going to have x you've got to have y.