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I still end each failed puzzle attempt in video games by cackling evilly and mumbling "i'mgoingtohavetostartagain".
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Feb 11, 2021 00:00
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Feb 11, 2021 00:56
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christmas boots posted:I always save Ashley so that there are two Christians in space. I always kill whichever one is a possible romance option for the gender of Shepard I'm playing in ME1, just so the game is absolutely clear that I'm not interested in them. Then I kill the other one in 3 for being a dick in 2. And then I get pissed off that I can't have Jack in my team, or romance her as femshep.
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Feb 11, 2021 01:47
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moosecow333 posted:Box pushing puzzles too, actually most puzzles. Oh hey it's the reason I quit Vagrant Story early. :vv: Crowetron posted:The solution is obviously to make the puzzles dumb, too. Like this door lock has a black-and-white checkerboard pattern on it, so clearly I need to go find a ska band in a clock tower to unlock it. 
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Feb 11, 2021 02:15
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The worst kind of puzzle is one you know the solution to, but it's so arduous to complete because it's overly linear/ too-strictly-timed/ slow to reset. loving Tomb Raider.
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Feb 11, 2021 02:20
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Inspector Gesicht posted:The worst kind of puzzle is one you know the solution to, but it's so arduous to complete because it's overly linear/ too-strictly-timed/ slow to reset. That's how I feel about timed mechanics. I can see what I need to do but I'm terrible at things like parry, dodge, shinespark style things. The worst are any tutorials that demand I do a perfect guard before it'll let me move on. Just accept I won't and let me facetank the game. I'll adjust
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Feb 11, 2021 02:26
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Phigs posted:Mechanically rewarding morality systems just seem like a bad idea period because people will always game them some way. I like when they go the extra step and punish you too. Like in Infamous where if you went the evil route for the cooler power and red lightning civilians would throw rocks at you and attack you. Now, this sounds like nothing but let me tell you; those rocks? They had better tracking than any enemy attack, would instantly stun you out of any animation you were doing and those little bastards had powerful enough arms to bean you in the face from ground level even if you were standing on top of the tallest building in the city. I died more late-game because a random dude knocked me with a rock, sent me plummeting to the ground and every enemy just stood around shooting me the whole time than I did in any other capacity.
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Feb 11, 2021 02:28
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moosecow333 posted:Those puzzles always gently caress with me too. Yeah, I was enjoying Cross Code until I got to the first actual dungeon and it was all box pushing puzzles. Ugh.
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Feb 11, 2021 03:19
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moosecow333 posted:Those puzzles always gently caress with me too. Yeah, I was enjoying Cross Code until I got to the first actual dungeon and it was all box pushing puzzles. Ugh.
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Feb 11, 2021 03:24
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Thinking about it more there was that timed sliding puzzle in the first Onimusha that can gently caress right off. And literally any dungeon in Tales of Symphonia. Really stupid puzzles that also took a long time to complete even if you knew what to do.
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Feb 11, 2021 04:23
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moosecow333 posted:Thinking about it more there was that timed sliding puzzle in the first Onimusha that can gently caress right off. That Onimusha puzzle was the worst Capcom puzzle until Onimusha 3 beat it with a timed Simon Says puzzle, including the same instant game over if you fail. Don't taunt me with a potential RE-el Big Fish.
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Feb 11, 2021 05:29
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Mr X already has the pork pie hat
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Feb 11, 2021 09:05
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Bogmonster posted:Mr X already has the pork pie hat He actually does not, as the first thing I always do when I replay re2make is shoot it right off his head. Don't worry, this makes him walk faster and probably also angrier so I am punished appropriately for my behavior. Edit: but he does stop skanking around everywhere when you do it so imo it's worth it to make him cut that out it's so lame
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Feb 11, 2021 15:11
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Inspector Gesicht posted:The worst kind of puzzle is one you know the solution to, but it's so arduous to complete because it's overly linear/ too-strictly-timed/ slow to reset. That's how I felt the entire time I played Last Guardian. I'd look around the room, figure out the puzzle, then spend half an hour trying to get Trico to do what he's supposed to do.
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Feb 11, 2021 15:55
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Anything in Fur Fighters: Viggo's Revenge where you have to control any sort of vehicle is totally abominable, which is a shame because the rest of the game is quite fun.
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Feb 11, 2021 15:59
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Alignment works fine in stuff like Forgotten Realms where, like, the gods provably exist and explicitly told everyone which actions are good and which are evil and while they're generally not interested in debate, they might explain their rationale if you're devout or annoying enough. Ironically, D&D has generally moved away from alignment based stuff and it's a nearly-vestigial leftover that barely interacts with any of the other game systems anymore. Also Star Wars for The Force, which is its own thing that has its own rules and doesn't really bend for mortal notions of ethics or nuance, which is why the grey jedi get reinvented for new comic/book series.
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Feb 11, 2021 19:36
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I like the Witcher games where sometimes something that seems like the humane or sensible choice might be worse than the bad choice. Also, at least in the first one and a bit in the third, consequences aren't always immediately apparent. Sometimes not becoming clear until hours later. Which means you can't just quickload if it turns out that that seemingly benign spirit you just freed is actually Fantasy Hitler Satan. Like in the first one where a choice about whether to allow some Elf/Dwarf guerrillas to loot an arms shipment results in a character you need to talk to an hour+ later getting murdered by them with those weapons meaning you need to do a bunch more legwork to get the info that character had.
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Feb 11, 2021 20:24
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FreudianSlippers posted:I like the Witcher games where sometimes something that seems like the humane or sensible choice might be worse than the bad choice. I can't stand that kind of thing. It's like the writer just wanted to be able to say "haha, gotcha sucker!" Just tedious as hell. It's like the writing equivalent of trap options when building a character.
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Feb 11, 2021 20:42
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As much of a cop out as it may seem to say this, that's just kinda how life is sometimes so I don't blame a story for incorporating it. Geralt's a magicky wight lookin and most importantly worldly-conscious and knowledgeable guy sure but he is just a guy, he's not omnipotent (that's Dandelion's job). Video games often shy away from cracking the ol' "you can do everything right and still lose" chestnut because they're 'supposed' to be about feeling a sense of accomplishment for accomplishing tasks and solving quandaries you reasonably couldn't do in real life, and sometimes mirroring tasks you can do in a timely and accurate manner. Well, most other genres of fiction are perfectly capable of incorporating unintended consequences of morally just actions, and I found it really interesting that CDPR has never felt pigeonholed by the need to have the player actively make that occur in some way. edit: Freeing the spirit from the tree seems like a pretty harsh gotcha once you get the log update after finishing the quest, especially given that you're pretty much told outright it's the right thing to do, but I'm pretty sure that quest was designed specifically to spur this kind of discussion to happen. There IS technically a solution where you free the spirit and everyone lives but it requires doing the quest without ever speaking to the ealdorman iirc, and you have to complete the quest before the main plot sends you there. You essentially have to sequence break to get an ending that doesn't result in some unintended consequence, meta-game it, look it up even unless you're exploring pretty thoroughly and follow the heartbeat under the hill or whathaveyou just by chance. People speculate it's unintentional due to a dialogue plot hole later but the game got several patches and they never fixed it, so... who knows. But I think it's a fascinating thought experiment because you cannot do NOTHING, you have to either free the spirit or kill it at some point during the game no matter what. You cannot complete The Witcher 3 without finishing the Whispering Hillock quest. It's like CDPR is the dealer and they're forcing a bad hand on you. But the REASON it is so fascinating to me is because it makes sense that there wouldn't be consequences if you did it as a side quest and not a main quest. The best outcome (aside from the village getting wrecked) naturally occurs because you put nothing on the line when you came to visit the tree. If you don't speak to the Eealdorman, Geralt doesn't know why it's actually there but you can still make a decision based on what it tells you alone. He has no personal stake in it as he hasn't spoken to the Crones yet, and thus he is basically free to do whatever he wants. For him, and for you, any decision is the correct one because it's just another entry in your journal of many adventures. But once it's a main quest, I bet you care a little more about what happens when you do something you now HAVE to do no matter what you choose, eh? Personally I feel that the pressure of being forced to choose makes a person more conscious of their choice, and CDPR knows that, and thus the quest has a "better" ending when Geralt is acting as a free agent. Or it could just be a bug because all three 'good' endings for the quest happen and two of them kinda sorta conflict. But I think analyzing it is more fun. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 21:26 on Feb 11, 2021 |
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Feb 11, 2021 21:04
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Triarii posted:I can't stand that kind of thing. It's like the writer just wanted to be able to say "haha, gotcha sucker!" Just tedious as hell. It's like the writing equivalent of trap options when building a character. It really varies across the games and the quests. If I'm remembering rightly the murdered-by-terrorists bit ends with an artsy flashback and Geralt brooding over how choices can have unforeseen consequences and it's excrutiatingly on the nose. But then there are other moments (like a lynch mob coming for a Prince who a) probably has it coming but b)didn't do the thing they think he did. Or the entirety of the Bloody Baron quest in 3) where it's clear that your actions are going to have some significance, but its unclear precisely how and you just have to do what seems best in the moment and live with the consequences. When it works, it owns. When it doesn't, it's as tedious as you're thinking.
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Feb 11, 2021 21:14
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If you want to tell a story about someone who is forced to do bad things, or who tries to do good things but they have bad consequences, then that's fine and good; tell me that story. But if you pretend to give me a choice to do a good thing and then turn around and say "Surprise! The thing was actually bad!" then that's just juvenile and makes me cease to care about further "decisions" in the game because I'm going to assume that you're just looking to pull a fast one and have the opposite happen of what I intended.
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Feb 11, 2021 21:35
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Well yeah but you're not being forced to do bad things, was my point. You are forced to make a decision but that doesn't mean you made a bad call or even that you made the wrong one looking back in hindsight with all the context. If you do it as a side quest there's no way for you to know what will happen, as it should be. If you do it as a main quest you're a LITTLE more informed but it'd be silly for the game to drop an obligatory "by the way, here's what I plan to do after". That's Mass Effect poo poo. The Witcher is an actually good game. edit: Before I draw aggro like it's an MMO or something I will say I'm mostly joking about Mass Effect, but once you notice just how often mean characters kindly inform you on what they plan on doing should you let em live, your plot kill count probably makes a little more sense if you're playing paragon and are confused as to why renegade is about as violent. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 21:40 on Feb 11, 2021 |
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Feb 11, 2021 21:37
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Triarii posted:If you want to tell a story about someone who is forced to do bad things, or who tries to do good things but they have bad consequences, then that's fine and good; tell me that story. But if you pretend to give me a choice to do a good thing and then turn around and say "Surprise! The thing was actually bad!" then that's just juvenile and makes me cease to care about further "decisions" in the game because I'm going to assume that you're just looking to pull a fast one and have the opposite happen of what I intended. It's just more Game of Thrones-esque 'The world is poo poo and is always going to be poo poo, now go do a quest with sex slaves that we were totally not beating off to while the dialogue talks about how awful this thing is, enjoy your tits and degraded, brutalized women. HARD MEN HARD CHOICES.' It's childish, nothing more.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:23
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The worst thing in any third or first person shooter is trying to pick up a health thing and knowing it's somewhere at your feet but you just keep missing it and circling it uselessly as the enemy kills you.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:26
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Triarii posted:I can't stand that kind of thing. It's like the writer just wanted to be able to say "haha, gotcha sucker!" Just tedious as hell. It's like the writing equivalent of trap options when building a character. It works for Witcher because it's more about the world than the developer just making GBS threads on the player. It doesn't feel like "surprise motherfucker" as much as it's like "yeah that's just how things are around here sometimes".
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Feb 11, 2021 22:32
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They don’t think it be like it is but it do
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Feb 11, 2021 22:35
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Making apparently 'good' decisions and the consequences turning out to be unexpectedly negative for reasons you couldn't foresee is a fundamental part of being a human being, so yeah, games should feature them.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:43
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Like when you correctly choose to save Zoe in Resident Evil 7 and are then canonically locked out of playing her rad DLC forever
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Feb 11, 2021 22:45
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Making it so there are no good decisions, or even worse that doing an objectively bad thing leads to some kind of greater good, is just a child's idea of what being mature is like. Why would I ever play a game where I can't make things better for the world and everyone's lives?
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Feb 11, 2021 22:45
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Cythereal posted:It's just more Game of Thrones-esque 'The world is poo poo and is always going to be poo poo, now go do a quest with sex slaves that we were totally not beating off to while the dialogue talks about how awful this thing is, enjoy your tits and degraded, brutalized women. HARD MEN HARD CHOICES.' Cythereal posted:Making it so there are no good decisions, or even worse that doing an objectively bad thing leads to some kind of greater good, is just a child's idea of what being mature is like. I have never seen someone reveal they have no ability to assess fictional media harder than these two posts.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:48
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Cythereal posted:Why would I ever play a game where I can't make things better for the world and everyone's lives? Because you're not eight years old?
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Feb 11, 2021 22:49
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CJacobs posted:I have never seen someone reveal they have no ability to assess fictional media harder than these two posts. Necrothatcher posted:Because you're not eight years old? Cool. My power fantasy is helping people and making the world a better place.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:50
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Think there're two conversations going on here. On one end you have 'Sometimes you make a decision in a game and it doesn't work out in the long run. You shrug and move on from that, it'd be called the butterfly effect in a time travelling setting' And on the other one is taking it like you save someone's life but then they die in a cutscene immediately after or get killed off screen, which would be very bad.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:57
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CJacobs posted:I have never seen someone reveal they have no ability to assess fictional media harder than these two posts. The Witcher games do have a lot of moments where everything is miserable and grim for no reason, so they're not wildly off the mark with those complaints. I would argue with the "Hard men, hard choices" bit, because its basically an excuse for cruelty, and that's the kind of moral weasling that the games and books come down pretty hard on. It's the Vernon Roche approach, and whilst he's affable and cool, he's a loving monster. They're quite clear that you should own your decisions, and stuff like "oh i had no choice" is absolute cowardice. W2 is I think the only one of the three games to have a coherent moral vision - you can't save everybody, you can't fix the world. But you can save some people, you can fix something. And even if it doesn't work out, you weren't wrong to try.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:58
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Necrothatcher posted:Making apparently 'good' decisions and the consequences turning out to be unexpectedly negative for reasons you couldn't foresee is a fundamental part of being a human being, so yeah, games should feature them. Aside from the general sentiment of "games should be more fun than real life, not just as lovely as it" it also comes off as more mean-spirited when a game does this sort of thing. Like, if a person in the real world saved Hitler's life when he was 4 years old, then they shouldn't feel too bad about that because it's pretty universally agreed that saving a child's life is a good thing to do. But if I'm playing an RPG and I make the choice to save a boy from a pack of wolves, and then later in the game that boy grows up to become Fantasy Hitler and kills millions of people, then it's like the game is trying to frame it as my fault and make me feel like a bad person just for the sake of some kind of storytelling gotcha. The events of the story didn't just happen; the writers chose to have them happen to make a point. Also, when a game goes heavy on your choices having unintended consequences, it tends to make me stop caring about my choices. If the consequences of my actions are disconnected from the actions themselves, then why should I carefully consider those actions? Why should I think hard about any decision when some random poo poo is going to come out of left field and turn the outcome on its head?
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Feb 11, 2021 23:19
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Triarii posted:Aside from the general sentiment of "games should be more fun than real life, not just as lovely as it" it also comes off as more mean-spirited when a game does this sort of thing. Like, if a person in the real world saved Hitler's life when he was 4 years old, then they shouldn't feel too bad about that because it's pretty universally agreed that saving a child's life is a good thing to do. But if I'm playing an RPG and I make the choice to save a boy from a pack of wolves, and then later in the game that boy grows up to become Fantasy Hitler and kills millions of people, then it's like the game is trying to frame it as my fault and make me feel like a bad person just for the sake of some kind of storytelling gotcha. The events of the story didn't just happen; the writers chose to have them happen to make a point. The vast majority of video games cater to providing that power fantasy. There's easily room for a small minority of titles that reflect morality and reality as it is rather than how people wish it was.
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Feb 11, 2021 23:22
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gently caress physics puzzles that allow too much randomness. I'm sitting in a puzzle area in Fenyx Rising where there's a giant metal ball constantly being blown around a path, the idea is that you have to press a button at the right time to launch it into the air at the right time to land in a target. I'm over two dozen tries in and it has never quite made it, I even looked up the solution to see if I'm missing something but nope, there's just too much variance in exactly how the ball rolls over the launch point for me to get it right 
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Feb 12, 2021 02:47
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Assistant Manager Devil posted:gently caress physics puzzles that allow too much randomness. I'm sitting in a puzzle area in Fenyx Rising where there's a giant metal ball constantly being blown around a path, the idea is that you have to press a button at the right time to launch it into the air at the right time to land in a target. I'm over two dozen tries in and it has never quite made it, I even looked up the solution to see if I'm missing something but nope, there's just too much variance in exactly how the ball rolls over the launch point for me to get it right Honestly any kind of randomness in a puzzle tends to drive me nuts. A great example of this would be JRPGs with puzzle-style challenges like "beat these specific enemies in X number of turns" but also don't like, account for things like status effects and random crits. Dragon Quest XI was kind of bad about this because there's a big side quest that is literally just that, but half the time one of the enemy groups is just something that moves fast and inflicts status effects. But not 100% of the time. So it's not like it's a situation where you have to be specifically prepared to beat it. It's just a random gently caress you, you don't win this time I guess. Likewise sometimes the enemies might get to go first and just crit every attack on their turns and welp, guess you lose that time too. If you're going to turn an encounter into a more puzzle-like structure, it feels cheap to just include elements like that.
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Feb 12, 2021 04:32
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Assistant Manager Devil posted:gently caress physics puzzles that allow too much randomness. I'm sitting in a puzzle area in Fenyx Rising where there's a giant metal ball constantly being blown around a path, the idea is that you have to press a button at the right time to launch it into the air at the right time to land in a target. I'm over two dozen tries in and it has never quite made it, I even looked up the solution to see if I'm missing something but nope, there's just too much variance in exactly how the ball rolls over the launch point for me to get it right That's the one that made me stop playing Immortals for, at time of writing, a month. gently caress that
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Feb 12, 2021 05:40
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bony tony posted:That's the one that made me stop playing Immortals for, at time of writing, a month. gently caress that Good news, I got it in another dozen-ish tries, so it was only doing a puzzle I knew how to solve approximately forty times 
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Feb 12, 2021 05:47
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