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Phigs posted:This one is necessary or you could just stealth a thief/invis a wizard/run a tough fighter to the exit. it winds up being busywork most of the time though, just to prevent the player from using rpg poo poo to break the rpg. in a single player rpg who cares? you're missing loot and XP as usual. they could also add some code and let you off the hook most of the time when the map is clear or you're just in town shopping or whatever but this kind of QoL stuff doesn't always happen poverty goat fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 11:54
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Caesar Saladin posted:I'm not sure if the combat in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 was any good at all because I was 13 when I played them, but the presentation of 2 in particular is incredible even by today's standards. Jon Irenicus has some of the best voice acting ever the backgrounds were beautiful and the ambient noises that they played in the city were amazing. The combat in Baldurs gate 2 is a perfect simulation of combat in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That is you are supposed to abuse spells and magic items and terrain to make every combat unfair and kill your enemies in one round. Because otherwise they are gonna fireball you or poison you for instant death or whatever. Using this system for an actual tactical game would be a mistake. It's an ambush simulator
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Mar 20, 2022 12:20
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Rutibex posted:The combat in Baldurs gate 2 is a perfect simulation of combat in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That is you are supposed to abuse spells and magic items and terrain to make every combat unfair and kill your enemies in one round. Because otherwise they are gonna fireball you or poison you for instant death or whatever. Imo they should bring back level drain as an enemy skill as the ultimate troll move. Bonus points if there are rare enemies that inflict perma level drain.
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Mar 20, 2022 12:57
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Archer666 posted:Elden Ring? Heh, I'm sorry but have you tried...Dragons Dogma? Yeah it whips rear end too
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Mar 20, 2022 16:42
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poverty goat posted:it winds up being busywork most of the time though, just to prevent the player from using rpg poo poo to break the rpg. in a single player rpg who cares? you're missing loot and XP as usual. they could also add some code and let you off the hook most of the time when the map is clear or you're just in town shopping or whatever but this kind of QoL stuff doesn't always happen If the act of exploring a dungeon is too much, don't play games where you have to do it?
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Mar 20, 2022 16:51
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Nah that's a good point, I'm the one who asked the question but I'd totally blocked out about having to gather your party before venturing forth. The UI was old and Infinity engine combat is comically unsatisfying, but at least Tyranny had an excellent premise/shtick/hook to drag me in. I tried to play Pillars of Eternity 2 afterwards and uninstalled the second the combat tutorial on the ship started; Wait a minute I hate these games why am I doing this?
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Mar 20, 2022 17:03
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The fast travel system in Elden Ring serves the game well, but it could be so much better. The game has a seamless, open world, so why have the fast travel simply load you into your destination? Make it so you get on a magic bird or something that flies you to where you want to go, allowing you to view the terrain pass by underneath. Making travel into a loading screen makes it a lot harder for my brain to square away where places are in relation to everything else, and instead makes the various locations feel more like traditional isolated levels in a game. Ironically, this is something that WoW, of all things, got right.
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Mar 20, 2022 17:10
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Devils Affricate posted:The fast travel system in Elden Ring serves the game well, but it could be so much better. The game has a seamless, open world, so why have the fast travel simply load you into your destination? Make it so you get on a magic bird or something that flies you to where you want to go, allowing you to view the terrain pass by underneath. Making travel into a loading screen makes it a lot harder for my brain to square away where places are in relation to everything else, and instead makes the various locations feel more like traditional isolated levels in a game. Ironically, this is something that WoW, of all things, got right. I think live-traveling is excellent for games to introduce players to a new area/highlight destinations in a specific area, but I'll be damned if another game forces me to spend 15 minutes flying down the barrens every time I get a quest there. Respecting player time is one of the best QoLs modern gaming has focused on.
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Mar 20, 2022 17:24
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Tetrabor posted:I think live-traveling is excellent for games to introduce players to a new area/highlight destinations in a specific area, but I'll be damned if another game forces me to spend 15 minutes flying down the barrens every time I get a quest there. WoW didn't get it perfect, just saying they had the right idea. The travel speed/acceleration can obviously be adjusted. In ER I imagine these flights would take about 10 - 15 seconds, similar to the loading time we face currently.
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Mar 20, 2022 18:02
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Devils Affricate posted:The fast travel system in Elden Ring serves the game well, but it could be so much better. The game has a seamless, open world, so why have the fast travel simply load you into your destination? Make it so you get on a magic bird or something that flies you to where you want to go, allowing you to view the terrain pass by underneath. Making travel into a loading screen makes it a lot harder for my brain to square away where places are in relation to everything else, and instead makes the various locations feel more like traditional isolated levels in a game. Ironically, this is something that WoW, of all things, got right. The reason companies don't do that is it has less value than adding loading tips of varying quality (I do not know or really care if Elden Ring does this). Okay some companies do that and those are games that just happen to have a bunch of elevators. Gee why are their so many elevators, this sure is immersive! edit: Oh and effort. WOW did it because it wasted a gently caress ton of the players time which is important for an MMORPG. Duck and Cover fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 18:12
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Devils Affricate posted:The fast travel system in Elden Ring serves the game well, but it could be so much better. The game has a seamless, open world, so why have the fast travel simply load you into your destination? Make it so you get on a magic bird or something that flies you to where you want to go, allowing you to view the terrain pass by underneath. Making travel into a loading screen makes it a lot harder for my brain to square away where places are in relation to everything else, and instead makes the various locations feel more like traditional isolated levels in a game. Ironically, this is something that WoW, of all things, got right. I'm sorry but this sounds loving awful and there are many good reasons that this is not how fast travel works in most games. I commend you for this contribution to the thread.
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Mar 20, 2022 18:26
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taking a taxi in gta and just looking out the window with some music going was good for chillin occasionally but gently caress making that the only way it works. they made it optional for a reason
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Mar 20, 2022 18:30
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QuarkJets posted:I'm sorry but this sounds loving awful and there are many good reasons that this is not how fast travel works in most games. I commend you for this contribution to the thread. The main reason it isn't used is because it takes extra effort. Why do you think it sounds awful?
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Mar 20, 2022 18:59
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Devils Affricate posted:The main reason it isn't used is because it takes extra effort. Why do you think it sounds awful? To get the effect that you're asking for the computer has to load and render assets along the flight path. If this is too fast then it's going to look like poo poo. The bare minimum amount of time it could take would be the time spent sitting at the loading screen that you see right now, therefore by necessity this process will need to take that time + time required to load and render all of the poo poo along the way. That's extra time spent watching my character ride an animal, perhaps an additional 10 or 20 seconds for shorter paths every time that you fast travel, instead of playing the game. This will be cool a handful of times and frustrating most of the time. And that's just the "don't waste my time" aspect. It doesn't even get into the logistics of going to destinations that would be inaccessible to whatever thing you fly on, say at the bottom of an elevator inside a dungeon, or in one of the game's many underground areas
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Mar 20, 2022 19:15
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QuarkJets posted:To get the effect that you're asking for the computer has to load and render assets along the flight path. If this is too fast then it's going to look like poo poo. The bare minimum amount of time it could take would be the time spent sitting at the loading screen that you see right now, therefore by necessity this process will need to take that time + time required to load and render all of the poo poo along the way. That's extra time spent watching my character ride an animal, perhaps an additional 10 or 20 seconds for shorter paths every time that you fast travel, instead of playing the game. This will be cool a handful of times and frustrating most of the time. Like I was saying, it could be tuned to be about as long as the current load times. A couple extra seconds would be worth the effect of better building a more cohesive image of the world for the player IMO. And they can always add a skip option to just load the area directly. The world design is my favorite part of Fromsoft games, and I think this would be a good way to enjoy that aspect of them even more.
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Mar 20, 2022 19:27
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Devils Affricate posted:Like I was saying, it could be tuned to be about as long as the current load times. A couple extra seconds would be worth the effect of better building a more cohesive image of the world for the player IMO. And they can always add a skip option to just load the area directly. The world design is my favorite part of Fromsoft games, and I think this would be a good way to enjoy that aspect of them even more. I'm saying that this part that I've bolded is not a valid assumption. If I'm being transported from one side of the world to the other, then I need to load and render not only the assets from the destination but also from everything within sight distance from my travel path. If the time to load and render the destination is N then the time to travel and land there is C*N where C scales with both travel distance and render distance. e: It's fundamentally a data throughput problem where you're asking "why can't I do 10x more IO and computation in the same amount of time". There is always going to be a tradeoff here. If you want to have the character model fly there, then it is going to take more time than a simple loading screen. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 21:25
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I’ve always thought instead of dumb elevators, pictures of the button mapping, or “hints” telling you that fire is weak to water, loading screens should show off all the awesome concept art. It’s not quite concept art but I really liked Elden Rings loading screens going in the right direction by giving us some nice pictures to look at. Basically just scan the whole art book and put a random page up on screen with a little lore entry would work great for so many different games.
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Mar 20, 2022 21:44
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mass effect 1 had the best load screens w/ the seamless elevator chats
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Mar 20, 2022 21:45
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galagazombie posted:I’ve always thought instead of dumb elevators, pictures of the button mapping, or “hints” telling you that fire is weak to water, loading screens should show off all the awesome concept art. It’s not quite concept art but I really liked Elden Rings loading screens going in the right direction by giving us some nice pictures to look at. Basically just scan the whole art book and put a random page up on screen with a little lore entry would work great for so many different games. There was a brief period in like the ps1/ps2 era where fighting games did this and I miss it The little moody scenes that would play out in The Darkness were pretty neat too
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Mar 20, 2022 22:05
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poverty goat posted:it winds up being busywork most of the time though, just to prevent the player from using rpg poo poo to break the rpg. in a single player rpg who cares? you're missing loot and XP as usual. they could also add some code and let you off the hook most of the time when the map is clear or you're just in town shopping or whatever but this kind of QoL stuff doesn't always happen It's something you easily get used to though. Moving all your people together becomes second-nature and you almost never really hit the you must gather your party thing again. You might get like a delay of a second or two while a straggler catches up, but it won't be a big problem. It's only a problem early on when you're not thinking about it when moving about. And being able to move characters individually is important for the combat system. Which is not really a slog if you know what you're doing because like Rutibex said it's much more about setting up a first round victory or disabling everyone or killing everyone important and then mopping up. If you're not murdering everyone quickly then you're doing it wrong. The core systems are good IMO, the problem is typically the implementation. Early levels you can often not have enough tools to play out combats the way they should play out. It's not made obvious to you how you "should" play for maximum enjoyment. There's too many combats that don't require a lot of thought so the combat feels clunky because it's got too much going on for how simple it was to just plow through that group of orcs, etc. The combat looks like it's real time but it's essentially turn-based with the option to skip turns being on by default. And yeah I think it could do something like try to move all your characters to the exit very quickly under the hood and only tell you to gather your party if that would trigger enemies or an event or whatever. I'm not saying you're wrong in that it's clunky, but I think the solutions are less about gutting and replacing the systems there and more about properly building the game around what is there and improving the UI/UX.
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Mar 20, 2022 22:17
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QuarkJets posted:I'm saying that this part that I've bolded is not a valid assumption. If I'm being transported from one side of the world to the other, then I need to load and render not only the assets from the destination but also from everything within sight distance from my travel path. If the time to load and render the destination is N then the time to travel and land there is C*N where C scales with both travel distance and render distance. I don't think that's true at all. The game is actually very wasteful when it loads new areas, dumping everything it currently has and loading it all fresh. Case in point: try fast traveling to a nearby location that you could reach on foot within 5 seconds. You'll get there faster on foot than with fast travel. Short trips would mostly be faster than fully loading the destination because lots of that data will already be loaded. Long distances would probably take a bit longer but, I dunno, shouldn't they?
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Mar 20, 2022 22:29
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Just noclip and fly around on your horse while running the game at 10x its normal speed.
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Mar 20, 2022 22:35
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Devils Affricate posted:I don't think that's true at all. The game is actually very wasteful when it loads new areas, dumping everything it currently has and loading it all fresh. Case in point: try fast traveling to a nearby location that you could reach on foot within 5 seconds. You'll get there faster on foot than with fast travel. Short trips would mostly be faster than fully loading the destination because lots of that data will already be loaded. Long distances would probably take a bit longer but, I dunno, shouldn't they? even if they optimized loading to be 10x as fast, the ride-on-a-bird animation would still always be slower than the loading screen
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Mar 20, 2022 22:49
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:even if they optimized loading to be 10x as fast, the ride-on-a-bird animation would still always be slower than the loading screen The post you quoted contains an example of a situation where it wouldn't be. I mean yeah, if Fromsoft's fast travel just put up a splash screen while it moved the player from X1,Y1,Z1 to X2,Y2,Z2 then there would be no beating it, but that's not what it does.
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Mar 20, 2022 22:52
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galagazombie posted:I’ve always thought instead of dumb elevators, pictures of the button mapping, or “hints” telling you that fire is weak to water, loading screens should show off all the awesome concept art. It’s not quite concept art but I really liked Elden Rings loading screens going in the right direction by giving us some nice pictures to look at. Basically just scan the whole art book and put a random page up on screen with a little lore entry would work great for so many different games. I love it when loading screens show cool concept art and whatnot. AC Odyssey went in the wrong direction (lol Ubisoft) and just shows gameplay tips on a generic screen, it loving sucks. Witcher 3 went partway in the right direction, showing a nice bit of art on the loading screen but unfortunately the art was the same every time (determined by how far you had progressed the story). This is a nice artistic choice but I'd still rather have alternative art to look at when I'm just fast traveling or whatever
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Mar 20, 2022 22:58
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Devils Affricate posted:I don't think that's true at all. The game is actually very wasteful when it loads new areas, dumping everything it currently has and loading it all fresh. Case in point: try fast traveling to a nearby location that you could reach on foot within 5 seconds. You'll get there faster on foot than with fast travel. Short trips would mostly be faster than fully loading the destination because lots of that data will already be loaded. Long distances would probably take a bit longer but, I dunno, shouldn't they? Yes, if you're standing literally next to a fast travel point and then choose to fast travel there, that may be slower than just taking 2 steps. Profound stuff. This is true for both methods (Flying Mount and Loading Screen) though It's also not relevant to what we're talking about. The whole point of a fast travel system is to cover large distances quickly, and that's clearly the context you were considering when you were talking about how cool it would be to watch the scenery from a flying mount. That would be an annoying time waster after the first 1 or 2 times, a fact that every former WOW player understands well. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 23:03
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QuarkJets posted:Yes, if you're standing literally next to a fast travel point and then choose to fast travel there, that may be slower than just taking 2 steps. Profound stuff. It's an extreme example to clearly demonstrate that the dynamic you're talking about isn't necessarily true. Still, in most situations, a significant amount of the required game data for the destination will already be loaded into memory. I imagine lot of short to medium range trips would actually be faster because of this (not that that was the point in the first place). And if I'm flying from one end of the world to the other and the game takes 15 seconds instead of 10 to visually convey how large and interconnected everything is, I wouldn't consider that a problem. You can still always include the option to skip it, I guess.
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Mar 20, 2022 23:19
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It’s cool how limited guns are in sleeping dogs and how you have to figure out tricks to obtain them (steal from a cop) if you want to use them in free roam instead of just going to a store or a black market dealer every single person knows about like in most open world shooters
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Mar 20, 2022 23:26
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Here's an unpopular opinion: If you're putting fast travel into your "open world" game so players can warp from dungeon to town and back, just make a level based game and get rid of the open world entirely. If you want players to explore and enjoy your open world, you can't have fast travel. It's clear, consistent game design choices like this that make Outward better than Elden Ring.
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Mar 20, 2022 23:28
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Devils Affricate posted:It's an extreme example to clearly demonstrate that the dynamic you're talking about isn't necessarily true. Still, in most situations, a significant amount of the required game data for the destination will already be loaded into memory. I imagine lot of short to medium range trips would actually be faster because of this (not that that was the point in the first place). No, the flying mount method would still be slower than a loading screen in that example. If the flying mount method can preserve assets that are already in memory, then so can a loading screen. What we've agreed on is that both methods would be slower than just walking the distance yourself, if the distance is small enough. Devils Affricate posted:It's an extreme example to clearly demonstrate that the dynamic you're talking about isn't necessarily true. Still, in most situations, a significant amount of the required game data for the destination will already be loaded into memory. I imagine lot of short to medium range trips would actually be faster because of this (not that that was the point in the first place). No, I've already pointed out the misconceptions here. If you need to load new assets for the flight path that aren't used at the origin or destination, then you have already lost time versus a loading screen. By definition. In the best case, the flying mount method could take equal time, but it rarely ever will. If a large set of game assets are so repeatedly used that you're caching them in memory because you could need them at any moment, then a loading screen transition can make use of those same cached assets.
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Mar 20, 2022 23:36
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pretty soft girl posted:The little moody scenes that would play out in The Darkness were pretty neat too I watched the tv's in The Darkness more than I actually played The Darkness.
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Mar 21, 2022 00:08
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Trollologist posted:Here's an unpopular opinion: yeah true it's pretty weird that every fast travel point is automatically unlocked in elden ring
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Mar 21, 2022 00:41
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QuarkJets posted:No, the flying mount method would still be slower than a loading screen in that example. If the flying mount method can preserve assets that are already in memory, then so can a loading screen. What we've agreed on is that both methods would be slower than just walking the distance yourself, if the distance is small enough.  QuarkJets posted:No, I've already pointed out the misconceptions here. If you need to load new assets for the flight path that aren't used at the origin or destination, then you have already lost time versus a loading screen. By definition. In the best case, the flying mount method could take equal time, but it rarely ever will. QuarkJets posted:If a large set of game assets are so repeatedly used that you're caching them in memory because you could need them at any moment, then a loading screen transition can make use of those same cached assets. Again, it could, but it doesn't.
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Mar 21, 2022 01:13
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Trollologist posted:Here's an unpopular opinion: You're cut off from fast travel in dungeons and other such places and you actually have to explore the world and find new locations before you can travel to them so seems like the point you're trying to make is kinda disingenuous
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Mar 21, 2022 01:29
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gently caress fast travel, you wanna get somewhere, walk you're playing a video game, your time isn't important
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Mar 21, 2022 04:04
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i always liked the loading screens in half life 2, blurred then coming into focus and it's places you had been or were going to go to, but just as if it were a slice of life of pre or post Gordon
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Mar 21, 2022 05:32
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:It’s cool how limited guns are in sleeping dogs and how you have to figure out tricks to obtain them (steal from a cop) if you want to use them in free roam instead of just going to a store or a black market dealer every single person knows about like in most open world shooters I agree with this. I remember that made me beeline to the end of the cop tree so I could get a shotgun from cop cars.
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Mar 21, 2022 06:13
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:It’s cool how limited guns are in sleeping dogs and how you have to figure out tricks to obtain them (steal from a cop) if you want to use them in free roam instead of just going to a store or a black market dealer every single person knows about like in most open world shooters They're limited for the first hour, for the rest of the game you get them loving everywhere but the game doesn't expect you to. There were lots of missions where it's like "Hey, this drunk is scaring off some customers, rough him up for me will ya?" and Wei goes "Yeah sure thing", turns around and guns the guy down with an assault rifle. "Thanks Wei, hopefully we won't see him around here again!"
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Mar 21, 2022 06:22
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i don't remember having a gun that much in sleeping dogs. i wasn't looking. in some of the main missions they'll give you a gun but iirc they are expirable or you can lose them easily somehow and they were usually gone pretty quick.
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Mar 21, 2022 06:33
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fast travel should plot a line between your location and destination then teleport you to a random encounter at some point in between the two
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Mar 21, 2022 06:35
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