Which kind of fag are you ?

[Kev Inkline]

I’m just a consoomer. I usually buy a game and let it sit in the backlog for years. (Like 98% of my games are untouched)

A sales fag?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

There is no dash/roll-fag among the options. 90% of the kids will not vote this pool.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Yeah, you want context and a sense of direction, to inform the gameplay. That means you value the gameplay, with the story as an enhancement to that. Just like I said. If you're just here for the story, why aren't you watching a movie or reading a book? I was responding to people saying the most important thing in a game is the story. If you came for a story, a video game is a bad place to look. If you came for gameplay, video games are the best place to look. Story, aesthetics, lore, graphics, and all those kinds of things can enhance the gameplay.

I agree, the briefings in Warcraft and starcraft made the game better. But if the gameplay sucked, those briefings wouldn't have mattered at all, except maybe to this odd breed of people who come into one medium hoping for another.

It is not either/or kind of situation. We're talking about games that managed to get synergy between their gameplay and story elements. While they were liked for their gameplay, they are remembered more for their story. Look at Planescape: Torment - the eternal Top 1 of the Codex. Legacy of Kain series (Soul Reaver games in particular) is another example of a story that elevates the game.

So that was a pretty stupid response to a reasonable question. In the future, you should read more so you aren't so bad at it.

You're the one who tries to equate video games to books and movies while expressing his surprise why people don't just read books or watch movies instead, not me. You're also the one who doesn't get what makes video games stand out as a medium in comparison.

Also, why are so many people here so gay for Rusty's attention? It's pretty funny how little effort it takes from him to rile you clowns up... "Oh no he isn't 100 percent consistent in his stated opinions, which for some reason I keep track of". He's probably not gonna fuck you guys, and honestly, I doubt he looks anything like his forum picture anyway.

Are you Rusty's alt or something?

You're kind of agreeing with me here. Yes, a good story can elevate a game with good gameplay. But that's still gameplay first, how fun the game is to play is top priority. If, as people claim, their top priority is a good story, there are better mediums for that.

I didn't equate video games to movies or books, I equated stories to movies or books. If you primarily like a good story, you shouldn't go to video games, there are far better stories in the form of books or movies.

I just happen to be observant, and find it pretty amusing how butthurt people get about rusty's seemingly tame comments. Clearly some people hold a grudge against him for something, and it's funny to me. You guys let him troll you with like no effort...

 

[Harthwain]

You're kind of agreeing with me here. Yes, a good story can elevate a game with good gameplay. But that's still gameplay first, how fun the game is to play is top priority.

We can agree on this much.

I didn't equate video games to movies or books, I equated stories to movies or books. If you primarily like a good story, you shouldn't go to video games, there are far better stories in the form of books or movies.

I don't agree with that. First of all, just because you can have good stories in books or movies doesn't mean you can't have good stories in video games. Hell, even a serviceable but well-executed story is good for the purpose of keeping you invested.

I should know, because that's why I played Icewind Dale I: a lot of it was for its tactical combat, but following the story read by an excellent narrator was also the important part of the experience. Same goes for Emperor: Battle for Dune. It's a better game when you have unique province-specific missions and faction-specific missions mixed up with an overarching storyline when battling for dominance over the map versus playing a bunch of raw random skirmish maps. Even though technically the core of the gameplay remains the same.

Secondly, you can't exactly rip off a story from a video game and make it into an equally good book or movie. Compare StarCraft books with the game, for example. It's just not the same. In fact, I would say the books were ranging from avarage to butchered. Yet you can play StarCraft and get a good story in the process, on top of having a decent game.

 

[Serus]

Yeah that's what I don't get about people that love games just for stories. Why watch a horribly low quality movie with a hackneyed plot, when there are actual movies made to be watched. I get being engrossed in the setting because you enjoy the gameplay, then wanting to learn more about the story, but if you're just here for a story, why not read a book or watch a movie? Then you don't have to click any buttons or worry about stats or builds.

Gameplay aside, the cRPG genre does give the player the ability to direct the flow of the narrative (or at least such is the assumption. In truth many cRPGs fail to pull this particular aspect in the manner it deserves, reducing it to cosmetics). This is something you won't get from reading a book or watching a movie.

If there is the problem then it lies with not putting enough emphasis on player's agency nor having system(s) in place to provide such agency. It is obvious by now that hand-crafting everything is unsustainable approach in designing cRPGs.

No, crpg genre definitely doesn't do that. It often claims and cheats that it does but almost never deliver in practice. So not "many crpg fail" but almost all of them do. In fact vast majority of crpg ever made don't even claim that the player has the ability to direct the narrative at all. They are fully linear by design. The few that do claim it, outright lie or cheat, offering fake ability of choices that change anything in the linear narrative.
All this means we return to the situation of crpgs offering linear story just like books - except usually MUCH worse. Theorising about what crpgs could be, maybe, sometime, if stars align well... is even more pointless then discussions with Rusty. They are what they are. Which makes your argument invalid.

I agree about the last phrase though. IF they are to become one day really reactive and with narrative that can be really directed - they need to be made differently.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

You're kind of agreeing with me here. Yes, a good story can elevate a game with good gameplay. But that's still gameplay first, how fun the game is to play is top priority.

We can agree on this much.

I didn't equate video games to movies or books, I equated stories to movies or books. If you primarily like a good story, you shouldn't go to video games, there are far better stories in the form of books or movies.

I don't agree with that. First of all, just because you can have good stories in books or movies doesn't mean you can't have good stories in video games. Hell, even a serviceable but well-executed story is good for the purpose of keeping you invested.

I should know, because that's why I played Icewind Dale I: a lot of it was for its tactical combat, but following the story read by an excellent narrator was also the important part of the experience. Same goes for Emperor: Battle for Dune. It's a better game when you have unique province-specific missions and faction-specific missions mixed up with an overarching storyline when battling for dominance over the map versus playing a bunch of raw random skirmish maps. Even though technically the core of the gameplay remains the same.

Secondly, you can't exactly rip off a story from a video game and make it into an equally good book or movie. Compare StarCraft books with the game, for example. It's just not the same. In fact, I would say the books were ranging from avarage to butchered. Yet you can play StarCraft and get a good story in the process, on top of having a decent game.

I literally never said you can't have good story in video games. That kind of contradicts the thing you said you agree with. Good video games are first and foremost fun to play, and a good story can enhance that, making them even more fun than they would be with just the gameplay alone.

Your other thing is kind of along the same lines. Yeah, you take a video game with a "good story", and try to extract it from the game, it's actually kinda shitty. The story really only works in service of the game. The starcraft mission briefings were super flavorful and fun, but they worked because they were short, and in between missions. Trying to extract that into a story only experience doesn't work.

I guess that's what I am trying to say. A game that wants to tell a movie quality story generally doesn't work because then the gameplay gets in the way of the story they want to tell, and you end up with a walking simulator or something like that. Which again, is much worse than just watching a movie or reading a book with a good story because you don't have this entire medium of a video game in the way. A game that wants to be a fun game with a cool world can tell some cool stories about the world, and you might care about that world because you enjoyed playing a game in it.

Different people have different tolerances for how good the gameplay has to be to get them invested in the story. That's why arcanum and planescape don't work for me, the gameplay doesn't interest me enough to care about the story, and the story isn't interesting enough to be worth the slog through a shitty game. And also, the stories generally aren't good enough to stand on their own.

 

[Harthwain]

No, crpg genre definitely doesn't do that. It often claims and cheats that it does but almost never deliver in practice.

I... said so myself:

(or at least such is the assumption. In truth many cRPGs fail to pull this particular aspect in the manner it deserves, reducing it to cosmetics).

Thing is most casuals don't think too much about how fake cRPGs are as a whole. Actually, it's worse - even Codex's top 101 RPGs is not something that's free from this problem (of cRPGs failing to direct the flow of the narrative). One can put together a list of the best RPGs and all, but it doesn't change the state of the genre as such, which is flawed at its core and has been since a hand-crafted narrative design became a thing for cRPGs.

So not "many crpg fail" but almost all of them do.

I said "many cRPGs fail", because I didn't want to use the absolute "all cRPGs fail" statement. I do agree with you though.

In fact vast majority of crpg ever made don't even claim that the player has the ability to direct the narrative at all. They are fully linear by design. The few that do claim it, outright lie or cheat, offering fake ability of choices that change anything in the linear narrative.

Which is why I advocate for systemic/simulationist approach over the hand-crafted narrative design. Mainly because turning the linear narrative into the non-linear one is just too much work when you have to put extra work into all of the choices. You either have longer games with shallower choices or shorter games with slightly more significant choices, and even then you won't be able to come up with something a player would want to do in any given scenario, rather than something a designer provided for him.

Corbin Dallas Multipass I can agree with that.

 

[Incendax]

Yeah that's what I don't get about people that love games just for stories. Why watch a horribly low quality movie with a hackneyed plot, when there are actual movies made to be watched. I get being engrossed in the setting because you enjoy the gameplay, then wanting to learn more about the story, but if you're just here for a story, why not read a book or watch a movie? Then you don't have to click any buttons or worry about stats or builds.

It's ok if you actually don't like video games.

Fuck movies. 2-3 hours. 9 at most if you have a trilogy. That's nothing on a 40-100 hour video game. Give me an Arcane or Stranger Things anyday over a fucking movie. As if any movie could come close to Disco Elysium, Planescape: Torment, or even Betrayal at Krondor. Movies are 2 fucking hours, you heathen.

 

[Paul_cz]

Combat, even when fun, is just busywork. I will always prefer well written dialogue over yet another combat encounter. Story/explore/atmosphere it is.

And the argument about "just read the book duh" is so fucking stupid. I read books too. But games are interactive and immersive and offer different experience.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Combat, even when fun, is just busywork. I will always prefer well written dialogue over yet another combat encounter. Story/explore/atmosphere it is.

And the argument about "just read the book duh" is so fucking stupid. I read books too. But games are interactive and immersive and offer different experience.

What are some of the games with the best dialogue, in your opinion?

 

[Pink Eye]

Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3; everybody knows these games are masterclass in dialogue. Don't kid yourself here, Bethesda has mastered a particular style over story telling that no other studio has come close to meeting. It goes beyond just story though. You see that mountain over there? You can climb it. How profound is that? How many games manage to interweave level design in such a way that it's able to say so much with little to no words being used.

 

[Harthwain]

You see that mountain over there? You can climb it. How profound is that?

You laugh, but I suspect that this is one of the reasons why Bethesda games are liked so much: they give you the total freedom to go wherever you want, which plays well into the sandbox nature of their games.

 

[Pink Eye]

they give you the total freedom to go wherever you want, which plays well into the sandbox nature of their games.

Question. Would you rather go outside and explore your city, meet new people, see new things, meet different wild life - like birds, lots of birds. Or would you rather play Skyrim?

 

[Harthwain]

Question. Would you rather go outside and explore your city, meet new people, see new things, meet different wild life - like birds, lots of birds. Or would you rather play Skyrim?

Nice try. However, that's a dumb question, considering the "outside" lacks anything to really explore, because all the blanks on the map has already been filled by the actual explorers hundreds of years before my birth and any pretense to magic died because of the accumulated scientific knowledge (and general knowledge) most people have access to nowadays.

 

[Pink Eye]

Question. Would you rather go outside and explore your city, meet new people, see new things, meet different wild life - like birds, lots of birds. Or would you rather play Skyrim?

Nice try. However, that's a dumb question, considering the "outside" lacks anything to really explore, because all the blanks on the map has already been filled by the actual explorers hundreds of years before my birth and any pretense to magic died because of the accumulated scientific knowledge (and general knowledge) most people have access to nowadays.

I don't know man. Seeing birds drop shit on other people's cars is far more entertaining than spending several hours modding Skyrim, setting it up, making sure it doesn't crash. Then finally launching the game only to realize, it's still shitty Skyrim.

 

[Harthwain]

I don't know man. Seeing birds drop shit on other people's cars is far more entertaining than spending several hours modding Skyrim, setting it up, making sure it doesn't crash. Then finally launching the game only to realize, it's still shitty Skyrim.

I am not interested in farming Codex Points, but you do you.

 

[Paul_cz]

What are some of the games with the best dialogue, in your opinion?

I don't know about "best", but I enjoyed characters/dialogue/writing in games like Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout New Vegas, Vampire Bloodlines, Witcher 2, Witcher 3, Kingdom Come, Red Dead Redemption 1/2, Forgotten City, Mafia, Enderal, Mass Effect trilogy, Cyberpunk 2077, Game of Thrones (RPG)

Haven't played Disco Elysium yet, but apparently that gets lot of praise for its writing too

 

[Semiurge]

Completionfag and atmosfag. One of these is a true vice, born of autism and compulsive, obsessive behaviour. Every playthrough needs to be perfect, as does your character despite his flaws, for you might never get another chance to play. The cruel irony is that the striving for perfection tends to kill the thrill off a game.

 

[0sacred]

Combat, even when fun, is just busywork. I will always prefer well written dialogue over yet another combat encounter. Story/explore/atmosphere it is.

And the argument about "just read the book duh" is so fucking stupid. I read books too. But games are interactive and immersive and offer different experience.

What are some of the games with the best dialogue, in your opinion?

Fallout 1&2, Fallout New Vegas, Arcanum and Ultima VII are all worth playing for the dialogues

 

[Laz Sundays]

It's great to be a Choice&Concequences faggot above all. This should be the basis of all roleplay. Good rpg needs just a fleshed out setting that is able to react to player agency.

Been looking into GW2 MMO for quite some time, it's my belief that their attempts to make a dynamic world that changes itself after global events occur were - spot on for an rpg. Not for an MMO sadly, but for rpg most definitely.
The NPC factions within a map over at Guild Wars will have a scripted event to attempt to control parts of the map, a big meta event that will execute whether or not there are PCs on the map. Remove the repetition and static that is the MMO and you'd get a perfect recipe for cRPG worldbuilding. We desperately need this in cRPG, it's 2022. and there isn't a single game out there that tries to attempt GIVING LIFE TO THEIR WORLDS.

If I am heading towards a town ingame and the game lets me see different versions of that town every time I replay, based on how early/late I have arrived and how the warring factions within have rolled on their escalated conflict, it's going to do so much more to immersion and tickle every fag. Games like that are possible to make. There are still paths that we left unexplored, concepts that deserve attention and research. Ways to make it better.

One thing is certain. To stop having choice&consequence is to stop having RPGs.

 

[Bastardchops]

the most important aspect of crpgs is companions

 

[Dadd]

Fuck choices and consequences. Combat. Exploration. Buildfaggotry. RPGs should be unadulterated and infinite receptacles for unbridled autism.

 

[Laz Sundays]

Fuck choices and consequences. Combat. Exploration. Buildfaggotry. RPGs should be unadulterated and infinite receptacles for unbridled autism.

yes Diablos are fun, I guess. Haven't played those in ages

 

[Laz Sundays]

..did anyone else click on Atmosfag cause it sounds good? Atmosfag. No, say it outloud, it has some hidden charm.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Combat. Exploration

Nothing beats krumping gits so you can explore around to find more gits to krump.