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

[Glop_dweller]

yeah well wot if my character is not interested in completing the main quest and would rather hitch a plane to Abu Dhabi?

Then you stop playing.

Roguey gets it.

I liked that Fallout displayed the reverse of this... If the player was not interested in completing the main quest, then Fallout stopped playing; the game quits, with no need to further accommodate the player. That's one of my favorite parts of the game... that and the other timers that they unfortunately disabled in a later patch. (That was really annoying of them, and my esteem for them took a hit.)

 

[dream expert]

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!"

P. sure OP was a split thread?

Zombra is not gay tho. I know.

 

[Archibald]

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.

Since I haven't read the guide I have no idea what that trinket will do nor do I know if side-quest's combat content (after walls of text) will be enjoyable.

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

Difficult to ask that question when you have no idea what you'll get. Your suggestion basically boils down to "assume that everything is shit", but I'm not sure whats the point of the playing the game in the first place then.

 

[razvedchiki]

i thought zombra was a gurl.

 

[dream expert]

 

[Grauken]

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

This just leads to people save scumming dialogue, if you combine it with a limited save system (e.g. save points), then it just means you add busy work to the save scumming, but it won't stop people from doing it

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

This is a stupid fucking thread

 

[Zombra]

Your suggestion basically boils down to "assume that everything is shit"

Not at all. My suggestion is that if something is unenjoyable, it's a good idea to question whether you should be doing it. I'm continually surprised by the reaction of people who feel they must do everything, no matter how much they hate it, just in case there is some reward they might or might not want. After the first 2 hours of the fishing minigame, you can either choose to say, "This is boring, I think I'll move on", or you can say, "I hate this, but only 58 hours to go! I sure hope Joe's Trinket is worth it!" To me, one of these looks like a bad decision.

So you slog through unenjoyable content

But the point is it should be enjoyable content.

I agree that good is better than bad. It would indeed be nice if every activity, every side quest, every crafting system, every NPC, every item description, every cutscene, every branch of every dialogue in every game was 100% orgasmically enjoyable to 100% of players. As it turns out, in some games this is not the case. Frowny face.

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.

The thing is, the problem is not in the blather itself, but that a) there's a lot of it and b) players think they have to read it all for some reason. The problem would indeed be solved if a) there was less of it. The problem would also be solved if b) a given player realizes he's not intended to read it all. Which one of those two things do you as a player have direct control over?

Let's quickly recap the conversation that led to this thread in the first place.

X: The writing in SRHK is bad because there's too much of it.
Z: So don't read it all. You don't have to ask every fish vendor for his life story.
X: Yes I do! You get xp for some conversations.
Z: So let a few xp go, who cares?
X: Getting some xp is necessary to win the game, therefore I must get all xp!
Z: What are you, stupid?

 

[Sigourn]

Not at all. My suggestion is that if something is unenjoyable, it's a good idea to question whether you should be doing it. I'm continually surprised by the reaction of people who feel they must do everything, no matter how much they hate it, just in case there is some reward they might or might not want. After the first 2 hours of the fishing minigame, you can either choose to say, "This is boring, I think I'll move on", or you can say, "I hate this, but only 58 hours to go! I sure hope Joe's Trinket is worth it!" To me, one of these looks like a bad decision.

This reminds me of all the time I spent in Wasteland 2 going through that awful loop of looting stuff in the game. Fucking Brian Fargo.

For the record, I'm against the idea that you should skip dialogue altogether. Skip conversations with NPCs if you want, but skipping dialogue IN conversations would feel terrible. I kind of get that feeling when speaking to NPCs when I just want to use their services.

 

[Zombra]

For the record, I'm against the idea that you should skip dialogue altogether. Skip conversations with NPCs if you want, but skipping dialogue IN conversations would feel terrible. I kind of get that feeling when speaking to NPCs when I just want to use their services.

Not me. I love going up to an NPC and seeing

1. You seem like an interesting guy, what's with the eye patch?
2. There's an air of melancholy about you. Please tell me your tale of lost love.
3. What's your favorite color, pet, and snack food?
4. I'm here for the map. Hand it over.

 

[PirateScum]

i thought zombra was a gurl.

 

[Sigourn]

For the record, I'm against the idea that you should skip dialogue altogether. Skip conversations with NPCs if you want, but skipping dialogue IN conversations would feel terrible. I kind of get that feeling when speaking to NPCs when I just want to use their services.

Not me. I love going up to an NPC and seeing

1. You seem like an interesting guy, what's with the eye patch?
2. There's an air of melancholy about you. Please tell me your tale of lost love.
3. What's your favorite color, pet, and snack food?
4. I'm here for the map. Hand it over.

Oh, that wasn't the kind of situation I was describing. I meant stuff like when you start a conversation with an NPC, see that you aren't interested in it, and start skipping whatever info the NPC is giving you.

 

[Zombra]

I meant stuff like when you start a conversation with an NPC, see that you aren't interested in it, and start skipping whatever info the NPC is giving you.

Ah! Completely agree. If you're going to have the conversation, read it.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

For the record, I'm against the idea that you should skip dialogue altogether. Skip conversations with NPCs if you want, but skipping dialogue IN conversations would feel terrible. I kind of get that feeling when speaking to NPCs when I just want to use their services.

Not me. I love going up to an NPC and seeing

1. You seem like an interesting guy, what's with the eye patch?
2. There's an air of melancholy about you. Please tell me your tale of lost love.
3. What's your favorite color, pet, and snack food?
4. I'm here for the map. Hand it over.

When I stopped bothering with Dragon Age 2 towards the end of Chapter 2, I decided to just barge through to the end of the game using this very system whenever possible (morbid curiosity of the staring at a trainwreck variety). Unfortunately, that game was so irredeemably bad that virtually no conversations had this option, and all conversations were voice-acted in mini cutscenes. Although I understand but generally disagree with your point in this thread, you could also argue that if a game is so bad it doesn't even provide you with a 'quick' option then your point is meaningless anyway, if it does provide that option then the game is probably well-enough designed that the bonus conversations are probably also well designed enough to be interesting? (I haven't played PoE or S:HK yet...).

 

[Lhynn]

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.

I thought that was the joke

 

[Zombra]

You could also argue that if a game is so bad it doesn't even provide you with a 'quick' option then your point is meaningless anyway, if it does provide that option then the game is probably well-enough designed that the bonus conversations are probably also well designed enough to be interesting?

Maybe, maybe not. A game can have a high general quality level but still screw specific things up, or be generally bad but have one or two brilliant innovations or shining moments. To stick with your example of Dragon Age 2, I tried to like it, but nothing held my interest; skipping the parts I didn't like meant quitting the game entirely. Which I did.

In SRHK, which started this whole discussion, my feeling is that the dialogue was actually really rich and well done but poorly paced with the rest of the game, as Siobhan observed upthread. If we should be complaining about anything, it's the overall pacing, not the word by word of the writing. People generally say they liked the first few conversations in SRHK but by the 50th one they were sick of it. When I got to that point, I wasn't mad or frustrated; I simply stopped delving deep into the history of every bum on the street. To use yet another analogy, I ate until I wasn't hungry any more and let the waiter take back my plate with food still on it (including the cole slaw I didn't even touch); this didn't mean I felt the restaurant served me a bad meal.

 

[Iznaliu]

This is a stupid fucking thread

Did you seriously expect something better?

 

[almondblight]

I agree that good is better than bad. It would indeed be nice if every activity, every side quest, every crafting system, every NPC, every item description, every cutscene, every branch of every dialogue in every game was 100% orgasmically enjoyable to 100% of players. As it turns out, in some games this is not the case. Frowny face.

Right, no game is perfect. There's always some amount of weak content that we tolerate in order to get to the better stuff. But that's why "just skip the weak stuff" isn't a simple solution.

The thing is, the problem is not in the blather itself, but that a) there's a lot of it and b) players think they have to read it all for some reason. The problem would indeed be solved if a) there was less of it. The problem would also be solved if b) a given player realizes he's not intended to read it all. Which one of those two things do you as a player have direct control over?

I think you are confusing complaints that the game is too verbose and uninteresting with complaints that the game has too many words. It's possible that people have said the latter was the problem, but I believe most of the complaints are actually because of the former (as well as some pacing issues). There were places in Dragonfall where you had to read a lot of non-interactive text (like watching the movies or reading Shadowlands), but it was actually interesting stuff (Dragonfall Shadowlands vs HK Shadowlands is actually a pretty good example of the drop in writing quality). It also made more sense to be reading a lot of text in that case (since you're passively reading/watching the content), rather than when you're supposedly having an active conversation with someone but it comes off as you meekly standing there while they spout monologues.

And yes, it's silly to keep doing something you dislike in the vain hope of getting a little extra XP. But that's not the only reason why someone might continue with some boring-ish conversations. There might be cases where you are interested in the content, even if the writing itself gets a bit tedious at points (I felt this way with Racter and Gaichu). And good content cane be locked behind boring content. The siege tower in Plansecape is a good example of this. It's one of the better locations in the game (I liked in more than anything in the Clerk's Ward), but you can't figure out a way inside unless you try to exhaust all dialogue options with every poor schmuck around (a conversation option not about the siege engine with some guy in the market ends up randomly giving you the way in). Unlike a book there's no easy way to access this content again if you later decide you want to.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

This is a stupid fucking thread

Did you seriously expect something better?

Not from you we don't.