Worldbuilding>Characters>Plot

[0sacred]

Not particularly, no. If a setting is engaging enough, I might want more stories in that setting. But I haven't found what passes for emergent gameplay in present-day sandboxes to be deep enough or compelling enough to stand in for a plot. Which is why so many sandboxes devolve into becoming murderhobo simulations or meme videos imo.

Plot exists because even a fantasy world would be boring for 90+% of the inhabitants, who'd just either be trying to survive or live their lives. I don't want to play the Sims. Give me a hook, a goal, and a reason to play and care.

Again, just my opinion; I know I'm likely in the minority here.

I agree that most sandboxes are too shallow to get the player invested without The Big Foozle to kill. This is more an argument for deeper gameplay than for slapping a plot on a sandbox though.

 

[0sacred]

BTW OP, when are you going to make a non-degenerate game? You have some based takes and coding skills. Use that power for good.

Depends what you mean by non-degenerate. I like putting sex in my games

The gold standard for sex in games is VtM: Bloodlines for me. It's got some degenerate shit, but it really fits the world and it's not too on the nose.

I meant when are you going to do a non-porn game, not a game without nudity.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

To each their own. I loathe sandboxes; unless there is also a well-developed plot and characters, it's a pass from me.

Do you never feel a desire to keep (free)playing a game after the plot is finished?

Not particularly, no. If a setting is engaging enough, I might want more stories in that setting. But I haven't found what passes for emergent gameplay in present-day sandboxes to be deep enough or compelling enough to stand in for a plot. Which is why so many sandboxes devolve into becoming murderhobo simulations or meme videos imo.

Plot exists because even a fantasy world would be boring for 90+% of the inhabitants, who'd just either be trying to survive or live their lives. I don't want to play the Sims. Give me a hook, a goal, and a reason to play and care.

Again, just my opinion; I know I'm likely in the minority here.

Well said, I agree completely.

 

[octavius]

Arcanum worldbuilding is one of the greatest.

It's kind of wasted when the combat system and encounter design is so bare bones and unexciting.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

When was the last time somebody here got genuinely invested in a new game world?
Not disputing OP's point, just curious as to the overall jadedness level

Better to ask what are the most recent (by release date) CRPGs with a genuinely well-done setting. Arguably, Jagged Alliance 3 (2023), but the next most recent might be Wasteland 3 (2020).

 

[RaggleFraggle]

BTW OP, when are you going to make a non-degenerate game? You have some based takes and coding skills. Use that power for good.

Depends what you mean by non-degenerate. I like putting sex in my games

The gold standard for sex in games is VtM: Bloodlines for me. It's got some degenerate shit, but it really fits the world and it's not too on the nose.

I meant when are you going to do a non-porn game, not a game without nudity.

Bloodlines doesn’t have nudity. There’s a strip club, but all the dancers wear pasties. Same for the adult theater. There’s a fair amount of implied sex occurring offscreen, but nothing explicit. There’s a fade-to-black sex encounter with Jeanette that you can get if you pursue her side plot. There’s two hidden easter eggs where nameless NPCs mime giving blowjobs. It’s very risqué, but Activision made Troika tone down anything explicit.

 

[octavius]

Bloodlines doesn’t have nudity. There’s a strip club, but all the dancers wear pasties. Same for the adult theater. There’s a fair amount of implied sex occurring offscreen, but nothing explicit. There’s a fade-to-black sex encounter with Jeanette that you can get if you pursue her side plot. There’s two hidden easter eggs where nameless NPCs mime giving blowjobs. It’s very risqué, but Activision made Troika tone down anything explicit.

That's some thorough research.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Arcanum worldbuilding is one of the greatest.

It's kind of wasted when the combat system and encounter design is so bare bones and unexciting.

People remember Arcanum for the characters.

 

[0sacred]

Bloodlines doesn’t have nudity. There’s a strip club, but all the dancers wear pasties. Same for the adult theater. There’s a fair amount of implied sex occurring offscreen, but nothing explicit. There’s a fade-to-black sex encounter with Jeanette that you can get if you pursue her side plot. There’s two hidden easter eggs where nameless NPCs mime giving blowjobs. It’s very risqué, but Activision made Troika tone down anything explicit.

My bad, I was thinking of some mod.

 

[NecroLord]

Arcanum worldbuilding is one of the greatest.

It's kind of wasted when the combat system and encounter design is so bare bones and unexciting.

People remember Arcanum for the characters.

 

[Vic]

that's not how a crashed zeppelin looks like

AI being dumb as fuck as always

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Companions were not the strong point of Arcanum. It's an example of setting and plot being more important than characters.

 

[NecroLord]

Companions were not the strong point of Arcanum.

Hold my Magnus, Franklin Payne, Torian Kel, Loghaire...

 

[lvl 2 Blue Slime]

I find any RPG where you spend too much time talking to characters boring. I just wanna kill monsters.

 

[NecroLord]

I find any RPG where you spend too much time talking to characters boring. I just wanna kill monsters.

Which you can also just do in Arcanum.
Really, you can just whack everybody and the plot will still go further.
No "With this character's death" message popping on the screen prompting you to reload a previous save.

 

[Serious_Business]

A couple of notes. First, world building can be approached in different ways ; it's hard to tell how it should be done exactly. There is a very abstract approach where you create the world before the game, or a more interactive one, where the world is created as you build the game. I would think the second approach is more appropriate, in so far as mechanics and so on influence the world building. In that case, world building in fact stops being a condition for the rest, it just flows immanently in design. Examples of this are no doubt Thief or Deus Ex.

Second, to say that "older mediums are curated, linear experiences" is a probably a simplistic view. I don't see a hard distinction between mediums on the interactive levels. You do interact with a book in some sense. If you don't see that, you probably don't read that much. My point being that to state that the apparition of a new medium radically changes the process of creation is probably naive in some way, even though it seems like the contrary.

Third, yes, write well. Do you have what it takes, you fuck?

 

[0sacred]

You do interact with a book in some sense.

*shakes book* mine's broken

 

[ds]

Bloodlines doesn’t have nudity. There’s a strip club, but all the dancers wear pasties. Same for the adult theater. There’s a fair amount of implied sex occurring offscreen, but nothing explicit. There’s a fade-to-black sex encounter with Jeanette that you can get if you pursue her side plot. There’s two hidden easter eggs where nameless NPCs mime giving blowjobs. It’s very risqué, but Activision made Troika tone down anything explicit.

That's some thorough research.

He forgot the "nude" posters of the vampire chicks you can collect. 0/10 coomer pass revoked.

 

[the mole]

I find any RPG where you spend too much time talking to characters boring. I just wanna kill monsters.

blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne

 

[Serus]

Writing > Combat
Fight me

Combat/Exploration >>>>>>>>>>>> Writing >>>> all non-prestigious people >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Bester
K.O. in first round.

Anything the combat can evoke - e.g. feelings of competence or fun - the writing can evoke. But writing can evoke literally anything else, too.
qfd

Since when playing computer games is about "evoking" anything? Does it have something to do with Evoks from Star Wars? Horrible, stupid creatures.

 

[NecroLord]

Bloodlines doesn’t have nudity. There’s a strip club, but all the dancers wear pasties. Same for the adult theater. There’s a fair amount of implied sex occurring offscreen, but nothing explicit. There’s a fade-to-black sex encounter with Jeanette that you can get if you pursue her side plot. There’s two hidden easter eggs where nameless NPCs mime giving blowjobs. It’s very risqué, but Activision made Troika tone down anything explicit.

That's some thorough research.

He forgot the "nude" posters of the vampire chicks you can collect. 0/10 coomer pass revoked.

Gary gives you those posters in exchange for some unique items he wants.

 

[Erebus]

Companions were not the strong point of Arcanum. It's an example of setting and plot being more important than characters.

No, the plot was also shit, just like the dungeons, the villains, the combat balance, the morality system and the so-called reactivity.

Arcanum is in fact proof that a good setting is not enough to make a good game.

 

[v1c70r14]

But the ideal RPG would be a fully realized world that you can just run around in as a sandbox.

What neckbeards don't understand is that sandboxes can't replace good writing, that and that there is really no such thing as worldbuilding by itself. Writing is something more holistic than these categories and characters for example are a part of the world, historically or present. How do you write background lore without characters and conflict and plots? All that must figure into the game plot, or what is currently happening, for the worldbuilding to have any way of interfacing with the player at all, that is if you're not just going to dump it in an in-game book for them to read and at that point it's not so much a part of the game as it is irrelevant and easily ignored fluff. Writing in games is about the delivery of all that cool stuff you came up with to the player, you could have the most imaginative setting and still have players quit out of boredom if it is written poorly.

The source of this misconception is tabletop, it has infected novel writing as well as how people think about video games, when they think what people really want and should care about is the setting source book. Video games don't have DMs that can come up with stories and characters based on the setting though. Moreover that's not actually how neither writers nor earlier video game developers went about their creative crafts, it was much less autistic than that. Can't think of any game that has been carried by "worldbuilding", yet that's the poison meme you and others keep repeating.

Tone also isn't the RPG setting book, it's pure writing, which would include the setting, characters, dialogue, and every facet of the written word and fictitious thing in the game. It's not even limited to this but goes into art and music too. How are you even developing video games if you think tone is just setting and lore?

 

[Vic]

How do you write background lore without characters and conflict and plots? All that must figure into the game plot, or what is currently happening, for the worldbuilding to have any way of interfacing with the player at all, that is if you're not just going to dump it in an in-game book for them to read and at that point it's not so much a part of the game as it is irrelevant and easily ignored fluff.

ummm ever heard of forgotten realms, or any kind of game setting? It's all part of the world building.

 

[Tihskael]

Tone>Worldbuilding>Characters>Plot

Bethesda does decent by this criteria?