Section8
Cipher
Oh I forgot to respond to this; This is one of the reasons why I LOVE Trespasser. You had to completely sight the weapons and it was thrilling. Medal of Honor Pacific Assault does this and one thing a bit more extreme...nowhere do you know how many bullets OR clips you have. Gun stops firing, desperately find another gun. I'm a big fan of the latest in reality FPS's without crosshairs...if I want any precision, aim down the sights. Love it.
I've just been getting into Trespasser, and holy fucking shit, it's impressing me. I can't believe I dismissed it without trial back in the day.
First of all, I really like the "no visible HUD" feature. It's a sort of "proof of concept" for a lot of the ideas being bandied around in this thread. It takes away the traditional feedback systems of FPS games, but more importantly it replaces them. You have the health tattoo, vocal ammo counts and even better, estimates, and also the sighting of the weapons.
A little off topic, but the other stuff that has impressed me:
* Physics, obviously, but moreso the specific gameplay implementations. Being able to drop heavy obstacles on enemies, crate stacking, rock throwing to topple crate stacks, etc. Are all good uses of physics, rather than the more recent offerings of "Ragdolls = relistic lookign deth!"
* IK, also obviously. Tying in animation to the "ragdoll physics" may look wonky at times, but from a simulationist perspective, it's so much more versatile than explicit animation frames. I'd love to be able to actually create animations within a game and assign them to actions, and a robust IK system would allow this. Of course, that's pretty mucha dev geek feature and wouldn't be appealing to many people.
you weren't in on our phone convo last night were you!?
Heh, if you're foolish enough to fall for the ol' "phone repair guy" routine, then you deserve to be tapped. :twisted:
How important is it for a game to punish the player for the sake of challenge. What is challenging is subjective sure, but does it need to be black and white? i'm fairly certain most of us at one time or another, playing a game, took a risk trying to do something that maybe we felt we JUST might be able to pull off, but almost expected to fail. If we made it, it was terribly fullfilling, but if we didn't, fine, it was our call, and the system gave us every reasonable opportunity to at least let us try.
Challenge constitutes a fair portion of my reason for playing games, and that's why game like Dungeon Siege have failed to impress me. Not because they're not RPG enough, or they're too action oriented, but just because it doesn't really demand anything from me as a player. It's a "reward without challenge" game that seems so symptomatic of today's generation.
It's a difficult thing to pin down though, without making assumptions about the target audience. For me personally, a game only gets the better of me (temporarily) if there's no alternative to a challenge that I've already attempted and failed many times. I go through an "I can do this" phase, and then a "I have to do this on principle" phase and finally a "broken man" phase. A good game offers me an alternative until I can muster up the will to try again.
And you're right, surmounting a high risk or exceedingly difficult challenge is incredibly rewarding. My housemates have banned me from playing N because I either sit their screaming in frustration at my PC, or shouting in jublitation.
See, you're still in the "Wuudnt it b kewl if" mode of thinking. No, it wouldn't be. Without the numbers, you're pretty much forced in to the whole use progression system of skill advancement. That may work fine for combat skills, but what about lockpicking? Repair skills? Or any skill which may be useful at certainly places but those places aren't overly common.
Glad you brought this one up. This was yet another of the long list of flaws in Morrowind. Skills advancement was completely unbalanced, and so certain skills like Athletics, would constantly be on the improve, regardless of player choice, and skills like Enchant would be difficult to practice without resorting to power gaming.
But I don't think you're forced into skill progression. One of the ideas that lurks somewhere in the dark bowels of the my "designs that will never see the light of day" chamber, is the idea that (almost) every day ends with you brushing you teeth in front of a mirror, and introspectively pondering, so you effectively have a "monologue tree" to help define what's important to your character. Some of the choices would be defined by previous action, and character build,
For example, a gunslinger might have a choice like "[Pretend to shoot a finger gun at your reflection]", which wouldn't actively improve a firearms skill, but it would show the character has an interest in that skill area, and at the very least, increase the rate of skill-progression-per-use. Because this is a skill the character is already proficient in, it reinforces an archetype.
Other choices would not be tied directly into the character's current build, so the player can help to fuzzily define their future goals, and aside from statistical and skill development, the can also be choices to help define the more personal elements of RP.
For instance:
- "I don't know what to make of that <NPC dropdown>"
- "He's friendly enough, I guess"
- "I don't think I trust a guy that's that friendly, he's hiding something."
- "Maybe he's queer for my gear. If I catch him staring at my junk again I'll fucking kill him"
- etc.
There's worthwhile alternatives to numbers, and I think they should be explored, instead of rehashing the same ideas over and over again.