I thought EQII did it first? There was an experience debt that had to be paid off, but you couldn't lose levels I don't think it was ever large enough to really matter anymore than the other minor setbacks and fairly easy to get back. It also takes the form of reduced experience gain rather than no experience gain at all until you pay off the debt from what I remember.
Edit:
[SOE]Waters - The death penalty in a game like this is such an integral part that we've put a lot of time into testing and tuning it. We have made some changes on beta lately to make it play a bit better.
[SOE]Waters - Some of the things we've changed are moving from the spirit system we were experimenting with to an experience debt system. Now when you die, you will have a certain amount of debt that you'll need to pay off for awhile.
[SOE]Waters - This debt system will make you want to avoid dying, but it won't keep you from advancing and being able to level while in debt. It will slow you down but not stop you or set you back.
[SOE]Waters - Also, we've made a big change in how the death penalty is applied to groups. If you're in a group, all group members will share any deaths that happen. This encourages group play and makes groups share the risks and the rewards of being a team.
[SOE]Waters - If you're in a group of six and your tank dies, each person gets about 1/6th of a normal death. This is pretty fast to recover from, and makes it less painful if someone occasionally has an accidental death.
Having everyone's equipment available to pick up works best when the equipment is randomized slightly, and as far as I'm concerned it always should be. It helps the immersion along when one out of every 20 guys has a weapon with a minor enchantment on it, or when a random guard is carrying a feather or rock around just because he liked it. There's an excitement to checking each body, and the differences in their equipment give them a little added personality and realism.
...Now i feel kinda horrible for equating looting dead bodies to opening Christmas gifts.
I thought EQII did it first? There was an experience debt that had to be paid off, but you couldn't lose levels I don't think it was ever large enough to really matter anymore than the other minor setbacks and fairly easy to get back. It also takes the form of reduced experience gain rather than no experience gain at all until you pay off the debt from what I remember.
Edit:
[SOE]Waters - The death penalty in a game like this is such an integral part that we've put a lot of time into testing and tuning it. We have made some changes on beta lately to make it play a bit better.
[SOE]Waters - Some of the things we've changed are moving from the spirit system we were experimenting with to an experience debt system. Now when you die, you will have a certain amount of debt that you'll need to pay off for awhile.
[SOE]Waters - This debt system will make you want to avoid dying, but it won't keep you from advancing and being able to level while in debt. It will slow you down but not stop you or set you back.
[SOE]Waters - Also, we've made a big change in how the death penalty is applied to groups. If you're in a group, all group members will share any deaths that happen. This encourages group play and makes groups share the risks and the rewards of being a team.
[SOE]Waters - If you're in a group of six and your tank dies, each person gets about 1/6th of a normal death. This is pretty fast to recover from, and makes it less painful if someone occasionally has an accidental death.
It's hard to directly compare whether WoW or EQII did things first. WoW had a very open beta compared to EQII, so a lot of the concepts shared by both were introduced to public awareness through WoW first. Also, though it released first, EQII ended up implementing some concepts (like the flight point system) in their beta well after WoW had had a working version up and running. There's a very good chance (though I doubt that anyone at SOE would admit to it) that the death penalty in EQII was altered specifically to be closer to the system that WoW already had at that time.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
I don't get why a death penalty was ever thought to be necessary mechanic in the first place. Isn't it big enough penalty that you fucked up and have to respawn somewhere else/have to waste time by corpse running?
Peeve: Devs wasting time coming up with completely worthless and annoying penalty mechanics when natural solutions already exist.
I don't get why a death penalty was ever thought to be necessary mechanic in the first place. Isn't it big enough penalty that you fucked up and have to respawn somewhere else/have to waste time by corpse running?
Peeve: Devs wasting time coming up with completely worthless and annoying penalty mechanics when natural solutions already exist.
Compare this to casino gambling. For many people, the reward you gain is exciting proportionally to what you stand to lose. Things like perma-death, PvP corpse looting, and experience loss all add to the "things you stand to lose" column. Clearly it's not what most people wanted, but there was a reason why it was present. EVE still works that way.
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Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
I don't get why a death penalty was ever thought to be necessary mechanic in the first place. Isn't it big enough penalty that you fucked up and have to respawn somewhere else/have to waste time by corpse running?
Peeve: Devs wasting time coming up with completely worthless and annoying penalty mechanics when natural solutions already exist.
Well, compare it with the other mechanics at the time: Permadeath -or- Your character drops all his shit and whoever is there gets to loot the body.
Plus, something to consider about EQ is that there was actually a risk vs reward system in play which modern MMOs lack. Grinding in WoW has absolutely no risk, which translates to it being quite boring. In EQ there was relatively riskless grinding too. If you really wanted, you could group in easy zones all day and hit cap level and beyond without ever risking death.
However, if you wanted to risk death, you could get much better rewards. The hardest zones in the game could give orders of magnitude faster gains. There were also incredibly risky strategies like Mind Controlling and buffing/equiping mobs; this strategy would allow someone to grind at blistering pace, but required perfect play and would probably result in death (and losing everything you had gained). Or AE grinding which was incredibly risky, required incredible coordination, but gave commensurate rewards. Comparatively, every type of grinding in WoW is bland and offers bland rewards. Presumably, this is because there is no penalty of death, so if a risky grinding method offered 20x XP rates, everyone would take it since there would be no trade-off for failure.
Edit: Casino Gambling is the perfect analogy. It's lost because modern MMOs don't allow you to 'win big' or allow you to lose it all, but back then you could.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I don't know if I've played an RPG since the SSI D&D Gold Box games where, if you get in a fight and slaughter 25 evil priests, you get to pick through 25 sets of chain armor, 25 maces, 25 shields, etc. I'm always annoyed when this isn't the case.
This is madness unless there are no inventory limits.
mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
Speaking of Inventory Madness and it's surely been mentioned. No auto sort for inventory.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
I want to see an RPG where you loot some guy's plate mail armor and then you have to actually carry it in your arms. An angry orc attacking? Sorry, can't swing your sword, your hands are full. Also, can't run away because shit be heavy, son.
On second thought, no.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Speaking of inventory, I'm replaying Diablo II and I'm amazed that I was able to play and finish this as a kid. Seriously, all this item management drives me crazy.
I want to see an RPG where you loot some guy's plate mail armor and then you have to actually carry it in your arms. An angry orc attacking? Sorry, can't swing your sword, your hands are full. Also, can't run away because shit be heavy, son.
On second thought, no.
Sorta related.
When your upgrades don't reflect upon your character. Especially in games where there's limited enough items for it to be practical to do so.
I love it when you say pickup a bullet proof vest in an action game, and can actually see it. It makes it feel more 'real', then a simple reduction in damage. More so if it's included in cutscenes, which to be fair it increasingly is (because graphics are good enough that mostare done in engine).
If you can't do that, cut out items until you can, no-one wants two dozen pieces of vendor trash a mission, and switching to better guns faster then you change socks.
My first MMO was CITY OF HEROES, and looking back I don't see how that game survived the "score negative experience every time you die" mechanic. Was that a common feature in MMO's at that time ? Cuz it killed COH for me, and everyone else I knew who tried to play it. You'd advance for a while until you needed to beat a tough quest, fail a bunch of times, and next thing you knew you had to play for a day and a half just to make up the experience deficit and get back to zero. Gosh I'd rather play BG2 again than do that.
So I did.
City of Heroes doesn't really do negative exp on death. It cuts your exp gain in half until you earn a certain amount, but you're still always moving forward.
I want to see an RPG where you loot some guy's plate mail armor and then you have to actually carry it in your arms. An angry orc attacking? Sorry, can't swing your sword, your hands are full. Also, can't run away because shit be heavy, son.
On second thought, no.
Sorta related.
When your upgrades don't reflect upon your character. Especially in games where there's limited enough items for it to be practical to do so.
I love it when you say pickup a bullet proof vest in an action game, and can actually see it. It makes it feel more 'real', then a simple reduction in damage. More so if it's included in cutscenes, which to be fair it increasingly is (because graphics are good enough that mostare done in engine).
If you can't do that, cut out items until you can, no-one wants two dozen pieces of vendor trash a mission, and switching to better guns faster then you change socks.
On the reverse of that, quit re-sorting my inventory just because your in-engine cutscene really really wants to use a particular piece of equipment, MGS4.
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GNU Terry Pratchett
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
I thought EQII did it first? There was an experience debt that had to be paid off, but you couldn't lose levels I don't think it was ever large enough to really matter anymore than the other minor setbacks and fairly easy to get back. It also takes the form of reduced experience gain rather than no experience gain at all until you pay off the debt from what I remember.
Edit:
[SOE]Waters - The death penalty in a game like this is such an integral part that we've put a lot of time into testing and tuning it. We have made some changes on beta lately to make it play a bit better.
[SOE]Waters - Some of the things we've changed are moving from the spirit system we were experimenting with to an experience debt system. Now when you die, you will have a certain amount of debt that you'll need to pay off for awhile.
[SOE]Waters - This debt system will make you want to avoid dying, but it won't keep you from advancing and being able to level while in debt. It will slow you down but not stop you or set you back.
[SOE]Waters - Also, we've made a big change in how the death penalty is applied to groups. If you're in a group, all group members will share any deaths that happen. This encourages group play and makes groups share the risks and the rewards of being a team.
[SOE]Waters - If you're in a group of six and your tank dies, each person gets about 1/6th of a normal death. This is pretty fast to recover from, and makes it less painful if someone occasionally has an accidental death.
Dark Age of Camelot did it before EQ2... Though I can't remember if EQ1 had it. Ugh... I still remember my level 43 Friar in DAoC... Spent HOURS getting to about 40% exp, and wiping in a dungeon three times in a row and losing all that exp.
Here's something I just realized I hate, open world games that don't use the Y axis, or use it sparsely. Red Faction Guerrilla and Oblivion are the two big offenders I can think of now. Maybe Crysis, but I haven't finished it yet.
The majority of Oblivion took place on a flat stage, rarely did you have a dungeon or city that required you to think in regards to hight, it was either left, right, or around a corner.
RFG had 1 or 2 areas per town that went up and down and they were incredible.
I understand limited system resources and time constraints, but just give me some areas that are as complicated vertically as it is horizontally.
Boring death animations are a bit of a peeve as well; your character is tapped by another guy, and they explode. Your health gets reduced to 0, and you fall over onto the ground. The screen fades to either black or red, and the game responds with "YOU ARE DEAD. TRY AGAIN?"
C'mon. It was a telegraphed attack, I failed the requirements for dodging it, and I had a sliver of health left. Why does my character stand up after getting curbstomped, only to ragdoll a second later? You can acceptably punish a player for losing in more ways than just prompting them to start over.
Boring death animations are a bit of a peeve as well; your character is tapped by another guy, and they explode. Your health gets reduced to 0, and you fall over onto the ground. The screen fades to either black or red, and the game responds with "YOU ARE DEAD. TRY AGAIN?"
C'mon. It was a telegraphed attack, I failed the requirements for dodging it, and I had a sliver of health left. Why does my character stand up after getting curbstomped, only to ragdoll a second later? You can acceptably punish a player for losing in more ways than just prompting them to start over.
This is why I loved how Resident Evil 4 handled death. Anything other that being slashed/shot to death by basic grunt gave you a context-specific death animation that actually made dying a lot less frustrating. Classic examples: getting your face melted off by acid, getting a knife through the eye, getting your throat torn out, and of course basic decapitation. Also helped that it was fairly generous with the checkpoints around any instadeath situations.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
They also removed the cop zombies in The Parish because they didn't want people attacking authority figures.
How does that even work if you're playing multiplayer with someone that doesn't have the censored version?
Apparently it just doesn't spawn them for anyone.
The bulletproof riot zombies definitely appear in the Australian version, but they may not in the German version. The reason the Riot zombies don't count towards Crass Menagerie is definitely because of this.
The dismemberment achievement pops up if you make enough hits that would have dismembered or decapitated things.
Also, and really weirdly, fire doesn't show up on anything but the tank and the ground. So zombies run around waving their arms in the air like mad crackheads being attacked by bees.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
At the very least Apothe0sis, valve have said that the second the laws here are fixed they will patch L4D2 for our region to be the same as everywhere else (except germany, of course).
I'd like to add that while losing experience was really shitty when it happened, having it as a consequence of failure made Everquest super thrilling and gave you a real sense of danger when exploring.
Personally I played on a pvp server where you could kill anyone at any level, but anyone within +/- 10 levels of you would lose exp on death. This made serious skill and tactics worthwhile in combat not to mention raised heartbeats and sweaty palms.
Best fun i've ever had in gaming is thanks to EQ's brutal experience curve and loss.
I deleveled a few times from mobs which sucks. But deleveling enemy players repeatedly is fucking awesome. Literally taking away months of someone else's life in some cases.
You could say it's my own fault in this case, but:
Games that require separate pieces of technology/software in order to run or do simple things like save your game. I'm looking at you Batman: Arkham Asylum!
Thing is, I run Linux and decided to check out the demo of the game off Steam, which ran perfectly with no fuss. Not only was it fun (in fact super awesome and ridiculously fun) but it was cheap so I bought it, only to discover that it requires Games For Windows Live to be running in the background in order to do the simple task of saving your damned game. Most other games seem to be able to accomplish this on their own, oh but not Batman!
And it just so happens that GFWL doesn't run yet under Linux.
Seriously, how many layers of crap do games really need? No wonder fewer people play PC games.
Through hacking the config file to start at the beginning of chapters I did manage to complete the game, albeit tediously and with no final record of my progress.
Jesus Christ, when you lose repeatedly because the boss has fucking twice the health than you do and regenerates health to boot, it's just asking for RAGE.
I just exit the game when I have to fight another stupidly overpowered boss when I can, but sometimes you have to beat the fucker to get a new ending/stage/character.
I'm looking at you, uh... almost every fucking game in the entire genre.
You could say it's my own fault in this case, but:
Games that require separate pieces of technology/software in order to run or do simple things like save your game. I'm looking at you Batman: Arkham Asylum!
Thing is, I run Linux and decided to check out the demo of the game off Steam, which ran perfectly with no fuss. Not only was it fun (in fact super awesome and ridiculously fun) but it was cheap so I bought it, only to discover that it requires Games For Windows Live to be running in the background in order to do the simple task of saving your damned game. Most other games seem to be able to accomplish this on their own, oh but not Batman!
And it just so happens that GFWL doesn't run yet under Linux.
Seriously, how many layers of crap do games really need? No wonder fewer people play PC games.
Through hacking the config file to start at the beginning of chapters I did manage to complete the game, albeit tediously and with no final record of my progress.
GFWL is not something I like. Maybe it is okay to force people who want to play multiplayer and so forth to log in to your shitty service all the time but I just want to play singleplayer! Why can't I do that without my computer talking to GFWL at all? I'm already logged into Steam, how many lame programs do we need? I was going to boycott GFWL games on principle but Batman is so good and so is Red Faction: Guerilla so my boycott isn't going very well.
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SirUltimosDon't talk, Rusty. Just paint.Registered Userregular
Jesus Christ, when you lose repeatedly because the boss has fucking twice the health than you do and regenerates health to boot, it's just asking for RAGE.
I just exit the game when I have to fight another stupidly overpowered boss when I can, but sometimes you have to beat the fucker to get a new ending/stage/character.
I'm looking at you, uh... almost every fucking game in the entire genre.
Sometimes bosses are just unnecessary. Remember how Guitar Hero III had boss battles? Seriously, wtf?
I'd like to add that while losing experience was really shitty when it happened, having it as a consequence of failure made Everquest super thrilling and gave you a real sense of danger when exploring.
No, it didn't. It just made me super pissed off when that jackhole decided to train another horde of orcs onto my ass for the fourth time that evening, now costing me a grand total of 8 hours of playtime worth of experience.
They also removed the cop zombies in The Parish because they didn't want people attacking authority figures.
How does that even work if you're playing multiplayer with someone that doesn't have the censored version?
Apparently it just doesn't spawn them for anyone.
I think initially, when the game came out, if there was someone in the game with the censored version the riot cops wouldn't spawn. But I think they've changed it since, because I've been playing parish recently with players who do have the cut version (I have the full version myself) and the cops were there. Maybe they just look different in the australian version.
I have played the censored version before, and the thing that threw me off the most was how common didn't ignite (they still behaved like they were on fire though).
Jesus Christ, when you lose repeatedly because the boss has fucking twice the health than you do and regenerates health to boot, it's just asking for RAGE.
I just exit the game when I have to fight another stupidly overpowered boss when I can, but sometimes you have to beat the fucker to get a new ending/stage/character.
I'm looking at you, uh... almost every fucking game in the entire genre.
Sometimes bosses are just unnecessary. Remember how Guitar Hero III had boss battles? Seriously, wtf?
Yeah, some game designers just assume they MUST include tropes of game design, even if they aren't necessary and run counter to the rest of the game.
Fucking fighting game bosses, ugh. A few games get it alright, but most just throw in stupid unblockable or cheap moves, resulting in a frustrating battle that requires as much luck (if not more so) than skill. A good fighting game boss should take the skills you have built up through the game to that point and test them at a higher level, not throw in some arbitrary new bullshit.
innovate. It made leveling easier to manage, and it was a much, MUCH faster combat
So...it was basically the same old shit but improved slightly?
So because they didn't invent combat in MMOs that's not considered an innovation? If you've ever played EQ or the older MMOs you'd understand why this is an innovation. It made it more of an Action genre than RPG genre.
Being faster makes it more of an action genre game now? O_o
You've never played WoW or anything before it clearly. Yes it's more akin to the action genre than the RPG genre.
In comparison to prior MMORPG efforts, it's a faster paced game, but still very much an RPG. The only point at which it constitutes action is in terms of movement; an aspect that Blizzard has underplayed. Hello "stay out of the fire" mechanics.
In the end, World of Warcraft doesn't have much more action than, let's say, Secret of Mana for the SNES did.
Which brings me to my next pet peeve, by the way: WoW MMOs. The level of innovation in any MMORPG since 2004 has been negligible at best. Anything unique and interesting introduced to the genre has been simple enough that the juggernaut of the industry has been able to pick it up and implement it into their own game by the next major content patch. The problem is, that game still doesn't compare to any competently designed game of the genre in the past decade or so, outside of art assets(debatably) and interface.
While WoW is an excellent MMORPG, I'm sick of playing demos for new MMORPGs just to find out I'm just playing the same game I've played on and off for nearly 6 years. And i'm sick of having to use MMORPG as a qualifier; why can't it just be a good game? Why is there such a gap in quality between a multiplayer game and a massively multiplayer one? Looking at this year's offerings, if one of the following doesn't happen:
1) Guild Wars 2 lives up to at least half of the expectations its developers have given it
2) ToR teaches the rest of the industry how to deliver a good story in an MMO
3) Some other MMO (TERA Online, maybe?) introduces something new and exciting for fans of the genre to catch on to that doesn't involve an interface enhancement
Then I think I'll stick to non-MMORPGs for the next decade or so.
New shooters that have crappy death animations. I did not like Modern Warfare 2's animations. Please, come into the 21st century and just use ragdoll. I don't think it would be that hard.
God, no. Ragdoll is awful. It always looks like you just shot a wooden marionette. Then there's clipping and twitching and stupidity.
Just have them explode in a shower of coins for cri-yi.
Yeah, Rainbow 6's death animations (which were mo-capped) look a hell of a lot better then rag-doll generally does.
As mentioned, GTAIV/Red Dead Redemption does this beautifully, but of course they're using the amazing Euphoria engine. However other games that don't use it and make it pretty neat are for example Bad Company 2, death animations are there but once they start they're affected by ragdoll physics as well, so it's a really nice mix of shooting a dude in the head with a rifle and just see how his arms drop while he's still standing and slowly collapses face forward and then suddenly an explosion sends his body flying away.
Also gotta love when it glitches out and you shoot some dude with a pistol and for some reason his body goes flying 3 feet into the air.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
New shooters that have crappy death animations. I did not like Modern Warfare 2's animations. Please, come into the 21st century and just use ragdoll. I don't think it would be that hard.
God, no. Ragdoll is awful. It always looks like you just shot a wooden marionette. Then there's clipping and twitching and stupidity.
Just have them explode in a shower of coins for cri-yi.
Yeah, Rainbow 6's death animations (which were mo-capped) look a hell of a lot better then rag-doll generally does.
It's better than the same deaths over and over. I don't give a shit if the guy falls back while getting shot in the front "realistically" It's still the same fucking animation. Also with those kind of deaths, I can't shotgun someone over a rail and watch them plummet to their death.
I love Euphoria, and wish more games used it. I'd also like it to be used in Multi. Shooting a guys gun out of his hand or shooting someone in the leg and have him limp? Awesome.
New shooters that have crappy death animations. I did not like Modern Warfare 2's animations. Please, come into the 21st century and just use ragdoll. I don't think it would be that hard.
God, no. Ragdoll is awful. It always looks like you just shot a wooden marionette. Then there's clipping and twitching and stupidity.
Just have them explode in a shower of coins for cri-yi.
Yeah, Rainbow 6's death animations (which were mo-capped) look a hell of a lot better then rag-doll generally does.
As mentioned, GTAIV/Red Dead Redemption does this beautifully, but of course they're using the amazing Euphoria engine. However other games that don't use it and make it pretty neat are for example Bad Company 2, death animations are there but once they start they're affected by ragdoll physics as well, so it's a really nice mix of shooting a dude in the head with a rifle and just see how his arms drop while he's still standing and slowly collapses face forward and then suddenly an explosion sends his body flying away.
Also gotta love when it glitches out and you shoot some dude with a pistol and for some reason his body goes flying 3 feet into the air.
Left 4 Dead also does a good hybrid of ragdoll/animated death. Also watching the developer commentary in L4D1, they'll tell about how they had a guy do mocaps of dying and falling animations, and then have them be flexible, so if you're still shooting, it'll twitch, it'll interact with the environment, or just ragdoll if the death would be a quick one (headloss). It's a really good system as well. Better than the same animation happening leaving the body half-clipped into walls or floating over edges.
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Edit:
...Now i feel kinda horrible for equating looting dead bodies to opening Christmas gifts.
It's hard to directly compare whether WoW or EQII did things first. WoW had a very open beta compared to EQII, so a lot of the concepts shared by both were introduced to public awareness through WoW first. Also, though it released first, EQII ended up implementing some concepts (like the flight point system) in their beta well after WoW had had a working version up and running. There's a very good chance (though I doubt that anyone at SOE would admit to it) that the death penalty in EQII was altered specifically to be closer to the system that WoW already had at that time.
Peeve: Devs wasting time coming up with completely worthless and annoying penalty mechanics when natural solutions already exist.
Compare this to casino gambling. For many people, the reward you gain is exciting proportionally to what you stand to lose. Things like perma-death, PvP corpse looting, and experience loss all add to the "things you stand to lose" column. Clearly it's not what most people wanted, but there was a reason why it was present. EVE still works that way.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
Well, compare it with the other mechanics at the time: Permadeath -or- Your character drops all his shit and whoever is there gets to loot the body.
Plus, something to consider about EQ is that there was actually a risk vs reward system in play which modern MMOs lack. Grinding in WoW has absolutely no risk, which translates to it being quite boring. In EQ there was relatively riskless grinding too. If you really wanted, you could group in easy zones all day and hit cap level and beyond without ever risking death.
However, if you wanted to risk death, you could get much better rewards. The hardest zones in the game could give orders of magnitude faster gains. There were also incredibly risky strategies like Mind Controlling and buffing/equiping mobs; this strategy would allow someone to grind at blistering pace, but required perfect play and would probably result in death (and losing everything you had gained). Or AE grinding which was incredibly risky, required incredible coordination, but gave commensurate rewards. Comparatively, every type of grinding in WoW is bland and offers bland rewards. Presumably, this is because there is no penalty of death, so if a risky grinding method offered 20x XP rates, everyone would take it since there would be no trade-off for failure.
Edit: Casino Gambling is the perfect analogy. It's lost because modern MMOs don't allow you to 'win big' or allow you to lose it all, but back then you could.
This is madness unless there are no inventory limits.
The Elder Scrolls series gets a huge thumbs-up from me for doing this.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
On second thought, no.
AS long as there is a way to easily ascertain the value of without having to pick it up, that'd be fine. Borderlands got this right for the most part.
Pokémon HGSS: 1205 1613 4041
Sorta related.
When your upgrades don't reflect upon your character. Especially in games where there's limited enough items for it to be practical to do so.
I love it when you say pickup a bullet proof vest in an action game, and can actually see it. It makes it feel more 'real', then a simple reduction in damage. More so if it's included in cutscenes, which to be fair it increasingly is (because graphics are good enough that mostare done in engine).
If you can't do that, cut out items until you can, no-one wants two dozen pieces of vendor trash a mission, and switching to better guns faster then you change socks.
City of Heroes doesn't really do negative exp on death. It cuts your exp gain in half until you earn a certain amount, but you're still always moving forward.
On the reverse of that, quit re-sorting my inventory just because your in-engine cutscene really really wants to use a particular piece of equipment, MGS4.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Dark Age of Camelot did it before EQ2... Though I can't remember if EQ1 had it. Ugh... I still remember my level 43 Friar in DAoC... Spent HOURS getting to about 40% exp, and wiping in a dungeon three times in a row and losing all that exp.
The majority of Oblivion took place on a flat stage, rarely did you have a dungeon or city that required you to think in regards to hight, it was either left, right, or around a corner.
RFG had 1 or 2 areas per town that went up and down and they were incredible.
I understand limited system resources and time constraints, but just give me some areas that are as complicated vertically as it is horizontally.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
C'mon. It was a telegraphed attack, I failed the requirements for dodging it, and I had a sliver of health left. Why does my character stand up after getting curbstomped, only to ragdoll a second later? You can acceptably punish a player for losing in more ways than just prompting them to start over.
This is why I loved how Resident Evil 4 handled death. Anything other that being slashed/shot to death by basic grunt gave you a context-specific death animation that actually made dying a lot less frustrating. Classic examples: getting your face melted off by acid, getting a knife through the eye, getting your throat torn out, and of course basic decapitation. Also helped that it was fairly generous with the checkpoints around any instadeath situations.
The bulletproof riot zombies definitely appear in the Australian version, but they may not in the German version. The reason the Riot zombies don't count towards Crass Menagerie is definitely because of this.
The dismemberment achievement pops up if you make enough hits that would have dismembered or decapitated things.
Also, and really weirdly, fire doesn't show up on anything but the tank and the ground. So zombies run around waving their arms in the air like mad crackheads being attacked by bees.
Fuck.
This can't come soon enough.
Valve :^:
Personally I played on a pvp server where you could kill anyone at any level, but anyone within +/- 10 levels of you would lose exp on death. This made serious skill and tactics worthwhile in combat not to mention raised heartbeats and sweaty palms.
Best fun i've ever had in gaming is thanks to EQ's brutal experience curve and loss.
I deleveled a few times from mobs which sucks. But deleveling enemy players repeatedly is fucking awesome. Literally taking away months of someone else's life in some cases.
REALSPOILER.
It absolutely used the Z axis (I grew up with Y as left-right).
Games that require separate pieces of technology/software in order to run or do simple things like save your game. I'm looking at you Batman: Arkham Asylum!
Thing is, I run Linux and decided to check out the demo of the game off Steam, which ran perfectly with no fuss. Not only was it fun (in fact super awesome and ridiculously fun) but it was cheap so I bought it, only to discover that it requires Games For Windows Live to be running in the background in order to do the simple task of saving your damned game. Most other games seem to be able to accomplish this on their own, oh but not Batman!
And it just so happens that GFWL doesn't run yet under Linux.
Seriously, how many layers of crap do games really need? No wonder fewer people play PC games.
Jesus Christ, when you lose repeatedly because the boss has fucking twice the health than you do and regenerates health to boot, it's just asking for RAGE.
I just exit the game when I have to fight another stupidly overpowered boss when I can, but sometimes you have to beat the fucker to get a new ending/stage/character.
I'm looking at you, uh... almost every fucking game in the entire genre.
GFWL is not something I like. Maybe it is okay to force people who want to play multiplayer and so forth to log in to your shitty service all the time but I just want to play singleplayer! Why can't I do that without my computer talking to GFWL at all? I'm already logged into Steam, how many lame programs do we need? I was going to boycott GFWL games on principle but Batman is so good and so is Red Faction: Guerilla so my boycott isn't going very well.
Sometimes bosses are just unnecessary. Remember how Guitar Hero III had boss battles? Seriously, wtf?
No, it didn't. It just made me super pissed off when that jackhole decided to train another horde of orcs onto my ass for the fourth time that evening, now costing me a grand total of 8 hours of playtime worth of experience.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I think initially, when the game came out, if there was someone in the game with the censored version the riot cops wouldn't spawn. But I think they've changed it since, because I've been playing parish recently with players who do have the cut version (I have the full version myself) and the cops were there. Maybe they just look different in the australian version.
I have played the censored version before, and the thing that threw me off the most was how common didn't ignite (they still behaved like they were on fire though).
Yeah, some game designers just assume they MUST include tropes of game design, even if they aren't necessary and run counter to the rest of the game.
Fucking fighting game bosses, ugh. A few games get it alright, but most just throw in stupid unblockable or cheap moves, resulting in a frustrating battle that requires as much luck (if not more so) than skill. A good fighting game boss should take the skills you have built up through the game to that point and test them at a higher level, not throw in some arbitrary new bullshit.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
In comparison to prior MMORPG efforts, it's a faster paced game, but still very much an RPG. The only point at which it constitutes action is in terms of movement; an aspect that Blizzard has underplayed. Hello "stay out of the fire" mechanics.
In the end, World of Warcraft doesn't have much more action than, let's say, Secret of Mana for the SNES did.
Which brings me to my next pet peeve, by the way: WoW MMOs. The level of innovation in any MMORPG since 2004 has been negligible at best. Anything unique and interesting introduced to the genre has been simple enough that the juggernaut of the industry has been able to pick it up and implement it into their own game by the next major content patch. The problem is, that game still doesn't compare to any competently designed game of the genre in the past decade or so, outside of art assets(debatably) and interface.
While WoW is an excellent MMORPG, I'm sick of playing demos for new MMORPGs just to find out I'm just playing the same game I've played on and off for nearly 6 years. And i'm sick of having to use MMORPG as a qualifier; why can't it just be a good game? Why is there such a gap in quality between a multiplayer game and a massively multiplayer one? Looking at this year's offerings, if one of the following doesn't happen:
1) Guild Wars 2 lives up to at least half of the expectations its developers have given it
2) ToR teaches the rest of the industry how to deliver a good story in an MMO
3) Some other MMO (TERA Online, maybe?) introduces something new and exciting for fans of the genre to catch on to that doesn't involve an interface enhancement
Then I think I'll stick to non-MMORPGs for the next decade or so.
As mentioned, GTAIV/Red Dead Redemption does this beautifully, but of course they're using the amazing Euphoria engine. However other games that don't use it and make it pretty neat are for example Bad Company 2, death animations are there but once they start they're affected by ragdoll physics as well, so it's a really nice mix of shooting a dude in the head with a rifle and just see how his arms drop while he's still standing and slowly collapses face forward and then suddenly an explosion sends his body flying away.
Also gotta love when it glitches out and you shoot some dude with a pistol and for some reason his body goes flying 3 feet into the air.
It's better than the same deaths over and over. I don't give a shit if the guy falls back while getting shot in the front "realistically" It's still the same fucking animation. Also with those kind of deaths, I can't shotgun someone over a rail and watch them plummet to their death.
I love Euphoria, and wish more games used it. I'd also like it to be used in Multi. Shooting a guys gun out of his hand or shooting someone in the leg and have him limp? Awesome.
Left 4 Dead also does a good hybrid of ragdoll/animated death. Also watching the developer commentary in L4D1, they'll tell about how they had a guy do mocaps of dying and falling animations, and then have them be flexible, so if you're still shooting, it'll twitch, it'll interact with the environment, or just ragdoll if the death would be a quick one (headloss). It's a really good system as well. Better than the same animation happening leaving the body half-clipped into walls or floating over edges.