Gaider on "Quality"

[Visceris]

He's human, just like all of us, except maybe Dick Clark, so he reacts like a human. Besides, its fun.

 

[Araanor]

Distance, damage, attacks of opportunity, area of effect, initiative; numbers and rules. Is there ANYTHING that wouldn't be straight-forward?

 

[Visceris]

Complex room traps.

 

[Volourn]

et many of those and other stuff are less straight forward then you think. They probably take a lot of play testing to get just right.

 

[Sharpei_Diem]

I challenge anyone here to come up with a list of:

1) Mulitplayer (not necessarilly massively) computer role-playing games that
2) have more than two ways to complete the game.

So is your message that because they're rare, no one should strive to make them? I've said on other threads that part of the problem with current crpgs is that the plot waits around conveniently for the player to complete it(time has no meaning). Since the plot is sitting, waiting for the player anyway, it really hardly matters which 'role' you choose to play since the end result is the same. You're still travelling the same highway, just that it's three lanes instead of one or two, and I personally don't see how that makes things much better.

 

[Araanor]

et many of those and other stuff are less straight forward then you think. They probably take a lot of play testing to get just right.

Give me an example. I can't argue about nothing.

 

[DrattedTin]

I find it a little insulting that Gaider dismisses everyone at rpgcodex.com, and anyone who would bring up any concerns at that place. It just smacks of closemindedness, not to mention defensive reflexes.

 

[Visceris]

Ever read Grimtooth's Traps? Try to put one ofhis room traps in a computer game.

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

Elvenshae: I will ask you the same question I asked Voluorn: can you name a game that had branching story paths where it did not add value as has been claimed? I for one cannot think of a single one.

 

[Visceris]

Common Elvenshae, MEET THE CHALLENGE!

 

[Araanor]

Ever read Grimtooth's Traps? Try to put one ofhis room traps in a computer game.

Nope. I fail to see how this is related to the combat, however.

 

[Sharpei_Diem]

just some thoughts from the gaider quote....

There are limitations that one must deal with when a project begins... you can't just breeze about and go "Oh, I think I'd like to have multiple endings today! Lots of them!" and then pout when someone tells you it can't be done.

I've never done any game development, but in web application development, my projects always began with what we were trying to achieve and then went(more or less) to what mechanisms we would use to achieve it and, of course, keeping in mind the budget available. From the 'tone' of the terminology, i would hazard a guess that multiple endings weren't in the scope at the beginning..

Of course they're committed to quality. We all are. But you work with what you have. You put out the best based on the resources available. Pre-rendered movies are expensive... one can't always have more than one or two in a game. Multiple beginnings, endings and paths? Hey, there's a reason why this isn't done to the degree you're implying: time is limited, too.

There's definite truth to this, but as someone mentioned, this sounds more like a comment from a 3 person shop, not a successful developer with milliions of copies sold.

Making a game is all about working around technical limitations and limited resources.

This bugs me. The accomplishment of anything in this world is based on working around technical limitations and limited resources. I deal with it at my job. You deal with it at yours. And everyone else deals with it at theirs. If the bread I get is moldy because it took an extra week to get here, i should be thankful that I at least have moldy bread?

I'll leave out my more pointed comments on the rest of that paragraph...

Don't, however, say how you're going to come over to our side and do it better. Because even the most starry-eyed developer who owns his own company and can make his own decisions about the kind of game he wants to do still has to deal with these things.

So no one can do anything better than the way it's being done by 'professionals'? Why, because they're 'professionals'. Give me a break. Many 'professionals' are amateurs that turned their hobby into their profession. Bioware included, if I remember that bit of history correctly. Wonder what Gaider did before he became a 'professional'...

grrr...

 

[Visceris]

It might not be pure combat but if someone ever did it would be a fight of your life, for how short it would last.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The current consensus seems to be that Bioware's efforts in the RPG genre are fairly lacking, especially with regards to multiple, independent paths through a given story.

That is correct. It's not a consenus, btw, it's a fact. We may disagree on whether or not Bioware produces good games, but I believe there is no argument that these games do not have multiple paths through a given story. Since we have none, any efforts if any are insufficient.

I challenge anyone here to come up with a list of:

1) Mulitplayer (not necessarilly massively) computer role-playing games that
2) have more than two ways to complete the game.

What does multiplayer have to do with anything? Are you implying that it's either multiplayer or multiple paths but not both? The concept of role-playing assumes that a player is able to make a choice including a choice of a path.

Another example that has popped up, however, both here and on the Bioware boards, is Troika's upcoming ToEE. While I laud Troika's design goals, there is currently no information to suggest that their multiple beginnings and endings will be anything more complex than a set of different opening and ending cut-scenes.

I don't think so, but it would be pointless to argue, so let's wait and see. The reason for my optimism is that multiple things (paths and endings) have been a trademark of Tim Cain & Co so far.

There is a lot of combat in the NWN and SOU OCs. However, there tends to be a lot of combat in most D&D modules

If I remember correctly a character in pnp is given more choices in combat, then in any computer CRPG, and especially in a RT CRPG.

and there are many places in the SOU OC's first chapter, at least, where a quick tongue will let you avoid combat entirely.

And the second chapter of BG2 is non-linear, what's your point? I hope we are not judging games by chapters or favourite parts now, are we?

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

Of course it is possible that Troika's multiple beginnings are mere window dressing (tho I seriously doubt it) but the very nature of multiple endings based on character action throughout the game - their very existence - proves otherwise. I.e, you cannot have mulitple endings and a slide show that reveals the consequences of the PC's actions during the game and have them be mere window dressing.

 

[EEVIAC]

I can see a lot of pressure being put on ToEE to be better than good when its eventually released. Personally I was hoping for a well designed turn-based game but I don't think that's going to be enough. The combat, the rule implementation, the character creation and customization, the dialogues, the sub-quests, the plot, the multiple paths and choices, are all going to have to be better than awesome.

The reason? Think about the stakes. Some RPG devs have good reason to snipe at Troika, it would make them look pretty silly if a smaller dev house produced a game that delivered precisely the gameplay elements that they said they had to compromise on for less money, in an 18 month development cycle. It brings to mind the Philospher's Guild in Douglas Adams' Hitch Hikers Guide To the Galaxy :

What's the point of us spending half the night debating whether there is or isn't a God when this machine goes and gives you his phone number!

Maybe I'm being overly dramatic but the RPG world doesn't seem very competetive. In FPS's, if someone said to Carmack "HL2 physics are going to own Doom 3," he certainly wouldn't say, "well, we didn't have enough time to implement a tight physics system, there are certain concessions that all game developers have to make..."

 

[Jed]

In the PnP world, roleplaying games are, almost by definition, multiplayer.

PnP is inherently multiplayer, otherwise you're just reading a book or talking to yourself!

Why, then, does it become an inherent contradiction when you insert the word "computer"?

Mediation. The same thing that happens when you insert a computer between any two or more people's interactions. Aftet all sex and cybersex aren't the same thing either, are they? CRPG multiplayer is unsatisfying because the first thing to go is interesting combat, next are the non-combat skills, next is the dynamic game world, followed quickly by the feeling of immersion and the realization that the neither the PC nor his choices have any effect on the game world, and finally without depth of setting or gameplay, you end up with a hollow hack-fest.

What about a multiplayer computer game makes it impossible for it to also be roleplaying?

I take that back. Multiplayer RPGs do allow you to play a role, one role: t3h l33t ub3r PC! w00t!!!!!!!!!11111234 LOL!!!11 OMG!!!11 KTXBYE1!!

Well, that's a fairly reductionist view of things, and while it is in some respects true, we all can acknowledge that it isn't the whole truth.

Which is appropriate, considering Bioware's reductionist approach to the D&D ruleset.

Well, it is a somewhat silly way to "beat" a game, but it is a possibility for completing it.

I can't even believe you're trying offer that as a serious point of argument. If dying is a satisfactory "completion" of a game to you, then no wonder you're so easily satisfied by Bioware's lukewarm products. When you go to parties do you also get razzed if they got potato chips?

Both of which were done in a much larger time frame with more people on the job (i.e., more dedicated man-months) and no source material to which the design teams had to stay true.

Not everybody needs five years to produce a game. If Tim & Co let me down, I'll be the first to raise the peasant mob, but he gets the benefit of a doubt.

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

Saint has on several occasions taken Tim et al to task as have many of us over what we thought sucked in Arcanum. I hope we can put behind us now the "argument" that all we do here is front for Troika.

Jed is right on - Tim gets the benefit of the doubt because he has earned it. 'course if he/they make(s) a game that sucks donkey balls one can expect to hear plenty about it here.

IMO I don't think we are in any danger of ever seeing a thread like that.

 

[Elwro]

Well, that's a fairly reductionist view of things, and while it is in some respects true, we all can acknowledge that it isn't the whole truth. There is a lot of combat in the NWN and SOU OCs (...)

That's quite an euphemism, speaking about NWN OC this way. You need not turn your brain on - you just kill hordes of weak monsters for hours. And that's it. Sometimes you can also watch some dialogue.
Ah, I forgot. You also open thousands of quite weirdly placed chests and crates.

Fallout and Arcanum are "proof of concept."

Both of which were done in a much larger time frame with more people on the job (i.e., more dedicated man-months) and no source material to which the design teams had to stay true.

Could you please specify, much longer time frame than what?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

1) Mulitplayer (not necessarilly massively) computer role-playing games that

Wait, where did we ever say in this thread we gave a shit about multiplayer? I don't see the ability to play something you don't like and share the experience with others as a huge plus. It's on par with reaching in the refridgerator, finding some beef that's several weeks old, smelling it, and then offering it to a friend to smell as well because it's so rank.

2) have more than two ways to complete the game.

You mean like Fallout and Geneforge? Games where you pick the order in which the outcomes occur? Doesn't Morrowind also do this by allowing you a set order, including optional parts to the ending? Or how about Prelude to Darkness, which has two different story paths through the game? What about Escape Velocity Nova, which has six different major storylines in the game, which you choose by your actions in the game?

Keep in mind, three of the five I mentioned are independent games, made by people who can't spend five years making one game, nor can they put 75 people on a project to get it done.

I specify two because character death followed by the ending of a game is always a possibility.

If you rank that as a possibility, then you've played too many BioWare games. Get out more, there's much better stuff available.

I believe you'll find the list to be very scant indeed.

I named five off the top of my head. Now name a BioWare game that meets criteria number 2.

Fallout is a deservedly much-lauded title, because it did, in fact, have multiple possible paths through the story. It was, however, a single-player only game.

And? Let me put it another way. When you have a feature that screws over you making a good design for your genre, then perhaps you should eliminate that feature.

Another example that has popped up, however, both here and on the Bioware boards, is Troika's upcoming ToEE. While I laud Troika's design goals, there is currently no information to suggest that their multiple beginnings and endings will be anything more complex than a set of different opening and ending cut-scenes.

You mean other than the interviews where they mention totally different starting locations?

 

[Jora]

The main reason ToEE doesn't have multiplayer is that the Arcanum engine has some "fundamental flaws".

"There is no way I'm letting multiplayer creep back into this codebase. I regret it being in Arcanum and am horribly sorry to all the fans who played it and got lagged out of games or desynched because animations weren't synching up.

There are fundimental flaws (that we have moved far away from as possible) in the Arcanum engine that make multiplayer a near impossibility to synchronize. While for the new codebase it isn't as big of a deal, there is neither the time, or the confidence that it will work in order to put it in." -Smoret

Here is the link: http://www.ataricommunity.com/forum...98ba0410ae0feb5cff05f9db6b702&threadid=311004

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Well, Volourn said I should come post over here, and that after I did I would be "eaten alive." I look forward to the experience.

Being eaten alive isn't that bad. Er, not that i'd know of it from personal experience, i... i.. erm... lets just get on with the show.

The current consensus seems to be that Bioware's efforts in the RPG genre are fairly lacking, especially with regards to multiple, independent paths through a given story.

Some might even call it a fact, not a consensus.

I challenge anyone here to come up with a list of:

1) Mulitplayer (not necessarilly massively) computer role-playing games that
2) have more than two ways to complete the game.

Well i guess i could lose myself for some months trying to scavenge such a list, but really, what would it matter to the discussion at hand? Roleplaying is all about equal parts characterization and customization combined (the roleplay). And that roleplay has to give you back all you invested in it - be it in fun, immersion or interactivity; not about how many people share the same experience.

I specify two because character death followed by the ending of a game is always a possibility.

Yes but not a good one. Unless its strictly story-related and/or needed (example: Planescape where you needed to die in order to advance in some places; or even Fallout: Tactics, where in one of the endings, you could sacrifice yourself to make the wasteland a better place, by merging with the sentient computer thingy in Vault 0), dying is not a good possibility to take. Out goal in videogames is to survive in them, given the odds - not lay down and die and happily look at the cutscene, with a Game Over-themed image. True, it stands as a possibility in terms of multiple paths, but it also stands as a halt to what our actions can change. If you die in a game, all you tried to achieve goes to waste - multiple paths (and specially, multiple endings), are there to show how our actions can influence outcomes, people, things - that they matter. Death is not an option, its a sudden and brutal halt on the probability outcome.

Another example that has popped up, however, both here and on the Bioware boards, is Troika's upcoming ToEE. While I laud Troika's design goals, there is currently no information to suggest that their multiple beginnings and endings will be anything more complex than a set of different opening and ending cut-scenes. (I.e., the difference between openings in which the party is sent on a quest by the head of a church, the boss of a crime syndicate, or an evil mutli-national alliance is minimal if, after said interlude, the party ends up in the same place with the same goals. The same is true for similarly-made endings.) This, as mentioned
with regards to BG II: TOB, would be an unsatisfying state of affairs.

The way i remeber it, i believe each party alignment will have a different beginning, all will then converge into the Temple, then they will all diverge in endings. Which to me is great, and better than what BG has to offer.
Of course, you ask what will the beginnings have that they can't be diferentiated with cutscenes? I honestly can't answer. But i can say that, personally, i expect the game to have us interact in said beginnings. The evil party will probably find itself in a place where it will have to cut down some of the local yokels and farmers. The good party will probably have to help some farmers. I expect the beginnings to have a degree of interaction - and to me interaction is more important than cutscenes of any sort.

Regardless, this is not a question of how different beginnings and endings are going to be portrayed, its a question of how they can help a game. And if different endings help, so do beginnings. The reason why the endings of TOB fail its because you don't need to do anything special to obtain them - just kill everything that stands in your way, and your reward will be a choice between 3 endings, endings which you did not work for. There isn't a sense of achievement - if all i have to do is get there and kill Amelyssan the Blackhearted, what the hell does it matter what i do before? Should i help peasants or kill them? Should i smite evil or join with it? Who cares - what i do won't affect my possibilities of ending the game, and of seeing an ending of my choosing. Instead of having programmed an action-> consequence check, that could lower your possibilities of being able to choose the good ending if you commited evil acts (and the reverse as well), it just removes any satisfaction whatsoever.

Hmm. I disagree with you. I find that a roleplaying game can be either:

1) a single-player game with enough built-in flexibility that the computer-run characters seem to be played by actual people, or
2) a multi-player game.

An RPG can have multiplayer functionality, but a multiplayer game doesnt' automatically turn into an RPG.

In the PnP world, roleplaying games are, almost by definition, multiplayer. Why, then, does it become an inherent contradiction when you insert the word "computer"?

Because:

1) The rules and scope of the game itself are different. One cannot faithfully emulate PnP on computers. The addition of multiplayer capability is nothing if players don't assume it as a means to further the role (which,BTW, the majority don't).

2) In multiplayer, not everyone plays the role they're supposed to. If playing an online-capable, multiplayer game, i abide to its rules. If its medieval-themed, i won' tgo about bitching because there aren't shotguns. If its sci-fi-themed, i won't equally bitch about there not being Elves and Dragons. And since it's multiplayer, we already are participating in an event which has adjacent rules, such as a form of etiquette pertaining to the game itself. One thing is to play Quake 3 online, that has no convention we have to care about, and my role is that of winning by maximum amount of frags. The other is to play an RPG, to play a role given the gameworld i'm in, and given the role i've chosen for myself. If i choose to be a Paladin Dwarf in a mystical land of Dragons rampaging trought the world, with a 17th century ambience, i will do my incredible utmost to not use a common language; if i play a Decker with psyonic powers in Downton LA in 3215, i will use futuristic, street-wise slang. Its called imemrsion and roleplay - i know i play my role. I play to the best of my abilities, given the role and game i've chosen. But i can't say the same of everyone else.

It becomes an inherent contradiction because "multiplayer" =/= "better roleplay". Because multiplayer doesn't actually put players together, it doesn't make them realize that there's a difference between playing together, and playing their roles together. Thats why there are, for instance, NWN servers, where Role-Playing is enforced. In short, multiplayer only makes players "be there", not "make them act as if they were there".

Well, that's a fairly reductionist view of things, and while it is in some respects true, we all can acknowledge that it isn't the whole truth. There is a lot of combat in the NWN and SOU OCs. However, there tends to be a lot of combat in most D&D modules, and there are many places in the SOU OC's first chapter, at least, where a quick tongue will let you avoid combat entirely.

And because D&D has much combat, all electronic iterations of it must also bring forth endless mobs of raving enemies trying to kill me? Er, no. I'm not even going to bring into discussion DM-specific takes on PnP where players get together for 12 hours to ONLY roleplay, because this kind of gameplay visible in PnP cannot be made (yet) on CRPGs. But it can be countered - the problem is not combat. I like combat. I like coming up with strategies for combat. What i don't like is excess of combat - to have about 80% or more of a game solely revolving around combat and FedEx quests which go hand-in-hand. I don't ask companies to recreate Planescape; i don't criticize companies because they don't create electronic versions of PnP 101. What i do criticize them is, their lack of understanding of what is roleplay, and what is playing a role. I play my role of Fighter when i'm whacking Kobolds; i play my role of Wizard when i'm memorizing spells. But in BG, my Fighter and my Wizard's role is the same when it comes to roleplay. Int 3 or Int 19 stands for the same. Less intelligence would make one speak like an idiot. This is specially true with the BG2 Half-Orc: with a minimum of Intelligence being a 2, he still speaks fluently. Now, how can i be convinced i'm roleplaying,using my character in a convincing way, if my character breaks every rule thats in the rulebook? That is not roleplay. The same situation in Fallout and Arcanum, *that* is roleplay. Your character *will* speak in an utterly stupid way, people *will* treat you as a stupid person.

One could say "stupid/idiotic dialogue lines don't help the game". Well, they may not, but at least it shows the designers took the time in coming up with something that gave players the feeling that playing their roles actually had some impact on the gameplay.

But i ask, where is my role taking me in BG? Its inconsequential - there are rare (or amounting-to-nothing) gender, class, racial and statistical checks. Dialogue lines are well written, but amounting to nothing much. Its either a flourished:

A) Yes
B) No
C) What?
D) Where?
E) Kill
F) Money
G) Kthnxbye

If you accept a quest, the possible dialogue lines when you return will amount to this:

A) Yes
B) No
C) More Money
D) Kill

Its unfeasible in many ways. I can't talk to my party NPCs in BG. They aren't capable of assuming their own roles in the world - why would Cernd be uncapable of being an Arch-Druid? Why would Anomen be incapable of having his own Temple, and sheperd the faithful? Why would Minsc be unable to protect Imnsvalle? Why wasn't Edwin able to operate the Planar Speher, plotting his own agenda while dealing with the Cowled Wizards? Now don't tell me these things are uncapable of being programmed, neither that they take time - perhaps if Bioware didn't had to break the entire rulesystem and the combat system of D&D, and turning it into something it wasn't meant to work on (RTWP), perhaps they'd have more time and more resources to actually make their products better in the immersion and roleplay department. Also don't try to say Bioware made the NPCs unable to get Strongholds for themselves because it'd "unbalance" the amount of experience - they were capable of allocating Quest Experience to single characters (such as Edwin's Nether Scroll quest, or Cernd's Child quest), they certainly could do the same there. Even non-party NPCs act strangely, or some situations are whacked. Remember Baron Ployer, the guy that has Jaheira cursed? He was in poverty remember? Now if i hire Terrence and the other 2 freelancing Cowled Wizards, it costs me 15,000 just to make it so they don't appear. What would have costed Ployer (who was supposedly poor), to get a lock of Jaheira's hair, to have the CW's create a curse, have them cast it, and have them help him in combat against my me and my party? Im betting it wasn't cheap. Also, why is it that, enemy NPCs can cast spells at will in Athkatla and get away with it, and i can't?

And quests are only there to give more experience, and thus, more levels of experience. All events, like the dream with Bhaal at Spellhold, and the decisions in Hell, only affect your character is on a statistical level.

Choose a goody-goody outcome? More reputation. Choose a bad outcome? Oh, more X to AC and HPs. Even the "curse" of having your soul stolen ends up giving you the chance of becoming the Slayer, which, as we all know, is pretty much unstoppable. Who cares everytime you change into it you lose 2 points of reputation? Just find a local temple and pay them off. Mahvelous.

I won't even bring up the fact that the game doesn't cater to several types of playing when it comes to alignment, because Gaider already buried himself with his outstanding remark of "being evil doesn't pay".

Well, it is a somewhat silly way to "beat" a game, but it is a possibility for completing it. The main character dies at the hands of desert bandits, Vault 13 doesn't get its water chip in time, and its entire population dies. The End. Sarevok slays the Bhaalspawn PC, and presumably goes on to global/planar domination; the PC doesn't know, he's dead. The End. It *is* a possible ending, though not a generally accepted one.

Wrong. By dying in a game, you're not completing your objectives - you're failing on their completion - therefor you're not completing it.

Both of which were done in a much larger time frame with more people on the job (i.e., more dedicated man-months) and no source material to which the design teams had to stay true.

Fallout and Arcanum took longer than BG or NWN, and had more people working in them? Lets also not forget that destroying TB and include a combat system the game wasn't supposed to handle also takes its toll on time and resources.

Moreover, Atari ne Infogrames has a habit of pushing developers to release before the product is truly ready, c.f. MOO3 and NWN. It would not surprise me if Atari's schedule for ToEE precludes a great deal of what Troika would like to do.

If this is regarding NWN's quality, Bioware had what? 3 to 4 frickin' years? 3 to 4 years is well enough. Morrowind was in development for about the same time, and still managed to present better content on many levels over NWN.

Don't get me wrong - I would love to see ToEE have all the multiple paths that Fallout did. The module on which it is supposed to be faithfully based, however, is not necessarily given to such non-linear branching.

I believe Troika decided to include more roleplaying abilities in occasions where the official module was letting it to player's imagination, or where it trailed off without explanations.

Because I'm a quixotic person and enjoy enlightening discourse.

Well here's hoping we gave off enough windmills for you to enjoy.

 

[Psilon]

I'd also like to point out that you can completely break the main plot in Morrowind and still complete the game successfully. This means that any grade-D psychopath can eliminate any of the major towns, say Balmora or Vivec, and still make it to the ending cutscene.

Minor towns like Hla Oad are even more susceptible to the ol' Berserker karmic trait, so it's not just Fallout that lets you perversely modify your game's plot.

Compare that to NWN, where all the main characters are invincible, all the guards kick your ass for even misdemeanors, and despite all your "persuade checks" (DC = -100) for psychoanalysis Aribeth always defects to the lizardmen. If that's what it takes for multiplayer, I'll stick to single player.

Oh, and the best part? Despite having a comparable-length dev cycle (assuming they started right after Battlespire), Bethesda never had 75 people working at once on Morrowind. They didn't even start pimping the game at E3 until 2001, when it was getting close to release.

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

so Elvenshae: are you going to address any of the questions, comments and concerns that have been put forth in this thread?

did he split? I hope not this was just starting to get fun.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The main reason ToEE doesn't have multiplayer is that the Arcanum engine has some "fundamental flaws".

You might have a point, except that ToEE isn't using Arcanum's engine.

If this is regarding NWN's quality, Bioware had what? 3 to 4 frickin' years? 3 to 4 years is well enough. Morrowind was in development for about the same time, and still managed to present better content on many levels over NWN.

Try five years for NWN. It was in production at interplay for four years, and another year at Infogrames.