@Reemax: "It feels pretty stupid if you have played previous Elder scroll with both climbing skill and levitate spells." Agreed, though I suppose there's always going to be breaks in verisimilitude in any game. For some reason I feel like this is something more than that, though. I can't quite put my finger on it. I guess if I trudged through dangerous and circuitous terrain over 40 miles to get to a restaurant that I liked, only to find that my route home was only 2 miles because of some one-way street... I would feel more cheated by the journey there than happy about the convenience of the return trip.
@Minus Dungon Games: "The Nords have still not invented the ladder. And the Dwemer created vast underground cities with steampunk tech but never invented the ladder either." I LOL'd!
@WithinAmnesia: I do agree there still is femenine-excluding tendency in game design, though it is certainly trending in the right direction. It is far less so than it used to be back when I first got into games (1980's). Even then, there was never a lack of female representation among the protagonists. Samus Aran of Metroid, Rydia of FF4. Celes, Terra, and Relm of FF6. Princess Peach Toadstool made a poor rolemodel, but so does Kratos now-a-days.
@Buttons: That is still an oversimplification of the core gameplay of Skyrim, but I do see your point. However, if you were to follow those instructions to create a skyrim clone with all those quests, all those interactive skills, and the (for the most part) moderately interesting dialogue, I would still love playing such a game (even with the hilarious built-in crash randomizer). Even if it were a text-based adventure in it's new form. Why is that? As much as I may agree with your assessment of Skyrim's primitive construction, why is it still fun to play? I guess you couldn't answer why I enjoy it if you do not. If you know of some games you think are like skyrim but less well marketed, let me know and I'll give them a try. I'm willing to bet I could either tell you why they fall short of the good things skyrim did, or I would enjoy those games at least as much. :)
EDIT: note that I am not a Skyrim Fangirl. I do think it has some major problems, both in design and construction. It is far from the best RPG I've played, I'm just saying I still enjoy playing it despite that.
RE: item tiers and player's skipping content - That is a robust answer. Thanks!
RE: pandering & contrived - ah, pandering to sexualized content. Yes, ok... however, you lost me about halfway through the paragraph here. What does the historical rape and torture have to do with pandering or "contrived worlds"?
EDIT RE: Audio Juice - Ah, got it. Yes, I agree with those assessments.
EDIT RE: Mount & blade - Indeed, a video is worth ~1,000,000 words. That certainly shows some fantastic combat. However, I am unable to feel the controls or tactics involved just from the video. Based on appearances alone, the technical aspects of combat in M&B is approximated by the combat in, say, Skyrim. I know that it isn't, but I still can't tell what sets M&B's combat apart from Skyrim's or The Witcher... Unless the answer is "massive battles involving tons of characters". Certainly impressive, but I'm still only playing one of those characters, right? If M&B always involves commanding armies of characters, then the combat is more like an RTS than an RPG, yes?
RE: rare to see women playing RPGs - I have to disagree on this one. More than a third of all players are women, specifically for High Fantasy MMOs like WoW? Yes that is a disparity to the male players, but hardly 'rare', and certainly not "incredibly so". It is actually a reverse disparity when looking at the subgenre we were originally talking about: the family/farming simulator (like Stardew Valley) player base is nearly seventy percent women. I guess I'm not much of an outlier after all. :P
Thank you for providing the detailed content. I am very much enjoying this discussion. :)
I totally agree with the end-of-dungeon loop conflict you have. They say it's "good game design" to not force the player to retraverse territory they've already gone over. I get it, but at the same time, it... destroys someting about the dungeon. It feels less forboding, less dangerous, when you can just hop down from the vault room and pop out to safety. Was that treasure vault really that secure all these centuries if any smuck with a ladder could have come in through the exit and avoided all the restless undead hellbent on keeping their sacred treasure safe?
I understand your feelings about abused work. We have resources we can provide (like making DMCA's really easy) and helping to report your work whenever we find it being abused. Though, I am happy to hear you feel the sharing of these assets is more important.
In light of that, would you be willing to remove or alter the 'no resale' stipulation from the submission above? As it is now, I cannot remove the "licensing issue" lock because it conflicts with CC-BY-SA's "no additional restrictions" clause.
Consolidating is good. However, removing content that others have already referenced in their projects makes it very difficult for them to find the new version. In the future, you should not make a new submission and delete the old one, you should edit the submission to include new content. If it is consolidated from multiple submissions, you should leave a note on the old content and a link to the new versions without removing the old version so people who already started using the older content can still find the new versions.
@WithinAmnesia: Oh, nice. Yes I agree with most of these points you've made.
Deep progression of player character via item tiers and different difficulty levels where a player can choose to skip content in areas to progress other areas deeply.
Interesting. I haven't played WoW myself, but I've looked into it some. How do item teirs facilitate a player's ability to skip content and/or progress to other areas?
yet it does not feel too childish nor pandering to a wider audience, yet contrived lack of mature themes... a mostly non-contrived world.
I don't disagree, but I'm not clear on how this stacks up to other games. What are some games that do pander or feel childish? What are contrived lack of mature themes? All fictional worlds are "contrived", but that's clearly not what is meant here. What are some examples of "contrived worlds" as a counterpoint?
What is "audio 'juice'" is that a specific type of music compilation?
What I like about the original Old School RuneScape [is] the deep progression system
Eh, I felt like the way OSRS did skill leveling was the worst part of the game. Don't get me wrong, I love OSRS, but I feel like skills that level up based on the usage of that skill promote very degenerate gameplay. Same for most of the Elder Scrolls games. I mean, baking a lot to improve baking skill is realistic, it just isn't very fun to me. I end up fishing for tons of shrimp that I never use, because the amount of shrimp I need to fish in order to level up vastly outstrips the amount of shrimp I would ever consume for the purpose of healing or nourishment... which is arguably the purpose of shrimp in OSRS. You always see rows upon rows of campfires as players grind to level up firestarting. They don't use all those fires, it's just metagaming to level up. I far prefer the games that give experience points for a variety of activities, but which skills you apply that XP to is up to the player, it's not determined by how they aquired the XP.
[regarding] Everquest... Want a map? Get wrecked go make one
Haha! There is something to be said for a gameplay experience that expects you to keep IRL notes. The old Dragon Quest games were like that, too; you'd get critical clues to the location of hidden treasure, but unless you have infallable recall, you need to write them down in order to put them all together later. It really enhances the feeling of discovery when the game refuses to do the discovering for you. On the other hand, it is easy to take that too far, which feels like the game is just missing features. What's wrong with an in-game journal? If I have to go hunt for a game wiki (entirely separate from- and not endorsed by- the game itself) just to find out the bare minimum info about an in-game item like "what is this" or "how do I use it", I'm going to be more annoyed that delighted. The game Don't Starve is guilty of this; the in-game item descriptions are punny, but useless. Googling the item just to discover it's basic function will inevitably lead you to spoilers as well. Ugh!
...The game is hard, slow and makes the thin butter spread of content go A lonnnng way, you get some player power you really feel like you earned it.
...Or you feel like the game is wasting your time to artificially inflate its playtime. I like games with lots of content, but EverQuest (and basically any pay-to-win game) is guilty of making some things unecessarily time-consuming without any real improvement to enjoyment, IMHO. Again, I love EverQuest and I agree with these points for the most part. I'm just pointing out the parts I think could use some enhancement.
"Mount and Blade Warband and Bannerlord: The combat is the best I have ever played in an R.P.G."
Why? I mean, I'm sure it is, but what makes it better than others? What is it about the combat that makes it great?
RE: Farming RPGs - "Women player base is quite substantial; that is rare in most R.P.G.s"
Is it rare? Hmm... RPGs as a genre in general have more women players than any other, it seems. Except may be puzzle games(?). Perhaps that's just my own bias talking; I love RPGs. A lot. Though I am also an engineer, so maybe I'm an outlier. The gender disparity among engineers is huge. That being said, I adore Stardew Valley. The relationships in Stardew Valley are fairly simple, but also plenty to explore with them. That's something I haven't seen done as well in any other game.
@Reemax:
I hate quest like Skyrim and Oblivions where you have one single way to do the quest and it is usually killing somebody and getting item from them.
Weird... I always felt like Skyrim and Oblivion actually fixed this exact problem with traditional RPG quests. Admittedly, there are plenty of quests in those games with only one solution (I frigging hate the House Of Horrors quest for this!), but a huge number of them have multiple routes to a solution. In fact, the example you listed is used several times in both games: Instead of killing the target (the obvious solution) you can instead pick his pocket, or persuade him to just give you the McGuffin. I didn't realize these options were available (they're not listed or hinted at in most of the quest descriptions, so perhaps that is the bigger issue) and only discovered them on subsequent playthroughs when my other skills were sufficient; if you don't have enough skill in speechcraft, pickpocket, or telekinesis, the failure of those attempts seem like there just isn't an alternative solution.
I was especially delighted with one particular quest involving a vampire; Instead of killing him openly, I reverse-picked his pocket and left garlic in it. He immediately got sick and suspicious and ran off yelling.
@Minus Dungeon Games:
"I hated turn based RPGs like the old Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior/Quest games... without other people it falls flat IMO."
Interesting. I feel the opposite about this; other players make turnbased rpgs incredibly slow. When it's just me deciding what my fellas are going to do, I take my action, then the computer acts for the monsters nigh-instantly. With other people, you have to wait for that rules-lawyer at the table to look up the AoE on Fireball for the 4th time this encounter before he decides what he wants to do. I do love me some D&D, though. :P
They have. :)
Amazing! Thanks for sharing this!
@Reemax: "It feels pretty stupid if you have played previous Elder scroll with both climbing skill and levitate spells." Agreed, though I suppose there's always going to be breaks in verisimilitude in any game. For some reason I feel like this is something more than that, though. I can't quite put my finger on it. I guess if I trudged through dangerous and circuitous terrain over 40 miles to get to a restaurant that I liked, only to find that my route home was only 2 miles because of some one-way street... I would feel more cheated by the journey there than happy about the convenience of the return trip.
@Minus Dungon Games: "The Nords have still not invented the ladder. And the Dwemer created vast underground cities with steampunk tech but never invented the ladder either." I LOL'd!
@WithinAmnesia: I do agree there still is femenine-excluding tendency in game design, though it is certainly trending in the right direction. It is far less so than it used to be back when I first got into games (1980's). Even then, there was never a lack of female representation among the protagonists. Samus Aran of Metroid, Rydia of FF4. Celes, Terra, and Relm of FF6. Princess Peach Toadstool made a poor rolemodel, but so does Kratos now-a-days.
@Buttons: That is still an oversimplification of the core gameplay of Skyrim, but I do see your point. However, if you were to follow those instructions to create a skyrim clone with all those quests, all those interactive skills, and the (for the most part) moderately interesting dialogue, I would still love playing such a game (even with the hilarious built-in crash randomizer). Even if it were a text-based adventure in it's new form. Why is that? As much as I may agree with your assessment of Skyrim's primitive construction, why is it still fun to play? I guess you couldn't answer why I enjoy it if you do not. If you know of some games you think are like skyrim but less well marketed, let me know and I'll give them a try. I'm willing to bet I could either tell you why they fall short of the good things skyrim did, or I would enjoy those games at least as much. :)
EDIT: note that I am not a Skyrim Fangirl. I do think it has some major problems, both in design and construction. It is far from the best RPG I've played, I'm just saying I still enjoy playing it despite that.
Thank you for providing the detailed content. I am very much enjoying this discussion. :)
Nice.
These should be in the texture category, not 2D
I totally agree with the end-of-dungeon loop conflict you have. They say it's "good game design" to not force the player to retraverse territory they've already gone over. I get it, but at the same time, it... destroys someting about the dungeon. It feels less forboding, less dangerous, when you can just hop down from the vault room and pop out to safety. Was that treasure vault really that secure all these centuries if any smuck with a ladder could have come in through the exit and avoided all the restless undead hellbent on keeping their sacred treasure safe?
I understand your feelings about abused work. We have resources we can provide (like making DMCA's really easy) and helping to report your work whenever we find it being abused. Though, I am happy to hear you feel the sharing of these assets is more important.
In light of that, would you be willing to remove or alter the 'no resale' stipulation from the submission above? As it is now, I cannot remove the "licensing issue" lock because it conflicts with CC-BY-SA's "no additional restrictions" clause.EDIT: Fixed, thanks! :)
Consolidating is good. However, removing content that others have already referenced in their projects makes it very difficult for them to find the new version. In the future, you should not make a new submission and delete the old one, you should edit the submission to include new content. If it is consolidated from multiple submissions, you should leave a note on the old content and a link to the new versions without removing the old version so people who already started using the older content can still find the new versions.
@WithinAmnesia: Oh, nice. Yes I agree with most of these points you've made.
Interesting. I haven't played WoW myself, but I've looked into it some. How do item teirs facilitate a player's ability to skip content and/or progress to other areas?
I don't disagree, but I'm not clear on how this stacks up to other games. What are some games that do pander or feel childish? What are contrived lack of mature themes? All fictional worlds are "contrived", but that's clearly not what is meant here. What are some examples of "contrived worlds" as a counterpoint?
What is "audio 'juice'" is that a specific type of music compilation?
Eh, I felt like the way OSRS did skill leveling was the worst part of the game. Don't get me wrong, I love OSRS, but I feel like skills that level up based on the usage of that skill promote very degenerate gameplay. Same for most of the Elder Scrolls games. I mean, baking a lot to improve baking skill is realistic, it just isn't very fun to me. I end up fishing for tons of shrimp that I never use, because the amount of shrimp I need to fish in order to level up vastly outstrips the amount of shrimp I would ever consume for the purpose of healing or nourishment... which is arguably the purpose of shrimp in OSRS. You always see rows upon rows of campfires as players grind to level up firestarting. They don't use all those fires, it's just metagaming to level up. I far prefer the games that give experience points for a variety of activities, but which skills you apply that XP to is up to the player, it's not determined by how they aquired the XP.
Haha! There is something to be said for a gameplay experience that expects you to keep IRL notes. The old Dragon Quest games were like that, too; you'd get critical clues to the location of hidden treasure, but unless you have infallable recall, you need to write them down in order to put them all together later. It really enhances the feeling of discovery when the game refuses to do the discovering for you. On the other hand, it is easy to take that too far, which feels like the game is just missing features. What's wrong with an in-game journal? If I have to go hunt for a game wiki (entirely separate from- and not endorsed by- the game itself) just to find out the bare minimum info about an in-game item like "what is this" or "how do I use it", I'm going to be more annoyed that delighted. The game Don't Starve is guilty of this; the in-game item descriptions are punny, but useless. Googling the item just to discover it's basic function will inevitably lead you to spoilers as well. Ugh!
...Or you feel like the game is wasting your time to artificially inflate its playtime. I like games with lots of content, but EverQuest (and basically any pay-to-win game) is guilty of making some things unecessarily time-consuming without any real improvement to enjoyment, IMHO. Again, I love EverQuest and I agree with these points for the most part. I'm just pointing out the parts I think could use some enhancement.
Why? I mean, I'm sure it is, but what makes it better than others? What is it about the combat that makes it great?
Is it rare? Hmm... RPGs as a genre in general have more women players than any other, it seems. Except may be puzzle games(?). Perhaps that's just my own bias talking; I love RPGs. A lot. Though I am also an engineer, so maybe I'm an outlier. The gender disparity among engineers is huge. That being said, I adore Stardew Valley. The relationships in Stardew Valley are fairly simple, but also plenty to explore with them. That's something I haven't seen done as well in any other game.
@Reemax:
Weird... I always felt like Skyrim and Oblivion actually fixed this exact problem with traditional RPG quests. Admittedly, there are plenty of quests in those games with only one solution (I frigging hate the House Of Horrors quest for this!), but a huge number of them have multiple routes to a solution. In fact, the example you listed is used several times in both games: Instead of killing the target (the obvious solution) you can instead pick his pocket, or persuade him to just give you the McGuffin. I didn't realize these options were available (they're not listed or hinted at in most of the quest descriptions, so perhaps that is the bigger issue) and only discovered them on subsequent playthroughs when my other skills were sufficient; if you don't have enough skill in speechcraft, pickpocket, or telekinesis, the failure of those attempts seem like there just isn't an alternative solution.
I was especially delighted with one particular quest involving a vampire; Instead of killing him openly, I reverse-picked his pocket and left garlic in it. He immediately got sick and suspicious and ran off yelling.
@Minus Dungeon Games:
Interesting. I feel the opposite about this; other players make turnbased rpgs incredibly slow. When it's just me deciding what my fellas are going to do, I take my action, then the computer acts for the monsters nigh-instantly. With other people, you have to wait for that rules-lawyer at the table to look up the AoE on Fireball for the 4th time this encounter before he decides what he wants to do. I do love me some D&D, though. :P
Cool,
but these aren't really textures. They should be in the 2d category.EDIT: Fixed, thanks! :)
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