RPG battles in general always strike me as totally unfair. What is the point of the bad guys having a dungeon or castle if they are only going to make you fight a handful of them at a time while you slowly make your way through the entire place slaughtering all of them? If they had any sense they would at least meet you together as a unified force and overwhelm you. I guess this is why I usually like strategy games more.
I guess while we're at it we might as well mention Hit Points.
We're all so used to some form of them in every game ever that we don't even notice them anymore but really, the idea that you have to suffer a set amount of "damage" before you die is pretty dumb. In an FPS the first time you get winged should hamper your progress significantly and any sort of direct hit should be Game Over.
It's even more ridiculous in RPGs where you might get shot with a volley of bullets (FF7/8 did this all the time) which incurs only minimal damage; the heroes were apparently hit but simply shrug off being hit with a burst of machine gun fire and just keep on attacking.
Lower centre of gravity plays a part. Also you can brace yourself better.
so shouldn't it only improve accuracy for automatic or at least repeated shots, rather than say a single shot?
In games, the effect of recoil is usually modeled by having your point of aim thrown off to a potentially exaggerated degree but the actual shot when you pressed the button is dead accurate. Some games let you cheese this by zooming and aiming with a sniper rifle, then switching to another weapon and still keeping the exact same point of aim to snipe with a handgun or submachinegun.
In real life, bullets are fast but not hitscan weapons. First, hold your arm out. Take a careful look at it. I bet it's not holding exactly still and instead is shaking a little with your heart beat, breathing, and a bit of muscle fatigue. Those things don't go away when firing a gun. When crouching, you can brace yourself better to lessen that arm movement.
RPG battles in general always strike me as totally unfair. What is the point of the bad guys having a dungeon or castle if they are only going to make you fight a handful of them at a time while you slowly make your way through the entire place slaughtering all of them? If they had any sense they would at least meet you together as a unified force and overwhelm you. I guess this is why I usually like strategy games more.
I guess while we're at it we might as well mention Hit Points.
We're all so used to some form of them in every game ever that we don't even notice them anymore but really, the idea that you have to suffer a set amount of "damage" before you die is pretty dumb. In an FPS the first time you get winged should hamper your progress significantly and any sort of direct hit should be Game Over.
It's even more ridiculous in RPGs where you might get shot with a volley of bullets (FF7/8 did this all the time) which incurs only minimal damage; the heroes were apparently hit but simply shrug off being hit with a burst of machine gun fire and just keep on attacking.
Guns in RPGs are always ridiculously weak compared to the swords, or in some cases, punching.
RPG battles in general always strike me as totally unfair. What is the point of the bad guys having a dungeon or castle if they are only going to make you fight a handful of them at a time while you slowly make your way through the entire place slaughtering all of them? If they had any sense they would at least meet you together as a unified force and overwhelm you. I guess this is why I usually like strategy games more.
I guess while we're at it we might as well mention Hit Points.
We're all so used to some form of them in every game ever that we don't even notice them anymore but really, the idea that you have to suffer a set amount of "damage" before you die is pretty dumb. In an FPS the first time you get winged should hamper your progress significantly and any sort of direct hit should be Game Over.
It's even more ridiculous in RPGs where you might get shot with a volley of bullets (FF7/8 did this all the time) which incurs only minimal damage; the heroes were apparently hit but simply shrug off being hit with a burst of machine gun fire and just keep on attacking.
Guns in RPGs are always ridiculously weak compared to the swords, or in some cases, punching.
Then again, FF7 and 8 also showed us that skilled martial artists can match the power of an atomic blast (complete with mushroom cloud) with their fists alone.
So I guess RPG enemies are just supposed to be really, really, really tough. Even a mountain would be destroyed if it was hit by a few nuclear ICBMs, but many bosses can withstand several Limit Breaks.
I want to add, but I'm sure someone must have said it,
not being able to carry more than one bomb in Left4Dead.
Seriously? I can have two pistolas, and an AR15, but more than one pipebomb is just too much.
RPG battles in general always strike me as totally unfair. What is the point of the bad guys having a dungeon or castle if they are only going to make you fight a handful of them at a time while you slowly make your way through the entire place slaughtering all of them? If they had any sense they would at least meet you together as a unified force and overwhelm you. I guess this is why I usually like strategy games more.
Always entertained me as well. "Well Bob, I hear gunfire and screaming from the next room over. Maybe we should go check it out"
"Nah..."
In any pen/paper game that I happen to be running (such as D&D) you can be damn sure that if you go into some place and start screaming/killing/wrecking the place, those dudes in the next room aren't going to just patiently await their turn. They will come check out what the fuck you are doing.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
why do terrorists leave all their explosive barrels out where i can shoot them
sometimes they even try to hide behind them
'jim where should i put these highly explosive containers?'
'uh, just kinda through them around. if some vigilante busts in we want to be able to have some cover y'know?'
'boss, you are so smart.'
Local H Jay on
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AriviaI Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered Userregular
Boss domain layouts. Any adventure game you can think of with platforming elements, how in christ's name do the henchmen and bosses get from point A to point B in these places?
"Yeah, where's that meeting? Third floor, Conference Room B? Alright, so just so I remember, I need to hop over the lava pit, swing onto the floating platform, dodge the spikes, climb the ladder and I'm there, right? No? Oh right, I have to wall jump three times up the small shaft, grab the ledge, then I'm there. Gotcha"
I always think there's some secret passage to each of these places that our hero simply never finds. Just a door with a staircase that leads right to anyplace you need to be in that dwelling. Probably says "for castmember use only" on the door.
I just figure it's some generational thing. Like, each henchman reproduces asexually and entire centuries-long ecosystems have sprouted up in and around Generic Ninja #5 on this chain platform. When you kill him, the respawn is just the next part of the cycle, new trees growing out of the corpses of the old.
This thread reminds me of my 5 year old daughter playing that cow race thing from Wii Play.
"Daddy, why can't my cow jump over that fence? I want to run around there!"
"I... uh... well, that's just the way it is."
I know I've never seen a cow jump a fence
The cow that you control in the game can jump and it's visually confirmable that it jumps higher than the fence around the area where you are supposed to stay.
I just found it intresting how a kid with no preconceptions about games tries to play it as opposed, for example, me.
Weapon ranges in RTS games always annoy me so much that I sometime have to just quit the game in disgust. What good is a tank to me if it has to be within 100 yards of it's target? These things can shoot at things that are miles and miles away in real life and make direct hits, why do game designers feel like it's ok to give them the range of a handgun in so many RTS's? If I have a dedicated artillery cannon, it should be able to hit anything on the map. But no, it only has maybe twice the range of my 100 yard tank gun. Supreme commander did a better job but for the most part RTS games frustrate me. Couple this with weird size proportions (my infantry soldier is as big as my helicopter?) and resource gathering and unit production and it gets hard to claim that RTS games are even trying to make sense.
Since when have videogames ever tried to make sense? If it makes sense (even in context of its universe) they usually chalk it up to happy coincidence and move on.
Weapon ranges in RTS games always annoy me so much that I sometime have to just quit the game in disgust. What good is a tank to me if it has to be within 100 yards of it's target? These things can shoot at things that are miles and miles away in real life and make direct hits, why do game designers feel like it's ok to give them the range of a handgun in so many RTS's? If I have a dedicated artillery cannon, it should be able to hit anything on the map. But no, it only has maybe twice the range of my 100 yard tank gun. Supreme commander did a better job but for the most part RTS games frustrate me. Couple this with weird size proportions (my infantry soldier is as big as my helicopter?) and resource gathering and unit production and it gets hard to claim that RTS games are even trying to make sense.
Well, I always thought the tanks/maps were supposed to be very scaled-down. So, even thought your map in Rise of Nations (or whatever) looks like it's about 100 acres or so it's actually a very large area (say, the size of a state) with several large cities, etc. So the tank is actually shooting several miles... but the scaled-down map makes it look like a few dozen yards.
Now, if you're playing games where all the units - tanks, infantry, etc. - have identical attack ranges then yeah, that's pretty irritating.
Since when have videogames ever tried to make sense? If it makes sense (even in context of its universe) they usually chalk it up to happy coincidence and move on.
Shit not making sense even in the context of the universe is especially true of most fantasy RPGs. Even the ones with a supposedly good plot never consider implications of magic (something that is essentially a perpetual motion machine) on a world except when they decide to use it as a fancy form of technology.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8sdYvrRbqE
Most of this shit doesn't make sense unless you realize that the designers probably just wanted to open up with a huge fight with siege engines.
If Advent Children was supposed to be a representative of what an endgame Final Fantasy cast can do...
And let's not even mention Disgaea.
Sorry, gotta mention it now (penultimate chapter spoilers ahead):
You get the story bit of Laharl destroying the entire human fleet from ridiculously long range, with such control, that he allows the occupants to escape with their lives. Then, you get onto the main battleship... only to be raped by a cannon because you had no idea what you were going to face. (Unless you overleveled. Or noticed the this-map-only exit panel like I did.)
I mean, seriously Laharl - you have the control to destroy their ships that were in orbit whilst leaving them alive, yet you can't destroy a single cannon at point blank range with the same precision attacks?
BlitzAce1981 on
PSN ID - BlitzAce1981 FFXIV - Raiden Solitaire (Sargatanas)
Weapon ranges in RTS games always annoy me so much that I sometime have to just quit the game in disgust. What good is a tank to me if it has to be within 100 yards of it's target? These things can shoot at things that are miles and miles away in real life and make direct hits, why do game designers feel like it's ok to give them the range of a handgun in so many RTS's? If I have a dedicated artillery cannon, it should be able to hit anything on the map. But no, it only has maybe twice the range of my 100 yard tank gun. Supreme commander did a better job but for the most part RTS games frustrate me. Couple this with weird size proportions (my infantry soldier is as big as my helicopter?) and resource gathering and unit production and it gets hard to claim that RTS games are even trying to make sense.
Well, I always thought the tanks/maps were supposed to be very scaled-down. So, even thought your map in Rise of Nations (or whatever) looks like it's about 100 acres or so it's actually a very large area (say, the size of a state) with several large cities, etc. So the tank is actually shooting several miles... but the scaled-down map makes it look like a few dozen yards.
Now, if you're playing games where all the units - tanks, infantry, etc. - have identical attack ranges then yeah, that's pretty irritating.
And, as others have said in this thread, I typically assume that one tank or soldier represents a unit of them.
That' nothing remotely like perpetual motion, that's just high efficiency of conversion.
Find a way to convert the energy found in a chicken and a three hour nap into a tidal wave of fire that scours an entire battlefield, you might have a point. The magic that gets used in videogames is much, much to flashy and energy intensive to be solved that way. Hell, there's an attack in Xenogears called 'Big Bang' that unleashes so much energy it's visible on a galactic scale. It costs like 30 EP. And also does shit for damage, while we're on the subject of illogical things in games.
That' nothing remotely like perpetual motion, that's just high efficiency of conversion.
Find a way to convert the energy found in a chicken and a three hour nap into a tidal wave of fire that scours an entire battlefield, you might have a point. The magic that gets used in videogames is much, much to flashy and energy intensive to be solved that way. Hell, there's an attack in Xenogears called 'Big Bang' that unleashes so much energy it's visible on a galactic scale. It costs like 30 EP. And also does shit for damage, while we're on the subject of illogical things in games.
This is a tiny mouse that can electrocute a fully grown whale to death. Say hi!
Since when have videogames ever tried to make sense? If it makes sense (even in context of its universe) they usually chalk it up to happy coincidence and move on.
Shit not making sense even in the context of the universe is especially true of most fantasy RPGs. Even the ones with a supposedly good plot never consider implications of magic (something that is essentially a perpetual motion machine) on a world except when they decide to use it as a fancy form of technology.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8sdYvrRbqE
Most of this shit doesn't make sense unless you realize that the designers probably just wanted to open up with a huge fight with siege engines.
You really need to post the commentary that Unskippable has on that scene, it's hysterical.
implications of magic (something that is essentially a perpetual motion machine)
Care to elaborate on this?
You can create fire, water, and various other stuff out of nothing at little cost.
It generally costs energy from the caster, which presumably must be restored via nutrition (and sleep).
Which is very little input compared to the output.
It is the same thing with movies. Because a rest at an inn or save point only takes a few seconds it is considered only a day.
Who is to say that it is only a day's rest? Typically after a long dungeon crawl you are put into an investigation sub plot of some sort. This sort of story arc could take weeks of in game time but it passes as one day while running around the city collecting information or quests.
Also in RPGs you become more adept as you progress in the game with skills and magic and the like. As your character progresses so does your 'power' so to speak. This is a typical vein in written fantasy as well. You have an apprentice and a master magic user with the apprentice usually overstepping his bounds in some way. This causes the master to come in and save his ass.
And last I would like to mention its friggen magic. Magic doesnt have to make scientific sense. Although most major RPGs try to explain magic in its own way (Mana Tree, Alternate Universe Being Soul Crystal...). Personally I could give a rats ass about it heh.
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I guess while we're at it we might as well mention Hit Points.
We're all so used to some form of them in every game ever that we don't even notice them anymore but really, the idea that you have to suffer a set amount of "damage" before you die is pretty dumb. In an FPS the first time you get winged should hamper your progress significantly and any sort of direct hit should be Game Over.
It's even more ridiculous in RPGs where you might get shot with a volley of bullets (FF7/8 did this all the time) which incurs only minimal damage; the heroes were apparently hit but simply shrug off being hit with a burst of machine gun fire and just keep on attacking.
Especially since a lot of guns are decently heavy, or at least they will become so after you've been running around with it a while.
In games, the effect of recoil is usually modeled by having your point of aim thrown off to a potentially exaggerated degree but the actual shot when you pressed the button is dead accurate. Some games let you cheese this by zooming and aiming with a sniper rifle, then switching to another weapon and still keeping the exact same point of aim to snipe with a handgun or submachinegun.
In real life, bullets are fast but not hitscan weapons. First, hold your arm out. Take a careful look at it. I bet it's not holding exactly still and instead is shaking a little with your heart beat, breathing, and a bit of muscle fatigue. Those things don't go away when firing a gun. When crouching, you can brace yourself better to lessen that arm movement.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Guns in RPGs are always ridiculously weak compared to the swords, or in some cases, punching.
Or maybe I was doing it wrong. But my sergeant never said anything, so...
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
Then again, FF7 and 8 also showed us that skilled martial artists can match the power of an atomic blast (complete with mushroom cloud) with their fists alone.
So I guess RPG enemies are just supposed to be really, really, really tough. Even a mountain would be destroyed if it was hit by a few nuclear ICBMs, but many bosses can withstand several Limit Breaks.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
And let's not even mention Disgaea.
not being able to carry more than one bomb in Left4Dead.
Seriously? I can have two pistolas, and an AR15, but more than one pipebomb is just too much.
Always entertained me as well. "Well Bob, I hear gunfire and screaming from the next room over. Maybe we should go check it out"
"Nah..."
In any pen/paper game that I happen to be running (such as D&D) you can be damn sure that if you go into some place and start screaming/killing/wrecking the place, those dudes in the next room aren't going to just patiently await their turn. They will come check out what the fuck you are doing.
"Daddy, why can't my cow jump over that fence? I want to run around there!"
"I... uh... well, that's just the way it is."
sometimes they even try to hide behind them
'jim where should i put these highly explosive containers?'
'uh, just kinda through them around. if some vigilante busts in we want to be able to have some cover y'know?'
'boss, you are so smart.'
I just figure it's some generational thing. Like, each henchman reproduces asexually and entire centuries-long ecosystems have sprouted up in and around Generic Ninja #5 on this chain platform. When you kill him, the respawn is just the next part of the cycle, new trees growing out of the corpses of the old.
I know I've never seen a cow jump a fence
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
They can jump over the moon so fences shouldn't be a problem.
Now you have.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
That is because you have seen lazy American cows.
http://www.livevideo.com/video/85B715B77780485E8129261BCEBC01B0/the-cow-jumped-over-the-.aspx
The cow that you control in the game can jump and it's visually confirmable that it jumps higher than the fence around the area where you are supposed to stay.
I just found it intresting how a kid with no preconceptions about games tries to play it as opposed, for example, me.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
That Cow is clearly bionic.
And not bred to be burger.
Well, I always thought the tanks/maps were supposed to be very scaled-down. So, even thought your map in Rise of Nations (or whatever) looks like it's about 100 acres or so it's actually a very large area (say, the size of a state) with several large cities, etc. So the tank is actually shooting several miles... but the scaled-down map makes it look like a few dozen yards.
Now, if you're playing games where all the units - tanks, infantry, etc. - have identical attack ranges then yeah, that's pretty irritating.
Shit not making sense even in the context of the universe is especially true of most fantasy RPGs. Even the ones with a supposedly good plot never consider implications of magic (something that is essentially a perpetual motion machine) on a world except when they decide to use it as a fancy form of technology.
For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8sdYvrRbqE
Most of this shit doesn't make sense unless you realize that the designers probably just wanted to open up with a huge fight with siege engines.
SupCom is my very favoritest RTS though so I think everything in it is pretty awesome.
Care to elaborate on this?
You can create fire, water, and various other stuff out of nothing at little cost.
Sorry, gotta mention it now (penultimate chapter spoilers ahead):
I mean, seriously Laharl - you have the control to destroy their ships that were in orbit whilst leaving them alive, yet you can't destroy a single cannon at point blank range with the same precision attacks?
It generally costs energy from the caster, which presumably must be restored via nutrition (and sleep).
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
And, as others have said in this thread, I typically assume that one tank or soldier represents a unit of them.
Which is very little input compared to the output.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
Find a way to convert the energy found in a chicken and a three hour nap into a tidal wave of fire that scours an entire battlefield, you might have a point. The magic that gets used in videogames is much, much to flashy and energy intensive to be solved that way. Hell, there's an attack in Xenogears called 'Big Bang' that unleashes so much energy it's visible on a galactic scale. It costs like 30 EP. And also does shit for damage, while we're on the subject of illogical things in games.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
This is a tiny mouse that can electrocute a fully grown whale to death. Say hi!
The efficiency of conversion has to be more than 100 percent.
You really need to post the commentary that Unskippable has on that scene, it's hysterical.
Edit: Oh fine, here it is.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/unskippable/736-Lost-Odyssey
Unless there are midi-chlorians.
It is the same thing with movies. Because a rest at an inn or save point only takes a few seconds it is considered only a day.
Who is to say that it is only a day's rest? Typically after a long dungeon crawl you are put into an investigation sub plot of some sort. This sort of story arc could take weeks of in game time but it passes as one day while running around the city collecting information or quests.
Also in RPGs you become more adept as you progress in the game with skills and magic and the like. As your character progresses so does your 'power' so to speak. This is a typical vein in written fantasy as well. You have an apprentice and a master magic user with the apprentice usually overstepping his bounds in some way. This causes the master to come in and save his ass.
And last I would like to mention its friggen magic. Magic doesnt have to make scientific sense. Although most major RPGs try to explain magic in its own way (Mana Tree, Alternate Universe Being Soul Crystal...). Personally I could give a rats ass about it heh.