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Letting go of the checklist: Zombra says you shouldn't do everything in RPGs

Self-Ejected

dream expert

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A. I think Zombra has a good point about not being OCD about every fucking thing. See Witcher quests and sidequests and how they can be locke dout according to your decisions.

B. I think Zombra is missing the huge point here. IF you improved the lore dumps in the side quests you speak of being as optional, wouldn't that make it a better game? Doesn't that make the criticism of the writing valid?

C. Let's say you are RPing a char who likes to talk to diff ppl...how would you know these dialogues are crap until you experience it? The point that ppl are trying to make is that the writing is subpar. You seem to make the point that meta gaming is a stupid/subpar way of playing a game. But think about your first play-though of a game. You have no idea these dialogues will suck and will be overly flowery.

Zombra , you do make some good points on how people play and experience RPGs. However, i think the fact that the dialogue isn't as good in HK is just that. It isn't as good. Period. Trying to hand wave that fact away is just unfair IMO.
 

huskarls

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The discerning gamer can tell from his dialogue options whether he is about to increase his understanding of the world or hear some biowarian prattle about some one's mean daddy, though of course there is the third dimension of whether a game only allows you to ask questions constantly or if it lets you express yourself in interesting ways
 

CryptRat

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I suggest we speak of walls of texts and their place in videogames (aka: they have NO place in videogames).

That was my disagreement with Zombra. A game that wastes more resources telling a story through walls of text than actual play is like a movie telling a story through spoken narration - you have a fucking audio-visual medium, so use it gofdamn it. "Show don't tell" and all that crap. When I play a game I want to PLAY a game, not READ shit on the screen. The gross of the experience should explore the medium strenghts like interactivity, choices & consequences, etc. Let the walls of texts to books. And spoken narration to radios.
No, walls of text are the cheapest way to describe complex situations.
Dragon Wars, Darklands, Neo Scavenger... minimal drawing, a lot of text and quite awesome.
 

resilient sphere

Educated
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Nov 27, 2014
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mostly agreed with Zombra. I do prefer to skim conversation trees when they're getting big, sample dip the houses in a settlement instead of looting them all systematically and so forth. other rpg veterans are like sponges, absorbing all the information and valuable material in an area in one single pass but frankly I'm still worried about offending innocent NPCs. Call me a larper all you want but I bet you've never grinded YOUR decorum stat anywhere near this high.

PS there are certain conversations in certain games where if you escape them or mess them up you render the game unsolveable. Who's that guy in Ultima Underworld who offers you a totally useless map, except the map is drawn on the back of a portrait which is the only item in the game you can exchange for a mandatory key, and if you decline then that's that? I fuck that stuff up on the regular without making a prior save but at least my Avatar of Britannia doesn't act like the world's most pernicious census taker
 

Silva

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I suggest we speak of walls of texts and their place in videogames (aka: they have NO place in videogames).

That was my disagreement with Zombra. A game that wastes more resources telling a story through walls of text than actual play is like a movie telling a story through spoken narration - you have a fucking audio-visual medium, so use it gofdamn it. "Show don't tell" and all that crap. When I play a game I want to PLAY a game, not READ shit on the screen. The gross of the experience should explore the medium strenghts like interactivity, choices & consequences, etc. Let the walls of texts to books. And spoken narration to radios.
No, walls of text are the cheapest way to describe complex situations.
Dragon Wars, Darklands, Neo Scavenger... minimal drawing, a lot of text and quite awesome.
Darklands and Neo Scav are predominately menu driven with single lines or small paragraphs of text. And while they DO have their share of walls, the gross of the experience is picking choices, managing risk and resources etc. as is expected from a videogame. Contrast that to Nu Shadowrun or Bladurs Gate where you waste more time passively reading with little to no interaction whatsoever and see the difference. It's a matter of signal to noise ratio. Bladur Gate gives you 20% signal while Neo Scav gives you 80%.

There's something to be learned of Dark Souls success here - it puts on a class on playing to the media strengths, with just snippets of text among what's predominantly an audio-visual narrative. It's 110% signal ratio.
 
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CryptRat

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But then blame branching dialog choices, not any text and not even any text in text adventure format.
I highly prefer hunting keyword with my keyboard ala Ultima when it comes to dialoging with NPCs.
 

Sigourn

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I think it's important to establish something which may be pretty obvious: content in a game must be WORTHWILE. These are RPGs we are talking about, it is a given that people playing RPGs will be interested in what NPCs have to say, as long as that content is worth your time. Talking with Caesar in New Vegas is worth my time. Talking with a random NPC in a shitty RPG certainly isn't. It's not a matter of quests or rewards, sometimes the dialogue offers more insight into the world, but if it isn't delivered properly it becomes busywork and no one appreciates busywork in a videogame.

Same with quests: if the quests are great, no one will complain about "oh man I have this huge list of quests I need to get done, such a pain in the ass", because no one says "oh man I have this huge list of pornstars I need to fuck today, such a pain in the ass" (unless you are a woman, that is). We look forward to getting quests done if the game has given us probable cause that these quests will be well worth our time.

On the other hand, when Skyrim shoves you nothing but fetch quests since the very beginning of the game, having a huge list of quests is truly a pain in the ass because you just know 80% of them will be fetch quests, 20% will be actual thought out quests, but only a quarter of those (5% total) will be interesting in any way or form.
 

almondblight

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But then blame branching dialog choices, not any text and not even any text in text adventure format.
I highly prefer hunting keyword with my keyboard ala Ultima when it comes to dialoging with NPCs.

Keywords are good. Another good system is the Deus Ex (original, no clue if the newer ones do this) aproach - a conversation happens, and you only give input when it reaches a genuine branching point and you have to make a significant decision (not "Do I ask about Mirkwood before asking about Gondor or do I ask about Gondor before asking about Mirkwood?"). Traditional dialogue trees in general aren't great.

And people should check out Sorcery! if they want to see a good example of how you can make a game that's not about hoovering up everything you see. In that game, doing something means not doing something else. Whatever you do you move progressively towards your goal - you don't just hang around in one town for a month exhausting content.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Very good points these. It's true that games with branching dialog choices aka lists of questions, promote the behavior of clicking through all options just to see if something will happen.
Other dialog formats would help to refrain from that. Keywords for example make the player actually think what he wants to learn from said NPC.. Ofcourse people have to WRITE!!! How can you do that in console? :P
 

Grauken

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Wizardry 8 had a modern take on keywords that didn't require you to write, but then you got lists of keywords and I'm sure some people OCD'ed on every new NPC by clicking on every keyword. It's pointless to try to design systems a certain way so that people play how you want them to, that way only madness and level scaling lies. Also larping is clearly not the answer to enjoy shitty games (that way Bethestardism lies).
 
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Freddie

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I'm with Zombra on this. The whole 'write better dialogue / lore, add more interesting items' just doesn't work because there isn't any sort of universal definition what constitutes these and there can't be because what each player of of possibly millions perceives as contributing towards good experience, is subjective. Even if you take just something like full. Some like fluff, some don't, some like little bit of it for a flavour...

While I appreciate what for example Ash said, I think reality is, that practical implementation of that would be aiming for the lowest common denominator, because simple economic reality economy and investors. Like we have seen so many times.

What comes to game play reasons, need to click trough every possible thing or otherwise player may fail, how often that really has been the case that most important information needed to complete the quest is buried under 3 pages / branches of dialogue? Even if there are cases like that, I would blame the quest design, if it doesn't allow alternative solutions.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The whole 'write better dialogue / lore, add more interesting items' just doesn't work because there isn't any sort of universal definition what constitutes these and there can't be because what each player of of possibly millions perceives as contributing towards good experience, is subjective.
Good might be subjective, but bad is certainly objective. And it's not so much "write good dialogue" as it's "don't write shit dialogue"
 

Archibald

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So what should I do if I like certain companion (in terms of stats and capabilities), I'm using him constantly and there is tons of boring text about his childhood followed by shitty side-quest that, once completed, will give him some new weapon or cool trinket that, very likely, I'll use often?
 

Stavrophore

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Strap Yourselves In
My obsessive compulsion to do as many quests as possible within one run[because i rarely replay games, unless they are very good] leads me to sacrifice or even completely forgo RPG experience. As a consequence i don't value C&C much, but on the other hand i put a strong emphasis on combat and game mechanics -because they had to be very good to interest me in doing quests, if i don't care much about story,my character and his choices.
 

Delterius

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Entre a serra e o mar.
The whole 'write better dialogue / lore, add more interesting items' just doesn't work because there isn't any sort of universal definition what constitutes these and there can't be because what each player of of possibly millions perceives as contributing towards good experience, is subjective.
Let's say you are the Lead Writer for Shadowrun: Codexia. And that your only purpose in the development team is just that. To lead and coordinate the efforts of the writing team. How would you go about editorializing the mountains of text and fluff they'll send your way if it 'just doesn't work' to 'improve the writing' because its all 'subjective'?

This is just an excuse not to do the very hard work necessary to actually write a good story.
 
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Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
So what should I do if I like certain companion (in terms of stats and capabilities), I'm using him constantly and there is tons of boring text about his childhood followed by shitty side-quest that, once completed, will give him some new weapon or cool trinket that, very likely, I'll use often?
Up to you. If you really can't sleep at night without that cool trinket, go ahead and do the shit work to get it. But at least consider life without the trinket. Your wonderful companion might still be fun to travel with if he is "merely" super excellent like you already described, and you might end up liking the game a lot more if you don't force yourself to do stuff you hate. I don't ever want to hear you say, "I almost liked that game, but it sucked because I had to do the fishing minigame for 60 hours to get Joe's Trinket," because no you didn't. Fuck that trinket. And how did you know about Joe's Trinket in the first place? Did you look it up in a walkthrough? Why are you already reading walkthroughs without trying to play the game first?
 
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Freddie

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The whole 'write better dialogue / lore, add more interesting items' just doesn't work because there isn't any sort of universal definition what constitutes these and there can't be because what each player of of possibly millions perceives as contributing towards good experience, is subjective.
Good might be subjective, but bad is certainly objective. And it's not so much "write good dialogue" as it's "don't write shit dialogue"
No, some things how they are experienced just are likely mutually exclusive. Some like dialogue that goes straight to the point like 'There's something going on in that warehouse at night' some like to know more about the NPC. It's about what kind of priorities players have.

Let's say you are the Lead Writer for Shadowrun: Codexia. And that your only purpose in the development team is just that. To lead and coordinate the efforts of the writing team. How would you go about editorializing the mountains of text and fluff they'll send your way if it 'just doesn't work' to 'improve the writing' because its all 'subjective'?

This is just an excuse not to do the very hard work necessary to actually write a good story.
I would call them all in one meeting and tell them 'We are doing something good here. So now don't fuck it up by writing shit dialogue! From now on, you are going to write just good dialogue, dismissed'.

Seriously though, I think Hong Kong was made the way it was because of at least two factors:
- They needed to reinvent the game for each instalment without rewriting the engine, what was left to explore after two games was dialogue (we got new matrix too though)
- Customer feedback, they didn't poured resources to writing on a whim, not after two games.
 

Archibald

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And how did you know about it in the first place? Did you look it up in a walkthrough? Why are you already reading walkthroughs without trying to play the game first?

Because it is standard trope in RPGs with companions, get character specific quest and once completed it will give some character specific reward. I haven't read any guide, but I know that I will get something for that character simply because I have played similar games in the past.
 

Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
And how did you know about it in the first place? Did you look it up in a walkthrough? Why are you already reading walkthroughs without trying to play the game first?
Because it is standard trope in RPGs with companions, get character specific quest and once completed it will give some character specific reward. I haven't read any guide, but I know that I will get something for that character simply because I have played similar games in the past.
So you slog through unenjoyable content because you assume it will "all be worth it" for Joe's Trinket to give Joe +2 damage vs. spiders. Cool, I hope you find the prize is worth the shit shoveling. Personally, I can't remember a single companion trinket or bonus that I really cared about in any RPG.

All I suggest is that you ask yourself, "Is this worth it?"
 
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Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
All I suggest is that you ask yourself, "Is this worth it?"
People are asking themselves "Could it be better?" That's the whole point.
Considering I invented the thread topic, I tend to disagree :D There are 1,000,001 threads about "iz game gud"? This isn't really one of them.

I think you're missing it.
Anyway, I'm not. "Could it be better?" is certainly a good question. Its validity, however, does not release a player from responsibility for his own behavior; nor does it excuse active scorn for the concept of player agency.
 

Tavernking

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Zombra is a pompous faggot who likes to refer to himself in the third person when he writes his thread titles so he can feel important and prestigious. "Oh, ZOMBRA says it so it must be true!"

That being said, if RPG developers want to curbstomp metagaming dialogue RPG fags to the ground they need to let you pick on option and one option only. Eg. you can either ask your the wise old man "How did the forest of doom get it's name" or "Have you ever been to the forest of doom", once you pick one the other option is gone forever. So you have to think carefully about what information you want to selectively ask, instead of looking dully at the screen and soaking up all the information like my cumrag
 

Roguey

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Zombra is a pompous faggot who likes to refer to himself in the third person when he writes his thread titles so he can feel important and prestigious. "Oh, ZOMBRA says it so it must be true!"

This thread was split off from the Shadowrun Hong Kong thread, a mod likely created the title. :M
 

almondblight

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So you slog through unenjoyable content

But the point is it should be enjoyable content. You're right, a lot of people will waste time on garbage in RPGs to see numbers slightly increase. We saw that with a lot of the PoE criticism - "the boring trash combat is pointless because it doesn't give you XP!" No, it's pointless because it's boring, and giving you XP doesn't change that. The fact that people will put up with bad content just to see numbers slowly increase (and looking at the amount of repetitive mindless content in a lot of Codex favorites, this is a big issue) is an issue, but it also doesn't excuse the bad content.

In the end I skipped most of the mindless blather in SR:HK. But when people are skipping a lot of content in a game because of it's poor quality it indicates a problem with the game.
 

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